Katsura Rikyū Imperial Villa

When I asked a Japanese landscaper what gardens I should visit in Kyoto, he named Katsura Imperial Villa first. So, I booked my tickets to go there the day I arrived to Kyoto. It is the most beautiful Japanese stroll garden I’ve seen so far. It was designed in the early 17th century by the Imperial Prince Toshihito and then considerably improved by his son Toshitada. All ponds, streams, islands and hills in this garden are artificial. The water is drawn from nearby Katsura River. Unlike many other historical properties in Japan, the villa had never been burned and the buildings retain their original form. Katsura Imperial Villa as a whole with its lakes, hills, trees and buildings, all in perfect harmony, strongly resonated with me. It’s a microcosm where Confucius’ ‘superior man’ could devote himself to scholarly pursuits such as calligraphy and tea. The villa also has a loan for Kemari football and archery, plus endless opportunities to work with the garden. It’s my kind of place. Images above and below show some of the garden views.

The garden has a couple of exquisite gates. One of them is Miyuki-mon gate with a Kiritsuma style thatched roof. Its roof is reinforced with bamboo rafters and supported by oak logs with the bark still on (see images below). It was built in the mid-17th century to honor a visiting retired emperor. The rightmost image is showing a different gate called Chu-mon.

The first tea house we saw was Shoka-tei (two leftmost images below). It is located on an island and placed on top of the highest hill in the garden. It is the smallest and the least formal tea house of the villa. Shoka-tei imitates a rustic tea stall on a mountain pass.

The rightmost image below shows the Soto-kashikake arbor (waiting place for tea ceremony). All structural timber of the arbor is logs with the bark and most of them are not straight. The floor is paved with large stones of irregular shapes. A little cubicle on its left side is the ‘sand toilet’ or sunazetchin, which is an arrangement of stones in the sand, and it is there for purely decorative purposes.

The most gorgeous tea house of the Imperial Villa is Shokin-tei (meaning ‘pine-tree-harp’). The building is so exquisite that I could have spent a day scrutinising it in detail (images below say it all). Apparently, Shokin-tei is the most prestigious place in Japan to hold a tea ceremony. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take good photos of it, because my view was continuously blocked by people of my tour group and the security staff wouldn’t let me stay behind. Shokin-tei is surrounded by water from three sides and its ichi-no-ma room offers the best view of the garden. Tea houses are not supposed to have splendid views, and I applaud the designer for disregarding this rule.

The next tea house we saw was Shoi-ken. It is a farm residence converted to a country style tea house (images below). It is not as glamorous as Shokin-tei, but it’s alluring nevertheless. Its charm lies in little features like round windows above sliding doors, different materials used for each door sill, combination of thatched and shingled roofing. A rice field maintained at the back of Shoi-ken is a thoughtful reminder of its agricultural past.

The last teahouse we saw is called Geppa-ro, which means ‘house of the moon and ripples’. As suggested by its name, it was designed for viewing the moon’s reflection in the pond. See images below left to right: Geppa-ro viewed from the east, kitchen room, central room (naka-no-ma), first room (ichi-no-ma), northern side of Geppa-ro exterior. Most of Geppa-ro’s rooms don’t have ceilings, instead, the bottom of the roof is decorated with panels made of bamboo and reed.

The actual ‘villa’ of the Katsura Imperial Villa is a series of four connected shoin buildings. Images below show them from left to right: Shin-goten, Gakki-no-ma, Chu-shoin and Ko-shoin. The rightmost image shows the moon-viewing platform of the Ko-shoin builing which offers an amazing lake view. The design of these buildings is dominated by straight lines, square angles and black and white colours, which make them look quite modern. It is not a coincidence – traditional Japanese architecture had a profound influence on contemporary architecture.

Images below show Okoshiyose entrance to shoin buildings shown above. Its courtyard garden is designed around a Tatami-ishi paved path, which was the first of its kind at the time of construction. This paved path is the main focal point of the garden (images below). Unfortunately, I haven’t taken any good photos of the path, but I was able to make a digital drawing of it (see the image below). The stones are superbly arranged in perfect balance between order and disorder (just like most things in life).

The garden actually has a delightful array of formal, semiformal and informal paved paths or nobedan as well as stepping stone paths. A selection of them is shown in the images below.

The pond of Katsura Imperial Villa has a highly irregular shape with a number of islands. This allowed the designer of the garden to incorporate a considerable number of bridges. Images below show just a selection of them. Some of them are made of stone, some of timber, but my favorite were earthen bridges (two rightmost images below). I’ve never seen them before and was very impressed by combination of textures (moss, sand, timber) and their graceful shape.

The garden features many stone lanterns (see images below). The majority are of less formal Oki-dōrō and Ikekomi-dōrō types (movable lantern and ’buried’ lantern). The leftmost image in the top row is a famous example of Yukimi-dōrō type of movable lantern. The rightmost image in the bottom row shows an Oribe-dōrō type of ’buried’ lantern with inscription ‘F. I. L. I.’, which is a Latin acronym for ‘My son Christ’. In a small courtyard garden, a lantern can be the main focal point, but in a large stroll garden like Katsura Imperial Villa they are used as accents. A lantern in a particular spot may imply “look at the view” or “your destination is here” or even “watch your step”.

One thing that caught my eye even before I entered the villa was different types of bamboo fencing. Some of them are shown in images below. The leftmost image shows Sasagaki hedge. It is made by bending and braiding bamboo to form a hedge. The second leftmost image shows Hogaki fence. It is constructed by piling bamboo twigs between bamboo posts and securing them by a black rope. Sasagaki hedge and Hogaki fence are unique to Katsura Imperial Villa.

There were also a few stone basins. Images below show some of them. All filled with sand, I presume to control mosquitoes. The middle image shows a bowl-shaped basin which used to be a part of stone lantern. The rightmost image shows a sickle-shaped stone basin.

If Katsura Imperial Villa were the only thing to see in Japan, it would've been still worth the trip.

Kyoto Imperial Palace – Kyoto Gosho

I visited Kyoto Imperial Palace or Kyoto Gosho on my first day in Kyoto. It’s magnificent, especially to those who like formal Japanese architecture, but the impression was quickly overshadowed by the places I saw later on. Kyoto Gosho started its existence in the 8th century as one of the spare palaces where the emperor could crash when his main palace was burned, which used to happen a lot. It is surrounded by an earthen wall, bits of which can be seen in the left and right images bellow. Left image shows Kenreimon gate and right image shows Kenshunmon gate. They are two of the five gates in the outer wall of the palace. The centre image shows Jomeimon gate in the inner wall surrounding the front garden (Dantei) of the main palace building (Shishiden).

The palace grounds have many impressive buildings and when I started writing this post I realised that I wasn’t paying enough attention to them. I was mostly looking at the garden. Because of this, the post contains only random examples of the Kyoto Gosho architecture. The building in the left image below is the royal carriage entrance Shinmikurumayose. The right image below shows Seiryoden, which used to be the Emperor’s residence. There are two lattice cubicles in front of Seiryoden with kuretake and kawatake varieties of bamboo. This building is mentioned in ‘The Tale of Genji’.

Leftmost image below shows Okurumayose entrance of Shodaibunoma building, which was used as a waiting area before the audience with the emperor. Shodaibunoma has three waiting rooms named after the subject of the paintings on their sliding doors. They are the Tiger Room, the Crane Room and the Cherry Room. Images below show some of the paintings.

Images below show the detail of few other buildings.

As mentioned above, I was interested in the gardens more than the buildings and the main garden of Kyoto Gosho is Oikeniwa (images below).

Oikeniwa is designed around a pond with a couple of islands, which are connected to the shore by bridges (image above and below).

The bridges were quite diverse, formal and informal in terms of style, as well as stone, earthen and timber in terms of materials. Some of them are shown in the images below. My favourite was Keyakibashi bridge shown in the top left image.

Such decided avoidance of repetition is seen the selection of lanterns around the palace grounds (images below). The majority of them are formal to go with the predominantly formal shinden and shoin style architecture. Some of the lanterns were metal (see second and third images from the left).

Finally, a few words about the garden trees in and around Kyoto Gosho. There were some trees of historical significance like the 300-year-old Muku Tree (Aphananthe aspera) of Shimizudani residence (leftmost image below). This tree is all that’s left of a court noble residence. The majority of all trees in Kyoto Gosho grounds have undergone a certain degree of shaping. A sample of such garden trees or niwaki is shown in the images below. Some of them bare a close similarity to bonsai.

Overall, it is worth visiting Kyoto Gosho, especially if you have to go to the Imperial Household Agency to secure passes to other places.

For my other posts on Japanese gardens in Kyoto see the following links:

Katsura Imperial Villa - http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/katsura-rikyu.html

Nijo Castle - http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/nijo-castle.html

Tofuku-ji - http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/tofuku-ji-temple.html

Ryoan-ji - http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/ryoan-ji.html 

Annual exhibition of Bonsai Society of Australia 2012

I have seen annual exhibitions of the Bonsai Society of Australia every year for the past six years. It’s a short span of time, but sufficient to notice a trend. I wish I could say there is a gradual improvement. Au contraire, year after year these exhibitions are more or less the same. You would probably think I am too judgmental. However, let’s have a look at Noelanders Trophy book (Kunstboek S. (2010) Bonsai: Noelanders Trophy 10 Years, Antique Collectors' Club). It illustrates the best trees from this competition between 2000 and 2009. The progress they have made between 2000 and 2007 is remarkable, and the trees they had on display in 2000 are quite comparable with what we have in Sydney today.


Anyway, back to the exhibition of the Bonsai Society of Australia. This year, my favourite was a forest planting (see the image above). Plus there were things I always enjoy no matter what, like flowering Wisterias, etc.

Bonsai-A and Bonsai-B by Takanori Aiba

A colleague of mine who is studying graphic design drew my attention to the work of Takanori Aiba. He is a 59-year-old Japanese concept maker and art director for architectural spaces. Since 2003, Aiba used his skills as an illustrator and an architect to create miniature three dimensional fantasy city-scapes. His work is fascinating (see it for yourself at: http://www.tokyogoodidea.com/galleries), but what impressed me the most is his Bonsai Series. Apparently, Aiba used to play with bonsai as a child and he created the Bonsai Series to reconnect with one of his original inspirations to create miniature worlds. To me, Takanori Aiba’s Bonsai Series is the most innovative approach to bonsai. However, I will let you be the judge. The images below are reproduced with the permission of Tokyo Good Idea Development Institute.

Images above: Bonsai-B (42 × 37 × 48 cm) and the concept drawing.

Images above: Bonsai-A (40 × 30 × 40 cm) and the concept drawing.

7th International Symposium of Japanese Gardens: The garden tour

At the beginning of this month, Sydney hosted 7th International Symposium of Japanese Gardens organised by the International Association of Japanese Gardens. I could not attend the Symposium, but managed to go on a private garden tour, which was a part of the symposium. I hoped to see some interesting gardens, but meeting Japanese landscapers and garden designers who were on the tour turned out to be much more interesting. The most senior gardener in the Japanese group was Mr Iwatani. I was told that he is 75 and everyone treated him like a sensei. The talk he presented at the symposium was titled “Tea Ceremony in 21st Century”. It would have been the talk I wouldn’t miss. He also conducted a practical workshop on pruning trees and inaugurated the future tea garden (roja) within Gosford Japanese Garden (for a blog post about this garden see: http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2011/03/last-sunday-i-visited-annual-exhibition.html). Our tour guide was Ken Lamb, a local landscaper who specialises in oriental gardens. On the bus, I was lucky to sit next to Mr Takuhiro Yamada. He is the director of a 150-year-old landscaping business in Kyoto. He manages the company with his father and their clients include some of the major temples as well as the Imperial Household Agency. His talk at the symposium was titled “Japanese Gardens in the 21st Century”. As we talked, Mr Yamada used his symposium presentation to illustrate his points and I got a fairly good idea about its content. 

Soon our bus pulled over to the Auburn Japanese Gardens car park. This garden is relatively old (opened in 1977) and large (9.2 ha). It offers panoramic views around its big lake (see images above), at the same time it is tacky and unrefined. To fix that it needs two things: expertise (perhaps a reputable Japanese garden consultancy) and substantial funding. This garden could become the jewel in Sydney’s crown. It could outshine the Chinese Gardens in Darling Harbour, but as they say ‘it ain’t gonna happen’. It seems that the local government doesn’t share this vision, doesn’t have the skills in obtaining funding and engaging the right expertise. We should remember that Chinese Garden in Darling Harbour had become what it is only after Chinese experts got involved and now it is one of Sydney’s major landmarks.

Our next destination was a private residence garden in Bondi (images above). It was a small garden designed by Ken Lamb. The garden had more of a South-east Asian feel to it. In my opinion, its designer used too many oriental elements to impress the client and forgot about the ‘less is more’ principal. Grater amount of negative space would have made this small garden look bigger too.

After that, we were taken to another garden designed by Ken Lamb for an apartment complex in Double Bay (images above). This garden featured lots of beautiful serpentine rock from Tamworth. Such rock combined with plants will make anything look good. Yet, the garden felt like it has been put together in a rush and then neglected. It featured two identical stone lanterns. Pre-existing structures such as the pergola were difficult to incorporate into the overall design. Apparently, there were time and money constrains at the time of construction. As a result, the mood of a communal barbeque area hasn’t been completely erased from the garden. I would have compartmentalised the garden with visual barriers into several sub-gardens (perhaps three). Each sub-garden would have to have a separate theme and covey a different mood. You could have several apartment dwellers in the garden, but each of them would feel that they are having the garden for themselves.

During lunch, I really enjoyed a conversation with an elderly Japanese lady, who proved to be quite knowledgeable about traditional Japanese culture. Mr Yamada told me that her husband holds a high position in the Kikkoman Corporation (soy sauce brewers). The lady told me that her family owns a traditional Japanese house, which has been made into a museum. She also told me that her husband is a keen bonsai enthusiast. He likes to saw lots of seeds to find seedlings with mutations suitable for bonsai.

After that we headed to the Darling Harbour Chinese Garden. I love this garden. The Japanese responded to it quite well too. They said that Sydney CBD provides an interesting backdrop for it (images above). They were impressed with the garden buildings. They said that the garden displays a few Japanese influences. At least two of the Japanese landscapers commented that having a stairway right next to a waterfall is very unusual and they’ve never seen it before.

Next was another private garden done by Ken Lamb (images above). This time it was in Newport. Once again it had seriously good serpentine rock. As for the design, it somehow lacked the natural flow. The paths and bridges led me somewhere, but my eyes drifted somewhere else. For example, I didn’t feel like crossing the bridge because there was a dead-end on the other side. Actually, we visited another garden in the same area. It was charming, but there was hardly anything oriental about it (image below).

Pest of the month: Aphids

With the coming of spring pests are becoming more apparent on bonsai plants. Last week, I saw a couple of winged aphids on a Japanese Box and on closer examination of its young shoots found wingless individuals as well. I was sure wingless aphids were just immature stages of the winged adults. In the lab, I was surprised to find that the aphids were three different species: the Potato Aphid (Macrosiphum euphorbiae, left image), the Rose-grain Aphid (Metopolophium dirhodum) and the Black Citrus Aphid (Toxoptera aurantii, right image). As their names suggest all three species are common pests of roses, grasses, potato and many other plants. I have roses and lime in my garden, but the aphids were feeding on a Japanese Box, probably because it had lots of new shoots. All three species give birth to live young and they don’t even need to mate to reproduce. The Black Citrus Aphid adults can be with and without wings. One of my colleagues told me that adults of this species can make an audible noise by rubbing their hind legs against their body, but I have difficulty believing that. Jokes aside, aphids multiply very quickly and it is good to nip them in the bud by spraying plants with a pesticide. They feed on plant sap, transmit plant viruses and their excreta on leaves encourages the growth of sooty mould fungi. 

Demonstration by Marc Nöelanders

Two years ago at Kokufu-ten in Tokyo, I met Vaclav Novák who gave me a collection of Czech bonsai magazines. One article really impressed me. It was about a large yew styled by Marc Nöelanders. I didn’t know anything about him, but his face and the tree he styled stuck in my head. A couple of months ago, I saw the same face in 'The Tops' Weekend brochure and booked myself in. At the workshop, I learned that Marc is a bonsai artist from Belgium, who practiced bonsai for 30 years. He had many prominent mentors who include John Naka, Saburo Kato and Masahiko Kimura among others. Marc said that he learned from many, but developed his own way of doing bonsai. He is one of the founders of Bonsai Association Belgium and the initiator of Noelanders Trophy, which is an important annual event in Europe.

On the day I attended 'The Tops' Weekend, Marc Nöelanders conducted two workshops and one demonstration. To me, he came across as professional, honest and talented. He explained his design for each tree and the reasons for choosing a particular design. He gave clear instructions to the workshop participants on what to do during the workshop time. He spent adequate time with each workshop participant. Most image panels in this post show the trees from the workshops. Left image in each panel shows the tree at the beginning of the workshop, centre image shows the tree design suggested by Marc and the right image of the panel shows the tree at the end of the workshop.

While talking about the trees, Marc emphasized the importance of sketching the final design of a bonsai tree. He said that determining the front of the tree and the angle of trunk inclination is 60% of bonsai design. Identifying the main branch and determining appropriate position of the apex in relation to it, is quite important too (apex should incline towards the main branch). He drew designs for each tree in the workshop. His drawings are good considering how little time he takes to do them (see images in this post). He mentioned that he runs bonsai drawing workshops where the speed of drawing is given importance. He even gave useful tips about conducting workshops and demonstrations. One of them was: work fast and talk less at the beginning of the demonstration, once the scope of work is gauged, demonstrator can talk more. 

As the workshops went on, Marc talked about his time as a journeyman in Omiya. At the beginning he was asked to do only weeding and watering. After that he was allowed to remove wire. Then he graduated to wiring inexpensive trees. Only later, he was trusted with wiring and styling more important trees. Marc said that wiring occupies 60-70% of the time spent on bonsai. It is not unusual to spend one or two days wiring one tree. He also mentioned that, apprentices in Japan get little feedback from the master and learn a lot from more experienced apprentices. 

Marc also talked at length about bonsai in Europe. He told that at first, when bonsai gained popularity, England was ahead of other countries. Then the focus shifted to Germany. After that, there was a prolonged period when Italy was the place of bonsai excellence. Though overtime, bonsai in Italy had become too competitive, political and commercial, with some Italian bonsai artists acting like celebrities. At present however, Spain holds the top spot in European bonsai. Apparently, Spanish conifers collected from the mountains feature old bark, beautiful dead wood and short needles. 

Right now, the standard of bonsai in Europe is quite high and in another ten years Europe might supersede Japan. However, one must also consider China, where bonsai is driven rapidly by the new wealth. At present, there are estimated 30,000 to 40,000 bonsai enthusiasts in Europe. This makes Europe a good market for bonsai and some entrepreneurs seize the opportunity. One such business is the trade in yamadori. In most cases, the trees are collected illegally and a significant proportion of them die. In Italy, people put name tags on trees still growing in the mountains to claim them. The trees are sold from photographs before they are dug out. In Switzerland, larger trees are lifted from remote areas by helicopter. A yamadori can cost €2,000-3,000, however it can go up to €15,000.

 

Yamadori trade also allows a bonsai artist to ‘cheat’ by swapping multiple freshly dug up yamadori for a bonsai that’s been worked on for many years. Minor changes can make such tree a prize winning bonsai. Thus, fame and prestige are achieved without the long years of work. On the other hand, some wealthy novices buy expensive yamadori just to kill them due to incompetence in bonsai basics. Marc pointed out that beginners should practice on nursery trees, which are more challenging and less likely to die. Once you have good basic skills, styling a good quality yamadori is relatively easy. 

Marc talked about Bonsai prices in Europe and North America as well. For a modest bonsai you are expected to pay €2,000-3,000, but really good trees start from € 5,000 and go all the way to €75,000. Prices between €15,000 and €35,000 are not unusual. 

The day ended with a demonstration by Marc Nöelanders. To me, it was the most impressive part of the day. The tree was a Juniperus procumbens grown in the ground and in the pot for less than 10 years. The duration of the demonstration was a little over 3 hours. In this time, Marc removed 60% of the branches, created jins and shari, wired the whole tree and styled it. He worked very fast. Below are the images showing the progress of the demonstration. 

1 – The tree in its initial state;

2 – Some of the longest branches removed;

3 – The front of the tree and the angle of trunk inclination are identified;

4 – A rough sketch of possible design options;

5 – More unnecessary branches removed;

6 – Jins and dead wood created;

7 – Lower branches are wired and positioned;

8 – The tree is wired and styled at the end of demonstration.

Marc said that this tree should undergo further refinement in a training pot for another 2-3 years before it is ready for an exhibition. After the demonstration, the tree was put up for an auction. In its initial state it was valued at AU$600, however after it has been styled by Marc it was sold at the auction for AU$3500. Marc Nöelanders added three-thousand-dollar-value to this tree in about three hours – pretty impressive!

Toju-en, Omiya

I visited this nursery in February 2010. It was minded by just one person who was cleaning the brunches of a Black Pine. He wasn’t interested in talking to me, so I just wandered off looking at the trees and there were enough of them to see. Photography was prohibited, so I just took a couple of shots from the gate (see images above). The current owner of Toju-en is Hiromi Hamano. His farther Motosuke Hamano had several students who became bonsai masters in their own right. The most famous of them is Masahiko Kimura who trained there for eleven years from the age of fifteen till 1966. Motosuke Hamano passed away in 1991.

P. S. For my posts about bonsai nurseries in Kyoto see the following links:

http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/shosei-en-bonsai-nursery-kyoto.html

http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/koju-en-kyoto.html