REVIEW: The Art of Japanese Gardens by Loraine E. Kuck (New York: John Day, 1940; republished London: Kegan Paul, 2006; reprinted 2012) by Miyuki Katahira

he reprinting in 2012 of Loraine Kuck’s The Art of her discussions with Mirei Shigemori. In the book’s Japanese Gardens, first published in 1940,provides T foreword, Kuck thanks Shigemori for many hours an opportunity for reassessing this important book spent explaining key ideas in his 26-volume study, that introduced many English-language readers Nihon teienshi zukan, (An Illustrated History of to the cultural history of Japanese gardens. Kuck Japanese Gardens, 1937-1938). In turn, in an article in presents gardens in Japan chronologically, thoroughly the garden magazine, Rinsen (1940), Shigemori notes describing their historical background in relation to Kuck’s impressive understanding of Japanese gardens. art and aesthetics. In retrospect, this study also reveals how ideas about Japan’s garden history formed in Kuck’s first premise is to link, and then distinguish, the 1930s have long shaped our understanding. The Japanese gardens from those in China - the subject fact that the book has been republished without a of her first two chapters. She explains how Daoism, new introduction to put it into historical context, blended with Buddhism, formed the Chinese view of demonstrates the staying power of many of these nature in China that celebrates the wildness of nature interpretations. but also suggests ways of living close to it. Gardens in the Tang dynasty, for instance, developed upon Kuck (1894-1977) first authoredOne Hundred Kyoto such a view, in which symbolic islands of immortality Gardens (Kobe: Kegan Paul, 1936) but is best known derived from Daoism coexist with representations for The World of Japanese Gardens (Tokyo: Weatherhill, of the Buddhist Mount Sumeru. 1968), a book that started as a revision of The Art of Japanese Gardens. Kuck initially visited Japan in1931, Although recent garden archaeology has made and returned in 1932, staying for three years in obsolete much of Kuck’s account of the first gardens Kyoto. There, Kuck, who had studied landscape in Japan, her mix of nature and culture in the makeup architecture at the University of California but made of Japanese gardens remains a potent idea. Although her living as a journalist, based her writing in part on Kuck notes that natural groves associated with recent publications by the first generation of modern Shinto deities were the first native gardens, it was a Japanese garden scholars. She asserts, however, that craftsman from Korea, Michiko-no-Takumi, who first in some of her “surmises” the “Japanese scholars . . . created artificial garden in Japan. He brought the style are not to be held accountable” (xix). These sources of Tang dynasty gardens with its finely detailed lakes include Matsunosuke Tatsui, Tsuyoshi Tamura, and and hills. As described in Heian period texts like The Eisaku Toyama, who are thanked in Kuck’s preface Tale of Genji and illustrated in the Nenjūgyōji emaki and their publications cited in its brief bibliography. (Scroll Painting of Annual Affairs), this style became As has been noted by Wybe Kuitert, in Themes in the popular among aristocrats. Kuck details how these History of Japanese Garden Art (Honolulu: University gardens, vibrant and bright, developed in connection of Hawaii Press, 2002) and Yamada Shoji, in Shots with outdoor entertainment. in the Dark (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), Kuck’s understanding of the stone garden From this world of courtly elegance, the introduction at Ryōanji, celebrated in her chapter “A Sermon in of Zen culture from Song dynasty China triggered a Stone,” was very much shaped by the Zen scholar, transition of taste and function. Compared to the three Daisetsu T. Suzuki. I would emphasize that Kuck’s brief chapters on aristocratic and Pureland gardens, interpretations, especially of Zen gardens and the Kuck devotes five chapters to medieval Japanese Edo period gardens, were very likely derived from temple gardens, where Zen values contributed to

60 The Art of Japanese Gardens is published by London, New York, Bahrain: Kegan Paul Limited, 2006. Distribution in North America is by Columbia University Press

the aesthetic of yūgen, and Song landscape paintings inspired the way of arranging stones. In this way, Japanese gardens were “reoriented” to become symbolic and “subjective.” Kuck defines yūgen as a feeling associated with “subtle harmonies and perfect naturalism” (89). By “subjective,” she means that a viewer has to activate his own imagination to expand what is before the eyes. Kuck claims that such a way of viewing gardens often puzzles foreign visitors, repeating what was, and remains, a frequent refrain among garden historians in Japan. in few exceptional gardens of the era: Sentō Gosho, Shugakuin Detached Palace, and Katsura Detached Following an evolutionary history proposed Palace. For Kuck, even later gardens at Zen temples by Shigemori, Kuck introduces the gardens at cannot match the “splendid mysticism” and “sheer Tenryūji, the Silver Pavilion, and Ryōanji, in Kyoto as artistry” of the great Muromachi gardens (223). After epitomizing the development of Muromachi gardens. such unenthusiastic analysis of Edo gardens, Kuck In an idiosyncratic deviation from her Japanese concludes with a more positive assessment of some sources, Kuck concludes that the stone arrangement Meiji gardens, particularly those created in Kyoto by at Tenryūji is the product of a Chinese craftsman, Jihei Ogawa. and the design of Ryōanji was derived from Chinese Chan monasteries. Despite these origins, Kuck Among Japanese garden historians, discourse praising carefully recuperates the Japanese-ness of these Muromachi dry gardens and devaluing Edo period iconic gardens, writing, “though Chinese philosophy gardens appeared in the late 1920s and remained and art have been deeply affected the Japanese, they standard until the end of the 20th century. Kuck’s never became Chinese in spirit” (265). book crystallizes this era of historical interpretation, and allows us to easily see the assumptions Following this golden age, Kuck traces a transition that inform many mid-century publications and into the gardens of the late 16th century, which impacted subsequent garden design. In this way, the Kuck describes as a “dark age.” In a chapter on republication and reprinting of The Art of Japanese gardens under the military hegemon Hideyoshi, Kuck Gardens guides us not just into the rich cultural ground criticizes the “showiness” that predominated in art, from which gardens in Japan grew, but alerts us to and notes the “artificiality” of gardens that developed the equally fertile intellectual positions of Japan in subsequently. In the Edo period, “rules” became the the 1930s, when the nation’s past was being carefully central matter and “inspiration” disappeared from studied, interpreted, and disseminated in light of the gardens. Consequently, Kuck criticizes Josiah Conder, growing conflict brewing between Imperial Japan and the English architect and the author of Landscape America. The complexity of the era, and Kuck’s place Gardening in Japan (1893), for his sole focus on in it, is underscored by the publication of “special Edo period gardens based on 19th century secret edition” of the book for The Japan Society, New York treatises on garden making. In Kuck’s interpretation, in 1941, just months before Pearl Harbor. Muromachi taste survived only in the tea culture of Contact Miyuki Katahira-Manabe at [email protected] the 17th century, and its subdued aesthetics remain