This next video is more of a fun overview of Japanese gardens that have
developed in California over the last hundred plus years. We'll be thinking of
some gardens that take a more traditional approach and others that are
a bit more adventurous or more modern in their ways of reinterpreting the
Japanese garden. And so we'll be starting off in San Francisco and then looking at
examples in Southern California. This is an image of the dry garden or that kind
of Zen rock garden inspired space that is in the tea garden in San Francisco -- in
Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. So starting off with that example the
Japanese tea garden in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco dates to 1894 when it
was created for a Japanese village that was going to be part of the California
Midwinter International Exposition or more commonly known as the World's Fair.
So this garden, you can see, was fairly basic in its overall construction but
still had some traditional elements that we've seen in Japanese gardens, also
we've seen in Chinese gardens. The idea of that moon bridge -- the creation of the
perfect circle when it creates a reflection in the water. The importance
of rocks, water, buildings, and plants -- all incorporated into the garden. Japanese
gardens are often designed into kind of "rooms," so you're looking at
different spaces -- getting those different views -- similar to what we saw in Chinese
gardens. So they're deliberately framing certain spaces or certain views for you.
So you have that moon bridge. You have the rocks. You have the water. Usually koi
were incorporated into these types of ponds, and so there may have been fish
incorporated. You can see the traditional East Asian style flared roofs with wide
eaves and this kind of entryway or gateway that you would move through, and
some of the main gateway today still has remnants of the past garden although
very little of the original garden survives today. So it was cared for by
individual named Makoto Hagiwara from 1895 to 1942. And so of course in 1942,
this is when Japanese-Americans were interned and were brought to camps, and
so he had always lived near the garden and had taken very, very
a good care of it because he did ask to keep the garden as permanent for it to
become a permanent part of Golden Gate Park and he did take care of it. Of
course during World War II, when he was interned, the garden fell into disrepair.
It was vandalized. It wasn't cared for and unfortunately much -- as I said -- much of
what was originally there is no longer there and has been replaced. By the 1950s
the sentiment about Japanese culture had improved. There was a greater desire for
peace, and so the garden was basically reinstated and is now a wonderful place
that many people go to in Golden Gate Park. So let's look at some of the views
of how the garden looks today. So in the garden you can encounter a lot of
lanterns. Lanterns are a very common feature of Japanese gardens. You can see
one here and here. You can also see a pagoda that emerges out from the garden.
You see certain elements that refer to Buddhism, like the pagoda, which
traditionally refers back to the parinirvana of the Buddha or the death
of the Buddha. It connects back to that tradition of the stupa where the relics
of the Buddha were kept. So you have the pagoda with those traditional flared
eaves -- the idea of the axis mundi reinforced here. And so you have some
Buddhist elements; also sculptures of the Buddha in the garden. And then some
Shinto elements as well. There's also a plant that's apparently shaped into the
form of Mount Fuji so that's particularly interesting. One of the most
popular parts of this Japanese tea garden is the moon bridge, so this kind
of more sturdy version of the earlier moon bridge. And you can actually climb
on this. So you can see here I am climbing it -- I did make it to the top. But
it is a beautiful bridge and emerges out between these trees and different
greenery. Often you see these kind of bulbous forms at the top of bridges and
certain numbers will often have symbolism. We'll see that in a later
example of a moon bridge. And it does create a challenge -- right? -- to have to
climb over that particular bridge because it is so dramatically steep and
many gardens will actually close these [types of bridges] and won't allow people to climb on them,
so the Golden Gate Park tea garden is especially lovely for letting people do that.
Here are some of these different spaces or different rooms we already saw the
Zen garden those dry rocks, which we've talked about how the smaller rocks could
symbolize water, and how the mossy and rocky outcroppings could symbolize land.
Also that these are supposed to encourage meditation and tranquility. So
this is really a kind of a quiet spot in the garden that's more off to the side.
This is another view where you can see how precisely these small trees and
bushes are cut into shape. So often these Japanese gardens require huge numbers of
volunteers and also employees and people who are extensively
trained in taking care of landscape, to make sure that these gardens stay in
kind of their perfect and artful form because they really are works of art.
Here's just that for you again of the of the rock garden again in a rather quiet
spot off to the side. These gardens in California are interesting because they want to use a lot of plants that are traditional in Japan
but obviously they have to also use plants that will thrive in California. So
the types of plants that you will encounter in a California Japanese
garden are obviously going to be quite different from what you would see in a
garden in Japan. The gardens of course respond to the seasons and so going to
the garden in the autumn is quite different from the spring just like many
people go to Japan today in the spring to see the blossoms to see when the
trees are blossoming. And there are certain times when you want to go. There
could be certain times when you can visit the tea garden and experience
these changes in the vegetation there. Of course, it is called the tea garden so
you can enjoy a cup of tea there. But mostly it is kind of a space for walking,
for gathering, for personal reflection, or for gathering with friends. So that was
traditional for Japanese gardens that weren't the Zen dry gardens -- that they
could be places of socializing, of gathering, of having a good time. Today in
California though if we go to places in Southern California, some Japanese
gardens have become harder to maintain, harder to keep. So there was a garden
that was owned by UCLA called the Hannah Carter
Garden. It was given to the University and just because of difficulties of
maintaining it in Bel-Air, which is a rather nice part of Los Angeles, the
value of the land there, the difficulty for visitors to get to this garden; this
garden has become very difficult for people to go and see. I think it was
recently purchased by a developer because the university no longer wanted
to manage it. But just this idea that as land values continue to rise and as the
maintenance for these gardens becomes more expensive, it's important to realize
how challenging it is to keep some of these gardens open. There's a really
interesting example of an earlier kind of Japanese-style Park, which was called
Japanese Deer Park. It was open in the late 60s to 70s -- mid 70s -- and it was
supposed to be kind of a recreation of the Deer Park at Todaiji in Nara -- so one
of those early Buddhist temples that we looked at. So it says "inspired by the
world-famous deer park in nara pet and feed scores of tame deer that
roam free and be enchanted by doves in the dove pavilion and sip tea and a
Japanese tea house." So right around the time when there were
a lot of these kind of theme parks opening in the area around Disneyland.
You had places like Movieland. You have this interest in opening a
space about Japanese culture, and so this was called the Japanese Village in Deer
Park. It obviously did not last particularly long. This is just a map of
the park where you get the sense that it really is this kind of theme park. There
you can see a traditional torii gate -- the kind of gate you would move through as
you go to a Shinto shrine -- so the entrance inspired by traditional Shinto
shrines. You can see this kind of stylized pagoda off to the side. Los
Angeles continues to have and did have a very strong Japanese and Japanese -American population and so it could be kind of calling out to that population
and then also just a broader interest in Japanese culture around that time. Of
course, there are palms and recreations of Japanese gardens. You can see the
bridge in the background. You can see a woman in
a version of kimono here holding one of those doves. Individuals petting these
deer -- these tame deer -- which is somewhat similar to individuals petting the deer
at Todaiji in Nara, but obviously you can see the hot, dry California climate does
not quite look the same as what you would see in Nara, Japan. And then there
were these very strange green figures called Fuji folks apparently, where they
were said to live on the slopes of Mount Fuji. So kind of a strange way to create
a mascot for your park, and maybe this was one of the reasons the park did not
succeed. Let's look at some examples of more successful Japanese gardens in
Southern California -- one that's more traditional and one that's more modern.
So this is the more traditional one. This is called the Earl Browns Miller
Japanese garden, and it's at California State University, Long Beach or Cal State
Long Beach, as it's more commonly called. You can see the presence of koi in the
pond, that combination of water, rocks, buildings, and bridges. There is a small
teahouse off to the side and a variety of bridges that direct you to different
views throughout the garden they do think of the garden as being divided
into separate "rooms" or spaces so that you're enjoying these different views.
You can see a kind of rocky outcropping here. You see a small island at center.
There is grass in this garden, which is not traditional for Japanese gardens, but
because it is on a university campus, it really is supposed to be of space for
gathering. A lot of weddings happen here too. So here are just three of the spaces
or three of the rooms. So there is this moon bridge. It doesn't curve as
dramatically as some moon bridges, but it does give you that sense of the circle
when it does reflect in the water. It has eight of those kind of bulging finials
along the top which are supposed to relate to the Eightfold Path connected
to Buddhism. You do have a Zen dry rock garden that's intended for meditation --
again that combination of the small rocks with the more mossy outcroppings.
There are some wonderful small and very valuable trees that are very carefully
maintained by the staff there. And then another room would be the tea
house. So there is a tea house where you can see the use of traditional tatami
mats. It is a small space similar to the tea houses we saw connected to tea
masters in the Kamakura and Momoyama periods. And so you can see just it
presents these different spaces that you could move through depending on what
purpose you want to use the garden for. You can also see a wedding going on,
as I mentioned, weddings were quite popular at this garden and continue to
be quite popular. A more modern approach to the Japanese garden would be
California Scenario which is in Costa Mesa California just off of the 405
freeway so in a very busy place -- a very bustling place with a lot of office
buildings nearby, a freeway nearby, a huge shopping center nearby. There's this
wonderful place of tranquility, and so Isamu Noguchi was an individual -- he was
born to a Japanese father and an American mother, and so he was
born in Los Angeles but then spent a lot of his time growing up in Japan, and kind
of kept coming back to to the United States. He spent time in
Europe as well, and then spent a lot of time in Japan, so he did have this very
kind of international upbringing, but a lot of it was in Japan. So he was he
would have been exposed to Japanese gardens. He would have been exposed to
Japanese aesthetic. And he was really interested in these kind of combinations
of hard sharp forms with softer more kind of biomorphic forms. You can see
that he's considering the drier California climate when he created this
version of a Japanese garden so it has more kind of succulents on this
particular outcropping. You're thinking of this kind of play of the dry Zen
garden where you have this dry area with these rocky outcroppings. You also have
these more angular forms with water running through. And you still have a lot
of those traditional elements with the rocks and the water and the plants all
incorporated. And then there are buildings that surround it. This
particular image is it's hard to figure out the scale, so it is massive in size.
So a human is probably -- I don't know -- about this tall.
It's wonderful to visit at different times of day, and it is this wonderful
place of rest in a busy part of Costa Mesa. You can see it kind of at dusk and
then you can see it at night. It's wonderful to visit at night -- beautifully
illuminated. And then just another view to give you a sense of scale you can see
a human form walking along this waterway which you can cross at various points.
You can gather here to rest in this kind of more shaded area with the trees here.
And then again these kind of angular pyramidal forms and then this kind of
outcropping of plants here. So just an interesting reflection on how to bring
the Japanese -- traditional Japanese garden into a very modern or contemporary space
in 1982. So both the garden that we saw from Long Beach from California
State University Long Beach. This one was created in 1981; this one was created in
1982, so you can see in the 1980s, there must have been this particular interest
in bringing these Japanese gardens into California spaces and reconsidering them
in kind of more intellectual ways than we saw with that Deer Park that was from
the 1960s and 70s. So I hope this has been interesting. Be sure to comment and
talk about what your favorite Japanese garden is because there are a lot more
than that in California and throughout the United States. Alright -- thank you!