Mapping sound-space: the Japanese garden as auditory model

Abstract

Japanese culture, through its art, language and religion, is a result of accumulated flows of knowledge from China and Korea. The traditions of garden design and garden construction, similarly, are ‘a space of flows’ from classical Chinese models though, after centuries of development and refinement, have become distinctly reflective of Japanese culture and aesthetics. The first recorded instance of this knowledge flow reaching Japan appears in the eleventh century. The first treatise on Japanese garden design, Sakuteiki (garden making), is attributed to Tachibana no Toshitsuna, a court official and designer of gardens. Though the treatise contains no illustrations, much of the text is precise, and its content reflective of the cultural and aesthetic predilections of the Confucianist Heien court. Other treatises may have been extant during the Heien period (794–1185), though they are now lost.