Off the beaten track, not easily seen because in private or official hands, these are the "hidden gardens" of one of the world’s great historic cities.

All the main types of Japanese garden are represented. First comes the pond garden, which on the grandest scale can be a match for the lake-wood-and-meadow parks of Western estates, and on a more modest scale still contains islands and bridges and pavilions. Then there is the dry landscape garden, whose gravel, rocks, and moss have an austerity remote from most Westerners’ idea of a garden, yet whose purpose, once understood, leaves an impression of dignity and resonance. And finally the tea garden, whose scrupulous simplicity belies great sophistication in the arrangement of its few components.

To a much greater degree than Western gardens, their enjoyment depends on knowing how to interpret them: how to look for the auspicious tortoise stones—a wedge-shaped head poking out of the ground—or the wings of a stone crane; the symbolic waterfall where no water flows; the bridge that crosses from this world into the next.

No better guides to these underlying attributes can be found than the photographer of this book, who has spent most of his life in the old capital, and the commentator, a professional garden designer who learned his craft from one of the twentieth century’s greatest landscape gardeners. With their help we learn such things as why no flowers bloom in the tea garden, and why its paths are seldom straight; or why some scenery is best seen in passing from a boat rather than on dry land.

As a sequel to the acclaimed LANDSCAPES FOR SMALL SPACES, this new appreciation of the traditional Japanese garden will give as much, if not more, pleasure, since part of its attraction is knowing that the gate into these gardens—which might otherwise be closed—is, in these pages, open to us all....