Shakkei and the picturesque
Encyclopedia
Borrowed scenery is the principle of "incorporating background landscape into the composition of a garden" found in traditional East Asian garden design
. The term "borrowed scenery" is Chinese in origin. It is known as jiejing in Chinese and shakkei in Japanese.
(藤原頼通, 990-1074 CE), records the Heian period
’s attention to a concept called "mono no aware
" (物の哀れ) "the pathos of things".
The first principle of the Sakuteiki is,
These four principle tenets guiding Japanese garden organization are, intending to create in the likeness of nature planning in accordance with the site topography designing with asymmetrical elements capturing and presenting the ambience
Shakkei, which attempts to capture nature alive rather than create a less spectacular version, is included in the first of these categories.
The origins of borrowed scenery gardens, as well as Shinden-zukuri
, lie in the increased local travel of the Japanese elite, a layered endeavor involving the bolstering of a national identity separate from China and the display of personal wealth. When they returned from their travels they would want to physically manifest these travels at home in a more ostentatious way than could be accomplished solely with art, weapons, or ceramics. Thus, borrowed scenery was introduced to incorporate the foreign landscapes seen in northern Japan into the southern cities of Nara
and Kyoto
.
According to the 1635 CE Chinese garden manual Yuanye (園冶), there are four categories of borrowed scenery, namely: yuanjie (遠借 "distant borrowing", e.g., mountains, lakes), linjie (隣借 "adjacent borrowing", neighboring buildings and features), yangjie (仰借 "upward borrowing", clouds, stars), and fujie (俯借 "downward borrowing", rocks, ponds); respectively Japanese enshaku, rinshaku, gyōshaku, and fushaku.
is the increased speed in dispersing and diffusing knowledge through the printed word, travel, and correspondence. Sir William Temple (1628–1699) was a statesman and essayist who traveled throughout Europe. His essay Upon the Gardens of Epicurus; or Of Gardening, in the Year 1685 described what he called “Chineses” [sic] landscaping.
Multiple authors have attempted to trace the etymology of sharawadgi to various Chinese and Japanese terms for garden design, two philosophies that greatly differ in adherence to feng shui
directional principles, proportional codes of site orientation and placement of buildings and plants. Two Chinese authors suggested the Chinese expressions sale guaizhi "quality of being impressive or surprising through careless or unorderly grace" (Chang 1930) and sanlan waizhi "space tastefully enlivened by disorder" (Ch'ien 1940). E. V. Gatenby (1931) proposed English sharawadgi derived from Japanese sorowaji (揃わじ) "not being regular", an older form of sorowazu (揃わず) "incomplete; unequal (in size); uneven; irregular". S. Lang and Nikolaus Pevsner
(1949) dismissed these two unattested Chinese terms, doubted the Japanese sorowaji, and suggested that Temple coined the word "sharawadgi". P. Quennell (1968) concurred that the term could not be traced to any Chinese word, and favored the Japanese etymology. Takau Shimada (1997) believed the irregular beauty that Temple admired was more likely characteristic of Japanese gardens, owing to the irregular topography upon which they were built, and compared the Japanese word sawarinai (触りない) "do not touch; leave things alone". Ciaran Murray (1998, 1999) reasons that Temple heard the word sharawadgi from Dutch
travelers who had visited Japanese gardens (perhaps accompanied by the German Engelbert Kaempfer
), when the Dutch East India Company
had a factory at Dejima
, Nagasaki. Murray emphasizes that Temple used "the Chineses" in blanket reference inclusive of all Oriental races during a time when the East-West dialogues and influences were quite fluid. He also notes the similarity between sarawadgi and the southern Japanese Kyūshū
dialect pronunciation shorowaji.
The Oxford English Dictionary
enters Sharawaggi or Sharawadgi without direct definition, excepting a gloss under the Temple quotation, "… have a particular Word to express it [sc. the beauty of studied irregularity]". It notes the etymology is "Of unknown origin; Chinese scholars agree that it cannot belong to that language. Temple speaks as if he had himself heard it from travellers", and cites Lang and Pevsner (1949). The OED cites two other early usage examples by Alexander Pope
(1724) "For as to the hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Paradise of Cyrus, and the Sharawaggi's of China, I have little or no Idea's of 'em" and Horace Walpople
(1750) "I am almost as fond of the Sharawaggi, or Chinese want of symmetry, in buildings, as in grounds or gardens."
Temple misinterpreted wild irregularity, which he characterized as “sharawagdi”, to be happy circumstance instead of carefully manipulated garden design. His idea of highlighting natural imperfections and spatial inconsistencies was the inspiration for fashioning early 18th-century "Sharawagdi gardens" in England. The most famous example was William Kent
’s “Elysian field” at Stowe House
built around 1738.
’s 1757 A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
. Burke suggested a third category including those things which neither inspire awe with the sublime or pleasure with the beautiful. He called it "the picturesque" and qualified it to mean all that cannot fit into the two more rational states evoked by the other categories. A flurry of English authors beginning with William Gilpin
and followed by Richard Payne Knight
, Uvedale Price
, and Humphrey Repton all called for promotion of the picturesque.
Gilpin wrote prolifically on the merits of touring the countryside of England. The naturally morose, craggy, pastoral, and untouched landscape of northern England and Scotland was a suitable endeavor for the rising middle classes, and Gilpin thought it almost patriotic to travel the homeland instead of the historically elite tour of the great European cities. One of the major commonalities between the precursor borrowed scenery and the later picturesque style movement is the role of travel and its integration in designing one’s home to enhance one's political and social standing. A simple description of the picturesque is the visual qualities of Nature suitable for a picture. However, Lockean philosophy had freed Nature from the ideal forms of allegory and classical pursuits, essentially embracing the imperfections in both landscapes and plants. In this way the idea progressed beyond the study of great landscape painters like Claude Deruet
and Nicolas Poussin
into experimentation with creating episodic, evocative, and contemplative landscapes in which elements were combined for their total effect as an individual picture.
As the borrowed scenery became a commonplace principle in Japanese gardening and was employed in monasteries, temples, and less noble homes alike it became more of a framing mechanism than a gesture to foreign scenes. Shakkei moved to incorporate the elements of the surrounding lands, such as a mountain in the distance or an ancient grove of trees, as the backdrop for the actual garden, arranging the plantings to highlight the distant view. Like the picturesque style, this was a conscious manipulation of Nature to create foregrounds, middlegrounds, and backgrounds in a move to highlight a selection of provocative formal elements. This improvement or elevation of certain aesthetic qualities is hardly a new phenomenon, as art and philosophy have often progressed hand in hand, but it is unique that an idea was mistakenly diffused (Sharawadgi), which resulted in a typology of gardens that served as a precursor for the picturesque style which actually represented the ideas of sorowaji and shakkei quite accurately. These class-driven aesthetic preferences were driven by nationalistic statements of incorporating goods and scenery from one’s own country, framing mechanisms which dictate the overall experience, and a simultaneous embracing of irregular qualities while manipulating the “natural” scenery to promote them. The importance of this comparison lies in its location at the beginning of modernism and modernization, marking a period in which Nature was allowed to become less mathematically ordered but where intervention was still paramount but could be masked compositionally and just shortly after technologically as in Adolphe Alphand’s Parc des Buttes Chaumont and Frederick Law Olmsted
's Central Park
.
Garden design
Garden design is the art and process of designing and creating plans for layout and planting of gardens and landscapes. Garden design may be done by the garden owner themselves, or by professionals of varying levels of experience and expertise...
. The term "borrowed scenery" is Chinese in origin. It is known as jiejing in Chinese and shakkei in Japanese.
Borrowed scenery in the Sakuteiki
The term borrowed scenery was originally codified in the oldest extant Japanese garden manual, the . This text, which is attributed to Tachibana Toshitsuna (橘俊綱, 1028-1094 CE), a son of the Byodoin's designer Fujiwara no YorimichiFujiwara no Yorimichi
' , son of Michinaga, was a Japanese Court noble. He succeeded his father to the position of Sesshō in 1017, and then went on to become Kampaku from 1020 until 1068...
(藤原頼通, 990-1074 CE), records the Heian period
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...
’s attention to a concept called "mono no aware
Mono no aware
, literally "the pathos of things", also translated as "an empathy toward things", or "a sensitivity to ephemera", is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of , or the transience of things, and a gentle sadness at their passing.-Origins:...
" (物の哀れ) "the pathos of things".
The first principle of the Sakuteiki is,
According to the lay of the land, and depending upon the aspect of the water landscape, you should design each part of the garden tastefully, recalling your memories of how nature presented itself for each feature. (tr. Inaji 1998:13)
These four principle tenets guiding Japanese garden organization are, intending to create in the likeness of nature planning in accordance with the site topography designing with asymmetrical elements capturing and presenting the ambience
Shakkei, which attempts to capture nature alive rather than create a less spectacular version, is included in the first of these categories.
The origins of borrowed scenery gardens, as well as Shinden-zukuri
Shinden-zukuri
Shinden-zukuri refers to the style of domestic architecture developed for palatial or aristocratic mansions built in Heian-kyō in the Heian period , especially in 10th century Japan....
, lie in the increased local travel of the Japanese elite, a layered endeavor involving the bolstering of a national identity separate from China and the display of personal wealth. When they returned from their travels they would want to physically manifest these travels at home in a more ostentatious way than could be accomplished solely with art, weapons, or ceramics. Thus, borrowed scenery was introduced to incorporate the foreign landscapes seen in northern Japan into the southern cities of Nara
Nara, Nara
is the capital city of Nara Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan. The city occupies the northern part of Nara Prefecture, directly bordering Kyoto Prefecture...
and Kyoto
Kyoto
is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...
.
According to the 1635 CE Chinese garden manual Yuanye (園冶), there are four categories of borrowed scenery, namely: yuanjie (遠借 "distant borrowing", e.g., mountains, lakes), linjie (隣借 "adjacent borrowing", neighboring buildings and features), yangjie (仰借 "upward borrowing", clouds, stars), and fujie (俯借 "downward borrowing", rocks, ponds); respectively Japanese enshaku, rinshaku, gyōshaku, and fushaku.
Diffusion of borrowed scenery and sharawadgi
A major feature of modernityModernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
is the increased speed in dispersing and diffusing knowledge through the printed word, travel, and correspondence. Sir William Temple (1628–1699) was a statesman and essayist who traveled throughout Europe. His essay Upon the Gardens of Epicurus; or Of Gardening, in the Year 1685 described what he called “Chineses” [sic] landscaping.
Among us [Europeans], the beauty of building and planting is placed chiefly in some certain proportions, symmetries, or uniformities; our walks and our trees ranged so as to answer one another, and at exact distances. The Chineses scorn this way of planting, and say, a boy, that can tell an hundred, may plant walks of trees in straight lines, and over-against one another, and to what length and extent he pleases. But their greatest reach of imagination is employed in contriving figures, where the beauty shall be great, and strike the eye, but without any order or disposition of parts that shall be commonly or easily observed: and, though we have hardly any notion of this sort of beauty, yet they have a particular word to express it, and, where they find it hit their eye at first sight, they say the sharawadgi is fine or is admirable, or any such expression of esteem. And whoever observes the work upon the best India gowns, or the painting upon their best screens or purcellans, will find their beauty is all of this kind (that is) without order. (1690:58)
Multiple authors have attempted to trace the etymology of sharawadgi to various Chinese and Japanese terms for garden design, two philosophies that greatly differ in adherence to feng shui
Feng shui
Feng shui ' is a Chinese system of geomancy believed to use the laws of both Heaven and Earth to help one improve life by receiving positive qi. The original designation for the discipline is Kan Yu ....
directional principles, proportional codes of site orientation and placement of buildings and plants. Two Chinese authors suggested the Chinese expressions sale guaizhi "quality of being impressive or surprising through careless or unorderly grace" (Chang 1930) and sanlan waizhi "space tastefully enlivened by disorder" (Ch'ien 1940). E. V. Gatenby (1931) proposed English sharawadgi derived from Japanese sorowaji (揃わじ) "not being regular", an older form of sorowazu (揃わず) "incomplete; unequal (in size); uneven; irregular". S. Lang and Nikolaus Pevsner
Nikolaus Pevsner
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner, CBE, FBA was a German-born British scholar of history of art and, especially, of history of architecture...
(1949) dismissed these two unattested Chinese terms, doubted the Japanese sorowaji, and suggested that Temple coined the word "sharawadgi". P. Quennell (1968) concurred that the term could not be traced to any Chinese word, and favored the Japanese etymology. Takau Shimada (1997) believed the irregular beauty that Temple admired was more likely characteristic of Japanese gardens, owing to the irregular topography upon which they were built, and compared the Japanese word sawarinai (触りない) "do not touch; leave things alone". Ciaran Murray (1998, 1999) reasons that Temple heard the word sharawadgi from Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
travelers who had visited Japanese gardens (perhaps accompanied by the German Engelbert Kaempfer
Engelbert Kaempfer
Engelbert Kaempfer , a German naturalist and physician is known for his tour of Russia, Persia, India, South-East Asia, and Japan between 1683 and 1693. He wrote two books about his travels...
), when the Dutch East India Company
Dutch East India Company
The Dutch East India Company was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia...
had a factory at Dejima
Dejima
was a small fan-shaped artificial island built in the bay of Nagasaki in 1634. This island, which was formed by digging a canal through a small peninsula, remained as the single place of direct trade and exchange between Japan and the outside world during the Edo period. Dejima was built to...
, Nagasaki. Murray emphasizes that Temple used "the Chineses" in blanket reference inclusive of all Oriental races during a time when the East-West dialogues and influences were quite fluid. He also notes the similarity between sarawadgi and the southern Japanese Kyūshū
Kyushu
is the third largest island of Japan and most southwesterly of its four main islands. Its alternate ancient names include , , and . The historical regional name is referred to Kyushu and its surrounding islands....
dialect pronunciation shorowaji.
The Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
enters Sharawaggi or Sharawadgi without direct definition, excepting a gloss under the Temple quotation, "… have a particular Word to express it [sc. the beauty of studied irregularity]". It notes the etymology is "Of unknown origin; Chinese scholars agree that it cannot belong to that language. Temple speaks as if he had himself heard it from travellers", and cites Lang and Pevsner (1949). The OED cites two other early usage examples by Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
(1724) "For as to the hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Paradise of Cyrus, and the Sharawaggi's of China, I have little or no Idea's of 'em" and Horace Walpople
Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford was an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician. He is now largely remembered for Strawberry Hill, the home he built in Twickenham, south-west London where he revived the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors,...
(1750) "I am almost as fond of the Sharawaggi, or Chinese want of symmetry, in buildings, as in grounds or gardens."
Temple misinterpreted wild irregularity, which he characterized as “sharawagdi”, to be happy circumstance instead of carefully manipulated garden design. His idea of highlighting natural imperfections and spatial inconsistencies was the inspiration for fashioning early 18th-century "Sharawagdi gardens" in England. The most famous example was William Kent
William Kent
William Kent , born in Bridlington, Yorkshire, was an eminent English architect, landscape architect and furniture designer of the early 18th century.He was baptised as William Cant.-Education:...
’s “Elysian field” at Stowe House
Stowe House
Stowe House is a Grade I listed country house located in Stowe, Buckinghamshire, England. It is the home of Stowe School, an independent school. The gardens , a significant example of the English Landscape Garden style, along with part of the Park, passed into the ownership of The National Trust...
built around 1738.
Ties between borrowed scenery and the Picturesque style
Temple's development of fashionable "sarawadgi" garden design was followed by Edmund BurkeEdmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
’s 1757 A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful is a 1757 treatise on aesthetics written by Edmund Burke. It attracted the attention of prominent Continental thinkers such as Denis Diderot and Immanuel Kant....
. Burke suggested a third category including those things which neither inspire awe with the sublime or pleasure with the beautiful. He called it "the picturesque" and qualified it to mean all that cannot fit into the two more rational states evoked by the other categories. A flurry of English authors beginning with William Gilpin
William Gilpin (clergyman)
The Reverend William Gilpin was an English artist, clergyman, schoolmaster, and author, best known as one of the originators of the idea of the picturesque.-Early life:...
and followed by Richard Payne Knight
Richard Payne Knight
Richard Payne Knight was a classical scholar and connoisseur best known for his theories of picturesque beauty and for his interest in ancient phallic imagery.-Biography:...
, Uvedale Price
Uvedale Price
Sir Uvedale Price, 1st Baronet , author of the Essay on the Picturesque, As Compared With The Sublime and The Beautiful , was a Herefordshire landowner who was at the heart of the 'Picturesque debate' of the 1790s...
, and Humphrey Repton all called for promotion of the picturesque.
Gilpin wrote prolifically on the merits of touring the countryside of England. The naturally morose, craggy, pastoral, and untouched landscape of northern England and Scotland was a suitable endeavor for the rising middle classes, and Gilpin thought it almost patriotic to travel the homeland instead of the historically elite tour of the great European cities. One of the major commonalities between the precursor borrowed scenery and the later picturesque style movement is the role of travel and its integration in designing one’s home to enhance one's political and social standing. A simple description of the picturesque is the visual qualities of Nature suitable for a picture. However, Lockean philosophy had freed Nature from the ideal forms of allegory and classical pursuits, essentially embracing the imperfections in both landscapes and plants. In this way the idea progressed beyond the study of great landscape painters like Claude Deruet
Claude Deruet
Claude Deruet was a famous French Baroque painter of the 17th century, from the city of Nancy.-Biography:Deruet was an apprentice to Jacques Bellange, the official court painter to Charles III, Duke of Lorraine. He was in Rome between ca. 1612 and 1619, where - according to André Félibien - he...
and Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...
into experimentation with creating episodic, evocative, and contemplative landscapes in which elements were combined for their total effect as an individual picture.
As the borrowed scenery became a commonplace principle in Japanese gardening and was employed in monasteries, temples, and less noble homes alike it became more of a framing mechanism than a gesture to foreign scenes. Shakkei moved to incorporate the elements of the surrounding lands, such as a mountain in the distance or an ancient grove of trees, as the backdrop for the actual garden, arranging the plantings to highlight the distant view. Like the picturesque style, this was a conscious manipulation of Nature to create foregrounds, middlegrounds, and backgrounds in a move to highlight a selection of provocative formal elements. This improvement or elevation of certain aesthetic qualities is hardly a new phenomenon, as art and philosophy have often progressed hand in hand, but it is unique that an idea was mistakenly diffused (Sharawadgi), which resulted in a typology of gardens that served as a precursor for the picturesque style which actually represented the ideas of sorowaji and shakkei quite accurately. These class-driven aesthetic preferences were driven by nationalistic statements of incorporating goods and scenery from one’s own country, framing mechanisms which dictate the overall experience, and a simultaneous embracing of irregular qualities while manipulating the “natural” scenery to promote them. The importance of this comparison lies in its location at the beginning of modernism and modernization, marking a period in which Nature was allowed to become less mathematically ordered but where intervention was still paramount but could be masked compositionally and just shortly after technologically as in Adolphe Alphand’s Parc des Buttes Chaumont and Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing...
's Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
.
External links
- shakkei 借景, Japanese Architecture and Art Net Users System
- SHARAWAGGI, Peter Laurence
- Natural and Built Environment Relationships in Asian Architecture, Jennifer M. Lo
- Examples of borrowed scenery in Tsubo-en and some other Japanese gardens.