The gardens of Tofukuji temple

 The important building in Tofukuji temple has 4 gardens designed by a modern garden designer, Shigemori Mirei.  

Shigemori Mirei was not originally a garden designer. He studied Japanese art, tea ceremony and flower arrangement in his early time. Then he went all over japan to conduct on-site research of all the traditional Japanese gardens and compiled the books of Japanese gardens. While doing this, he realized that Japanese gardens were an art. They abstract the nature and express it three-dimensionally. In a sense, it is something like a sculpture.　Keeping classic art as a foundation. he aimed at eternal modernism

Let's see the gardens.

The South garden.

This set of stones represents the ancient Chinese belief. What is special here is the way of placing stones. Mirei laid 6 meter-long stone here. He created the wonderful stone-set keeping the best balance with standing stones. 

The moss shows 5 great mountains in Kyoto. The line between the moss and pebbles goes gently, which shows the different atmosphere of the stone set. 

The West garden shows a traditional Japanese pattern called Ichimatsu with white sand and azaleas. The moss continues from the south garden to this garden.

The north garden.

It has a smaller Ichimatsu pattern. When you see this garden, you will find that the left side has a clear and neat pattern but as it goes to the right, the pattern becomes blur and disappears at the end. This is affected by the technique of Japanese old paintings, which makes variety by making the border blur.

These stones represent the seven stars in the sky. It is unlikely that  the factor of constellation is used for the garden. In addition, these stones were used as cornerstones of the old lavatory.

Why Mirei used the old materials? It is because of zen teaching. When he designed the gardens, he was told to use the old materials to eliminate waste.

I can say that you will enjoy a little different but traditional zen garden here.

Tofukuji temple

 This temple has a long history dating back to 1236. One of the court nobles, Kujo Michiie, founded this. Tofukuji was named after the great temples in Nara, Todaiji and Kofukuji. It uses a part of the names. 
Todaiji in Nara has a large Buddha statue, and Tofukuji also had a large Buddha statue in the past. Unfortunately, because of the fire, we can no longer see it .

The large precinct has many buildings such as an old lavatory, Sanmon gate, Hatto hall, and hojo builging. But most famous here is a valley covered with maple trees.

In the 15th century, the temple has a monk who was very good at painting. Due to his fine works, the shogun asked his what he wanted. He requested  to remove all the cherry trees in the temple because it is a nuisance in zen training. For that reason, this temple doesn't have any cherry trees but maples.

Now they attract many tourists from japan and overseas.

The monk who studied Buddhism in China brought tea seeds back to Japan, and planted his home town in Shizuoka. Today, we can enjoy very nice tea from Shizuoka thanks to him. He was the first monk of this temple.
( The monk who brought tea seeds to Japan first in our history is Yosai, a different monk, Yosai brought the seeds and planted in the North of Kyoto )

Sanmon gate which has three entrances is the typical gate seen in zen temple. Each of the entrances is said to show three ways to attain enlightenment. the gate of emptiness, the gate of no thought ( prejudice), the gate of no desire. 
What is interesting is that the pillars have square halls. I heard they are  for taking a balance of all the pillars. 

The zen hall is the oldest in Japan. It still has many monks for training occasionally. 

The old lavatory is large so that about 100 monks could use it at a time  in those days. 

The sanitary system here was amazing. Because many monks were accommodated  and had their lives together, bad diseases must not occur. 

In Hatto hall, you can see dragon painting on the ceiling. It is painted by a modern artist, Domoto Insho.  When he painted, he needed a large amount of Chinese ink. For him, many monks made a line putting a suzuri ink container and rubbed a ink bar to make ink for him.

Please enjoy the movie of Tofukuji temple