The gardens of Japan have graced both landscape and life for over a thousand years. Regarded as works of art, they lend insight into the nation’s history and culture. In Japanese Garden Design, ...

Shoden-ji is a quiet Rinzai Zen temple hidden in Kyoto's northern suburbs, famed for a blood-stained ceiling and a rock garden that enchanted David Bowie. Founded in 1282, the temple's main hall was ...

The gardens of Japan have fascinated ever since the 1854 Treaty of Kamagawa opened the country to the West and they first came to the attention of the garden-making cognoscenti. Imitations are now ...

A new study has found that a delicate moss, which gives temple grounds their distinctive air of mellow tranquillity, is in rapid decline because of warmer weather and changing rainfall. The research, ...

Kita-no-Mandokoro, wife of the lord Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–98), ordered the construction of Kōdaiji in 1606 to pray for her husband’s departed soul. The temple’s formal title is Kōdaijushōzenji—said ...

The first thing that will strike any reader on opening "Zen Gardens and Temples of Kyoto" is that this book is a work of photographic art. The photos of John Einarsen span all seasons and somehow ...

When asked how to view a Japanese garden, designer Kinsaku Nakane (1917-1995) replied: “With a detached gaze, without preconceptions and in a state of total receptivity”. Since their earliest history ...

Kyoto's most famous Zen garden is Ryoan-ji. Its raked gravel and 15 carefully placed stones make it the world's most recognisable garden image. I love Ryoan-ji, which, despite the hoards of visitors ...

Last week I went on a five-day trip to Japan with my boyfriend and two friends. Our plan was to spend three days in Osaka and two days in Kyoto. In Japan almost every municipality has at least one ...

A rectangular bed of gravel raked into wave patterns might not be everyone's idea of a garden. This, however, is Japan, and I am standing in a garden in Kyoto called The Ocean of Nothingness. It's not ...