Paper short abstract:

The Sakuteiki is often referred to as the gardening bible of Japan. However, the treatise from the mid-11th century only rose to prominence in the 20th century. Japanese garden experts used it as a tool against Western orientalism. To achieve this, they had to ignore its mystic qualities.

Paper long abstract:

Today, the Sakuteiki is widely acknowledged as the fundamental classic text on Japanese gardens and their design. Especially recommendations and rules on setting stones from this treatise of the mid-11th century are cited widely as proof that Japanese garden design is rooted firmly in national history and has not changed very much over the last thousand years.

However, the Sakuteiki actually only rose to its prominence since around 1900. Ozawa Keijirō (1842-1932), a teacher at the Tōkyō Metropolitan School of Horticulture, was one of the first to rediscover the Sakuteiki in the Meiji period. But it was only in the 1920s and 30s that Japanese garden experts became more interested in the Sakuteiki. They used the old treatise as one important argument to repudiate Western interpretations of the Japanese garden and to establish zōengaku (horticultural science). Eventually Yamada Yoshio, a linguist, published a new interpretation of the Sakuteiki in 1940 which became canonical in the following decades. Given the ultranationalist undertone of Yamada's interpretation and the fact that he had been a member of the committee responsible for the infamous Kokutai no hongi, it is quite surprising that his interpretation remained so influential.

This presentation will discuss the rise in popularity of the Sakuteiki within the context of redefining the Japanese garden since 1868. Gardens in Japan were turned into a national symbol through presentations at world's fairs and an ongoing process of cultural translation between East and West. The Sakuteiki acted as one tool for Japanese experts to break the Orientalist hegemony of Western experts. However, this strategic move lead to a naive essentialist interpretation of Japanese garden history. The mystic character of the Sakuteiki had to be downplayed in order to turn it into the modern and national gardening bible of Japan.