❐ Garden built for the Moon: Kyoto’s Two Imperial Villas ｜為月亮而建的庭園： 桂離宮與修學院離宮- 塵世閑遊 41

For a long time, two of Kyoto’s most celebrated gardens were also among the hardest to see. Katsura Imperial Villa, beside the Katsura River in the west of the city, and Shugakuin Imperial Villa, at the foot of Mount Hiei in the northeast, are both managed by the Imperial Household Agency. A visit once meant applying well in advance and waiting for permission. Today anyone can book online, and audio guides are available in several languages. What was once a privilege is now an unhurried afternoon’s walk. Katsura was begun around 1615 by Prince Hachijō Toshihito. Adopted for a time by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and at one point close to the throne, he spent his life kept away from power. He turned instead to poetry, to The Tale of Genji, and to this stretch of riverbank, famous since the Heian period as a place to watch the moon. The garden he began is a stroll garden, meant to be experienced on foot. Hedges and trees deliberately hide the pond, so every turn of the path reveals a new view. The shoin halls are staggered like a flight of wild geese, each room turned toward the garden and toward the moon. In the teahouse Shōkintei, a bold checkerboard of blue and white paper covers the alcove and sliding doors, and nearly four hundred years later it still looks startlingly modern. When the German architect Bruno Taut visited in 1933, he is said to have found it so beautiful that one could weep. Shugakuin was built in the 1650s by the retired Emperor Go-Mizunoo, Toshihito’s nephew. He had abdicated in protest against the Tokugawa shogunate’s interference, and he gave the long years that followed to beauty. His villa is really three gardens, Lower, Middle and Upper, linked by pine-lined paths that run through working rice fields. In September the rice hangs heavy and gold. The way to the Upper Villa climbs a narrow stair between tall clipped hedges, with nothing to see but green, until you reach Rin’un-tei, the Pavilion Beside the Clouds. Then everything opens at once: the Pond of the Bathing Dragon below, the whole city of Kyoto beyond, and the western mountains on the horizon. This is shakkei, borrowed scenery, on the grandest scale. This video tries to walk the gardens the way they were meant to be walked. The narration speaks only when there is something specific to point to: a stone lantern on a cape, six round windows, a plaque in an emperor’s hand, dark stones set into plaster in ones, twos and threes. The rest of the time it steps back and lets the scenery speak. As one of the guides at Katsura said, standing by the pond: “Please, go and find the view you like best.” ───────────────── #japan #travel #kyoto #京都 #桂離宮 #旅行