The Nine Mountains & Eight Seas Garden and the Mount Horai Pond Garden

 

This is the second post on the gardens at Kanyoji Temple in Yamaguchi.

The previous post looked at the temple and mostly the main garden and purely sand and rock courtyard garden.

This time we are looking at two gardens behind the temple, both quite narrow and they run into each other.

I was fortunate to be here during the peak of the autumn colours.

Kanyoji is a 14th century Rinzai Zen temple that is temple 15 on the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage, the reason I was visiting this time.

The running water in all the gardens at Kanyoji comes from Choondo Cave behind the temple. It is actually a man-made tunnel, 89 meters long, which brings water from the river. It was constructed in the 17th century.

The Mount Horai Pond Garden represents Mount Horai, which is the Japanese name for Mount Penglai, a  mountain and home of immortals in Chinese mythology.

The roots would seem to be in Daoism, a major influence on Japanese garden design which would include Crane and Turrtle islands.

Both this and the Nine Mountains garden are said to represent Kamakura Period styles, though the bold spirals on the sand are definitely Mirei Shigemori...

The Nine Mountain and Eight Seas Garden depict the landscape surounding Mount Sumeru, the central stone.

This is very much grounded in Buddhist cosmology, though it does have some Hindu origins.

Mount Sumeru is the centre of the world in Buddhist cosmology, and like Mount Horai, is a common motif in many gardens.

The gardens here at Kanyoji, and the gardens at Matsuo Shrine near Kyoto, are both considered masterworks of Mirei Shigemori.

Both were designed towards the end of his career, and both feature garden designs depicting various historical periods.

Matsu Shrine is obviously more accessible, but Kanyoji would be my favorite in the Autumn colors season.

The previous post in this series on the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage was on the other gardens here at Kanyoji.

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