Sakuteiki

The Sakuteiki ( Japanese 作 庭 記 , dt. About: "garden design book") is a manual for garden design. It comes from the Japan of the Heian period , probably from the second half of the 11th century, and is one of the oldest works dealing with the aesthetic design of gardens.

Lore history

The oldest version of the Sakuteiki is a handwriting that can be found on two horizontal scrolls . Both are 28.5 cm high, the first 1114.2 cm long and the second 950.0 cm long. The tradition is linked to the Maeda family , who owned the scrolls and had copies made. The only copy that survives today is named Tanimura rolls after the owning family .

These roles do not yet have a title. In the Kamakura period the work was called Senzai Hisshō ( 前 栽 秘 抄 , German "Secrets of the garden"). Only in the Edo period can the title Sakuteiki be proven. Around 1800 the text was included in the source collection Gunsho Ruijū and transferred to print.

author

The author has not survived: while Fujiwara no Yoshitsune was previously thought to be the author, recent research assumes that it was written by Tachibana no Toshitsuna (1028-1094). Toshitsuna, son of Fujiwara no Yorimichi , worked for a long time in the imperial building administration. It is known that he designed various gardens and owned two estates himself. An anecdote relates that he had told the emperor Shirakawa that his own garden was more beautiful than the imperial one.

However, it is also possible that there were several authors and that the work was only compiled later in the form it has today.

content

The Sakuteiki deals with the design of gardens and other open spaces in the shinden style in the vicinity of aristocratic estates. The central design elements are stones, water and trees. The work deals with 17 different types of bodies of water, eight types of waterfalls and 16 different plants, but according to the shinden style it contains comparatively little about stones.

Several passages deal with technical instructions with precise measurements and work instructions. The greater part, about two thirds of the book, deals with religious and philosophical aspects of garden design.

Influences of Shinto , Chinese geomancy ( Feng Shui ) and Buddhism can be identified. They are mainly reflected in numerous instructions on cardinal points: how stones should be placed in relation to the building or in which direction a stream should flow through the garden.

supporting documents

• Jirō Takei, Marc Peter Keane: Sakuteiki or the art of the Japanese garden . Ulmer, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-8001-4496-4 .

1. ↑ 書 跡 ・ 典籍 6 . (No longer available online.) Cultural Monuments Division, Ishikawa Prefecture Education Committee, archived from original on June 23, 2009 ; Retrieved March 21, 2009 (Japanese). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ SAKUTEIKI　作 庭 記 . In: JAANUS. Retrieved March 21, 2009 (English, contains misreading of 前 栽 秘 抄 as zensai hishou ).