ABSTRACT
The garden at Saiho-ji, on the south-western outskirts of Kyoto, evokes just this sense of yugen. Saiho-ji utilized all these aspects and remains—in spite of later overlays—one of the most representative of the Japanese paradise gardens. The gardens of the Pure Land sect were intended as re-creations or evocations of Amida Buddha’s Western Paradise and hence are known as paradise gardens. The temple’s principal garden usually set adjacent to the south side of the Zen hall, and in turn perhaps the attainment of the ultimate goal. The garden condensed the features and the spirit of the landscape, and the landscape of the spirit. The pond—its shape based on kokoro, the Japanese character for spirit or heart—remained the garden’s central feature, its flow sufficiently restricted to create a slightly muddy composition that heightened the reflectivity of its surface. The idea of transition, so critical to Japanese garden design, also plays a central role at Kokedera—the moss temple—as Saiho-ji is familiarly known.
