11/6/2023 0 Comments Japanese garden archHei are enclosures akin to a blindfold and do not permit an outside viewer a peek within. Later, samurai homes also came to have these fences, but they were not used around ordinary homes. These originally were walls made from earth or brick and first saw use exclusively for temples and aristocratic homes. It may easily be surmounted or crossed over and would not keep out intruders.Īnother word for fence in Japanese is hei, 塀. In the strictest sense, kaki are essentially a demarkation of territory and do little to obstruct the view of the area contained within. One word for fence is kaki, 垣, which originally signified a solid enclosure made of stone, earth and/or wood. Therefore, the perimeter wall and gate of a Japanese residential compound is most directly analogous to the front door of a Western house. In the Japanese home, the relationship between outer wall and gate, to the garden, to the house itself is one of continuity, each flowing into the other without clear demarkation. The yard is clearly an altogether separate entity than the house. The front door of the western home is a stout barrier with its locking mechanism clearly displayed – connoting a strong message of the barrier between inside and outside. While western homes begins from the inside of the front door of the home, the Japanese home begins from the inside of the door on the entry gate. The first structure encountered when visiting a Japanese single family residence is the entry gate, mon, 門, and its associated fence. In that sense then, the structures in and around the garden are akin to islands or boats. Some writers have speculated that given the island nature of Japan itself, and the likelihood that early settlers of the archipelago had lives which revolved around the sea, and were somewhat hindered in their movements due to the sea, gardens themselves are reflections of that ocean and are designed to evoke such a setting. The garden is intended primarily for visual enjoyment, and the architecture around it is positioned in such a way as to both frame the garden scene and provide ideal viewing locations from which to appreciate different aspect of the garden. The relaxing is meant to happen within, or at the edge of the house proper, while sitting in the drawing room, zashiki 座敷, or on the veranda, engawa, 縁側. It is not intended as a place in which to relax or play. The garden in a Japanese traditional context is akin to a slowly unfolding work of art. In Japan, the house and garden are meant to have a certain integration, and the perimeter of the property is generally going to have a wall which blocks the view of most of what is contained within. It is common in both the United States and Europe for people to put out feeders and drinking troughs for birds and small animals, a practice seldom seen in Japan. The garden is an adjunct to the home, and if elaborated in detail and planting, it might be best characterized as a place meant to call to mind images of life in the woods. The lawn is as often as not a place to exercise or relax in. In the West, the house is a conspicuous object set into a scene (the garden, or, most typically, the lawn), intended to be viewed and appreciated from the street. While one can relate the ka-tei pattern somewhat well to the detached western house on its own plot, the relationship and functions of the parts which compose the scene are wholly different in the two cultures. While there are many other arrangements of living spaces in Japan that accommodate gardens in one form or another, in terms of an arrangement that would correlate most closely to North American and European patterns of detached houses on separate plots of land, ka-tei is undoubtedly the closest. This expression encapsulates a Sino-Japanese character pairing representing both the house itself, 家, and the garden, 庭. A term commonly used in Japanese to mean ‘residence’ is ka-tei, 家庭.
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