[Special Feature: Viewing the City from Parks] Gardens as Art that Transcends "Boundaries": "A Drop of Water in a Pond is Itself a Garden"

Image: Parc de la Villette, Paris

Strolling along the forest paths and wooden bridges over the ponds, I sit down on a bench in the shade of the trees. Then, a single kangaroo comes walking leisurely from the other side. Soon, a group of penguins appears from a side path and passes noisily before my eyes. Of course, there is no need for surprise—they, like me, are beings enjoying a stroll.

The vivid scene of visiting the "zoo" in Basel, Switzerland, in early summer remains fresh in my memory. It was 1976. This was not a simple matter of an open-air approach that does not confine animals to cages. Nor was it a leisure facility for citizens. Opening the guide in my hand on the bench, my eyes caught the description: not Basel Zoo (Zoo Basel), but Basel Zoological Garden (Zoologischer Garten Basel). This place is, first and foremost, a "garden."

Dividing the phenomena of the world into the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, observing and analyzing each scientifically, and simultaneously understanding the world as a whole through the intellectual activities of the human realm that transcend them—I had only just begun my life as a student at a German university, and since my specialty was art history and aesthetics, I felt overwhelmed by the traditions of natural science and philosophy that form the foundation of European scholarship. On the other hand, I also had in mind Japanese zoos and gardens, which tend toward amusement and entertainment. Here, however, kangaroos and penguins do not simply settle into the position of being objects of our observation. I cannot help but think that they, as they stroll, are also observing us humans.

A stroll is perhaps a physical act that breaks down the "boundary" between the privileged observer and the observed object. Was it not such an insight that led Yukichi Fukuzawa to place importance on walking?

The basis of art lies in the creation of images. By borrowing actual objects at hand, one creates a boundary and generates an absent spiritual value there—for example, try drawing a single horizontal line or a circle on a blank sheet of paper on a desk. Even if it is a faint pencil line, top and bottom, heaven and earth, or unity and surroundings, inside and outside, being and nothingness—precisely order and chaos—appear on the desk. An image is first born from the setting of a boundary. At the same time, however, it cannot be an image unless it transcends that conventional expression. How an artist creates their own new boundaries in color, light and shadow, shape, sound, or physical movement, and how they shift, overturn, and leap beyond them, is what establishes the creative work of Cézanne, Rodin, Mahler, and Isadora Duncan.

Modern and contemporary art and culture have walked a path of struggle, seeking how to inherit and overcome the boundaries of tradition.

R. Steiner's Goetheanum (1928) and F. Gehry's Vitra Design Museum (1989) are close to Basel, but let us now head to the Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut (1955) standing on the hill of Ronchamp in the Franche-Comté region of France. The architect Le Corbusier, focusing on the overall form as a Catholic pilgrimage chapel, embodied the ingenuity of providing an altar on the exterior eastern wall to enable outdoor mass. The momentum of the volume of this wall and the chapel as a whole blesses the "pilgrimage" up the hill.

However, looking back, regardless of time or place, religious architecture is a space that presents an absolute "boundary." This is because a transcendent world of a different dimension from everyday life actually exists there. To begin with, no one other than the faithful who believe in what lies beyond that "boundary" is even permitted to enter the architectural space. But in the 20th century, rationalism overlooked this "boundary." Today, no one reproaches a "pilgrim of beauty" sitting on a pew for the faithful while browsing the "Europeana" world cultural heritage search app on a smartphone. Even in social spaces, "boundaries" fluctuate in this way.

Basel is an ancient city that produced Europe's greatest humanists; Erasmus lived there during the Renaissance. The zoo opened in 1874, the oldest in Switzerland. The university is close to the zoo. It is impossible that the historian Burckhardt, the philosopher Nietzsche, or the psychologist Jung did not stroll through the grounds between their classes.

They had no way of knowing the work of landscape architect Kurt Brägger, who renovated it into a lush landscape garden (1954–1989), but there is no doubt that they sat on benches and gazed at the roots of human knowledge at the "boundary" with the animal and plant kingdoms.

Such benches have also been provided in botanical gardens since ancient times.

Padua, Italy, is known for Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel frescoes (1305), which marked the dawn of early modern and modern painting, but no researcher of garden history fails to visit the city's Botanical Garden (Orto Botanico). Established in 1545 as an annex to the University of Padua, it became the model for all European universities and research institutions as the world's first and oldest botanical garden. Padua is a city adjacent to Venice. This Adriatic trading port was proficient in the "navigation" to exotic other worlds, to "other countries and others."

From its inception, the Padua Botanical Garden aimed for the collection and practical use of medicinal herbs not found in its own country and the establishment of systematic botany. Since greenhouses and cultivation gardens were also indispensable, it implemented the display and opening of formal flowerbeds and other features for public recognition and acceptance.

Here, while sitting on a bench during a stroll, we may confirm that the establishment of this botanical garden was a system based on "polar" functions. That is, the interest in the exotic—exoticism—created a system consisting of polar functions: home country/foreign country, known/unknown, technical knowledge/theoretical knowledge, and cultivation/appreciation. Exoticism, in other words, also leads to the world of images where the "boundaries" of self/other, subject/object, production/reception, and presence/absence are fields of struggle—namely, the "judgment of taste" (Kant) called art.

Among these polarities, I would particularly like to note the function of "cultivation/appreciation" in botanical gardens. This is because this function is cherished as a fundamental operation of gardens and serves as the basis for modern urban parks and new garden issues.

Let us broaden our perspective to garden history. In ancient Roman life, there are many examples of houses having a courtyard (peristylium) and a back garden (hortus). The courtyard was furnished with flowers, ornamental plants, and water basins, and murals with mythological themes were painted. It was a space that also played a social role and became a political space from the early modern period onward (yard, Hof). The back garden was a space for cultivating vegetables, fruits, and other edible and medicinal plants. The history of two gardens with different functions—practical "cultivation" and extra-ordinary "appreciation"—existing within a single residential space is extremely significant.

This polarity was inherited by palace gardens and urban spaces from the early modern period onward as the "pleasure garden (Lustgarten)" and the "utility garden (Nutzgarten)." In a single palace, a configuration might be adopted with a pleasure garden on the south side and a utility garden on the north side. The former signifies a place of "reception and appreciation," from the viewing of flowerbeds and fountains to music and theater shows, dancing, parties, and play-like mazes, whereas the latter refers to "production and cultivation," such as vegetable gardens, cooking, medicinal herb cultivation, and natural history practices.

The German term for pleasure garden was once used by M. Luther, implying a temptation toward joy not found in everyday life, meaning a "garden of earthly delights" based on the Bible or an "amusement park" that occasionally appeared in civic life. Eventually, from the 18th century, the "recreation garden (Erholungsgarten)" in today's nuance became widespread. However, I want to pay attention to that nuance. While utility refers to everyday creation, re-creation means the recovery of consciousness (erholen) toward an extra-ordinary place, a shift in consciousness—that is, the "re-creation" of an act. It is not merely diversion, leisure, or entertainment.

This brings to mind the Parc de la Villette (1989) in modern Paris, designed by B. Tschumi, which provocatively constructed a recreation garden. Indeed, the passage-like deconstruction, which denies the Vitruvian fundamentalism that is the norm of architecture, sets grids and other unique boundaries on a vast garden site, and features a clash of halls, museums, and shopping malls, forces a shift in consciousness upon the citizens strolling through the park—asking what a garden is. Because it is a park that demands an agency from Parisians that transcends the boundaries of appreciation and reception, there was criticism, but this stance is justified.

The "park" that appeared from the latter half of the 18th century is a garden that possesses a wide landscape and accepts the recreation of citizens. Since large parks available for public use existed even in palace gardens, parks and gardens do not differ in terms of operating the polar functional system mentioned earlier. However, in the critical situation of modern cities facing rapid expansion, the improvement of civic life is an urgent task. Amid demands for environmental improvement and urban redevelopment, including greening, park planning forms the core. Paris prides itself as a leader in this.

However, when strolling through La Villette and paying attention to the setting of boundaries centered on the canals within the garden and the connection between urban living facilities and the botanical garden, one is reminded of the tradition of boundary setting in traditional European botanical gardens and gardens. For example, let us take the Château de Chantilly in France. Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé, commissioned the architect Le Nôtre to create a section with a hamlet (Hameau) in the English-style garden (1774). In the setting of canals and streams in the creation of the Hameau, one can recognize a shift in consciousness that fuses the boundaries of the opposing living worlds of the court and the countryside.

The fact that the experimental La Villette attempts a unique dialogue with the natural landscape is something that should be closely observed. In Japan, the term "landscape" was forced into misunderstanding because Shigetaka Shiga's translation "fukei" (scenery) took root after the Meiji era, but from Chinese and Japanese traditions, "sansuikei" (mountain and water scenery) or "daichikei" (landform landscape) are more appropriate to the meaning. Today, the activity of garden designer and botanist Gilles Clément as a landscape architect in Paris continues to announce the contemporary significance of botanical gardens.

The etymology of garden (Garten, jardin) is indeed the Indo-European gher or ghortos, and the Latin hortus, meaning a place or shape enclosed by hedges, walls, or forests. But the essential point does not lie in a static shape or structure. Rather, what is important is the dynamic functional systematicity of dividing, creating boundaries, and further changing, shifting, and constantly remaking them.

The reason we emphasize the special concept of "polarity" is to capture the dynamics of the garden. A garden can be seen as a three-way kinetic permeation body created not only by the consciousness, will, and technique of the creator, but also by the dynamism of the materials themselves—animals, plants, and the earth—and by the recipient who literally experiences the garden physically and re-creates it. To capture this dynamism even in a small way, one has no choice but to find dual structures that mutually posit opposites, such as stillness/motion or life/death—"polarity"—and to experience and describe the changes in state that occur there.

Goethe, from the morphology of animals and plants and the phenomenology of color perception, named these changes in state "metamorphosis." A work of art is a world that embodies metamorphosis, just as a block of marble is transformed into a statue of a goddess, but there is no other art that unfolds this transformation as much as a garden work.

From this somewhat complex discussion, we may return to the existing theory of expression media in the clear field of fine arts/plastic arts.

Painting/Image — Sculpture — Craft/Design/Video — Architecture — Environmental Design — Garden

This series of expression media is a progression from two-dimensional flat painting to three-dimensional spatial art, then to socio-institutional space and natural/movement space, and finally to the garden, which connects to the living space-time of animals and plants. While it is a traditional categorization based on spatiality and temporality, there is no other comprehensive art that brings as much dynamism to the world of art as the "production/experience" of a garden.

The most noteworthy functions in zoological and botanical gardens are cultivation/appreciation and production/reception, and these functions became established in civil society as gardens in the 19th century. The Jardin des Plantes in Paris started as the Royal Medicinal Herb Garden of Louis XIII in the 17th century and welcomed the naturalist Buffon as its representative in 1739. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London was established in 1840 following the Royal Kew Gardens (1759). Lamarck, who discussed zoological philosophy/evolution (1809) as a founder of modern biology, studied at the Jardin des Plantes, while in 19th-century London, the Zoological Society of London established a menagerie (1828) in Regent's Park for its members, and soon the Zoological Gardens (1847), named after the society, opened its gates to civil society.

Yukichi Fukuzawa, who stayed in London in 1862, likely visited the garden and its newly established reptile house and aquarium (1853). In Fukuzawa's translated term "dobutsuen" (zoo), there is a leap of surprise and empathy toward a city where citizens can encounter the world's living creatures and their research.

Nevertheless, European gardens do not seem to hesitate to ask yet another question. It is the quiet question: what is material life, and where are the boundaries of minerals, rocks, the earth, and water? Other than zoos and botanical gardens, "mineral gardens" do not exist, except for actual mines or collections in "cabinets of curiosities." However, a garden is always also a garden of the earth (landscape) and minerals. Then, "what is water?"

I realized one day that "water" is a liquid "substance" that constantly changes its form, a variable "mineral." When Goethe (1749–1832) went to the Weimar court, he first settled in the "Park an der Ilm." He was granted a small bower with a garden in the park, which he seems to have liked. This man of letters later achieved great results in botanical and zoological research, and his achievements are still noted by experts today, but the beginning of such natural research was mining and mineralogy. The Ilm River is a small stream, but its source is the Ilmenau mine about 50 kilometers upstream. Since there are caves and tunnels in the canyon-like Ilm Park, if we stay in Weimar for a long time, we are taught by Goethe that the root of human life lies in the liquid "substance" in which earth and water are fused, in its metamorphosis.

This understanding can also be confirmed in another garden: the Herrenhausen Gardens (1665) in Hannover, Germany. Here, a parterre (ornamental flower garden) is placed in front of a small palace, followed by an area with many ponds, and further south, a forest belt unfolds. All are designs of a formal French garden, but we must walk through the garden carefully. Generally, when people hear "French garden," they tend to have the preconception that it is based on "belvedere" (viewpoint) principles from the second-floor terrace of the palace, keeping in mind a perspectival production where the absolute power of the ruler extends to the end of the distant forest belt, dominating the world. However, Herrenhausen Palace is not like that at all. The protagonist of this garden is the expression of hydraulics through numerous geometric pond surfaces and fountains created by the clever arrangement of water pipes in the middle-ground pond area.

This garden is said to have been designed by the philosopher and mathematician Leibniz (1646–1716). A passage in his major work, Monadology, suddenly mentions "gardens" and "water."

Every portion of matter may be conceived as like a garden full of plants and like a pond full of fish. But every branch of a plant, every member of an animal, and every drop of its fluids is "also such a garden or such a pond."

This mathematician, unlike Descartes, rejects "I think, therefore I am." The stance where the spiritual subject distinguishes and "boundaries" itself from the objective world is put in parentheses. Leibniz and Goethe grasped water, earth, and rocks as liquid substances and further regarded the polar functions of presence/absence as a circular movement. The part is the whole, and the whole is the part.

I can think of two gardens in Japan where such states of water can be confirmed.

They are old and new Japanese works that join water with rocks and beton. The garden of Bon-on-gan (circa 1314), which reminds one of a training ground at the Rinzai sect Eiho-ji Temple in Tajimi City, Gifu Prefecture, facing the Toki River. Also, the D.T. Suzuki Museum in Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture (Yoshio Taniguchi, 2011, photo), thoroughly conveys the waves of transformation and connection of boundaries, such as body/liquid substance and language/nature.

In 1981, the social philosopher Habermas argued that modern society would extremely accelerate specialization and fragmentation—that is, boundary-making—in the fields of science and technology, ethics and morality, and art and culture, falling into a crisis of fragmentary diversification. This is the danger of strictly performing boundary-making, the exact opposite of a garden that transcends boundaries. It was a prophecy that hit the mark; in fact, even in the near future of cross-domain networks and urban redevelopment design, it is difficult to discern whether it is integration or fragmentation. If verification in line with Japan's culture and traditions is also indispensable, I would like to close my display and head to a garden.

Rereading Tachibana no Toshitsuna's "Sakuteiki" (11th century) on a garden bench is fine, but I still want to go for more strolls. Since space is limited, these are just notes, but the following gardens will surely speak again of the spirit of re-creation that transcends boundaries.

First, Murin-an (1896) and Tairyu-sanso (1905) in Kyoto by Jihei Ogawa VII, who respected the Lake Biwa Canal. In modern times, the "mimesis of plants" seen in "Monet's Garden" (2000) in Kitagawa Village, Kochi Prefecture, modeled after the painter Monet's garden in Giverny. The double contingency of Hiroshi Sugimoto's "Enoura Observatory" (2017). And the "Former Second Research Building Small Garden" (1951) by Isamu Noguchi on the Mita Campus of this Juku.