Japanese garden

Gardens in conventional Japanese style can be found at private homes, in neighborhood or city parks, and at historical landmarks such as Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines and old castles.

Some of the Japanese gardens most well-known in the West, and within Japan as well, are dry gardens or rock gardens, karesansui. The custom of the Tea masters has formed highly refined Japanese gardens of quite another style, evoking rural simplicity. In Japanese civilization garden-making is a high art, closely related to the linked arts of calligraphy and ink painting. Since the end of the 19th century, Japanese gardens contain also been adapted to Western settings. Japanese gardens were improved under the influences of the distinctive and stylized Chinese gardens.