Japan's Master Gardens: Lessons in Space and Environment

by Stephen Mansfield

Overview

"While very attractive visually, this is no mere coffee table book. A wealth of knowledge and information is put across in an instructive yet highly readable fashion. The attention to detail is thoughtful, from the map inside the front cover to the font used in the titles. This book offers both intellectual and visual appeal to any reader, whether familiar with Japanese gardens or new to their aesthetic and traditions. --Garden Design Magazine"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781462908523
Publisher:	Tuttle Publishing
Publication date:	09/04/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	44 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Stephen Mansfield, an author and freelance photojournalist based in Japan, has contributed to over 60 magazines, newspapers and journals worldwide. His books include Japanese Stone Gardens: Origins, Meaning, Form and Tokyo: A Cultural and Literary History. A specialist in the field, he has visited over two hundred gardens in Japan, written extensively on the topic and designed a Japanese garden of his own.

Editorial Reviews

In this generously illustrated book, author and photojournalist Mansfield (Japanese Stone Gardens) explores the beauty and history of Japanese gardens. Mansfield is an expert guide who uses poetic prose and photographs to examine the Japanese senses of nature and space, and the culture’s fundamental gardening genres: the modular garden, the landscape garden, and the healing garden. The visual tour of 25 master gardens allows the reader to appreciate the exquisite details of each place, while also discerning the fundamental aesthetic principles that underlie the Japanese garden. Mansfield accompanies his striking photographs with a spare text that combines history, poetry, and thoughtful meditations on each space. It’s a wonderful balance of insight and visual delight. The guide is completed with a glossary, historic timeline, and bibliography. Color photographs throughout. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Mansfield accompanies his striking photographs with a spare text that combines history, poetry, and thoughtful meditations on each space. It's a wonderful balance of insight and visual delight." —Publishers Weekly

"Mansfield's elegant photographs artfully capture each garden's essence, from the tightly controlled symmetry of dry landscape gardens of the temple at Sekizo-ji to the serene majesty of early-seventeenth-century stroll gardens at Kumamoto. Teeming with historical, cultural, and design insights, Mansfield's treatise succinctly defines the extraordinary variety and beauty of gardens throughout Japan." —Booklist

"While very attractive visually, this is no mere coffee table book. A wealth of knowledge and information is put across in an instructive yet highly readable fashion. The attention to detail is thoughtful, from the map inside the front cover to the font used in the titles. This book offers both intellectual and visual appeal to any reader, whether familiar with Japanese gardens or new to their aesthetic and traditions." —Garden Design Magazine

"A poetic homage to the Japanese garden—not just for its artistry and grandeur, but also as the locus of our desire for balance and equanimity." —Leza Lowitz, author of Green Tea to Go: Stories from Tokyo

"This book is as close as one could get to understanding the function of Japan's timeless gardens as the embodiment of the 'separate one-ness' of nature and human existence." —Hans Brinckmann, author of Showa Japan

"Such are the magnificent artifices of the Japanese garden, these pas de deux of man and nature, that while drinking in Mansfield's beautiful images you may fall under the illusion you are viewing the painterly landscapes of Hayao Miyazaki and pinch yourself and glance at the fine print for locations and assurance the gardens are indeed real and visitable." —Burritt Sabin, author of A Historical Guide to Yokohama

From the Publisher