Japanese Garden Design

The Japanese garden designer, like the poet, creates a theater for the wind to speak, and asks only that we listen. This book presents the essential concepts that garden designers have employed through the centuries and the knowledge necessary to create these living sculptures, these sacred spaces, these ethereal and graceful gardens of Japan.

Marc Peter Keane, a licensed landscape architect and garden designer, came to Japan in 1985, and since then has been creating and building gardens for companies, temples, and private individuals. He teaches a design workshop as an adjunct professor at the Kyoto University of Art and Design, and is a staff member of the Research Center for Japanese Garden Art there. He is also the Chairman of ISSK, International Society to Save Kyoto, a multi-national society working to perserve Kyoto’s natural environment. He has traveled and lectured widely on traditional and classical approaches to Japanese garden design and landscaping. He lives in Kyoto where he owns a landscape architectural firm.

Haruzo Ohashi, born in 1927, is a freelance photographer based in Tokyo and is considered one of Japan’s leading garden photographers. Among his many publications are Famous Gardens in Japan (Seibundo Shinko-sha Publishing Co., 1969), Gardens of Japanese History, Vol. 35 (Shakai Shiso-sha Publishing Co., 1976), and Japanese Garden, Traditional Forms and Drawings, Vol. 5 (The Mainichi Newspapers 1977). He is a member of the Japan Professional Photographers Society.