Temples of yesterday, gardens of today: the eternity of mosses in Japan

Conference of Véronique Brindeau, author, professor of Japanese music history at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations, editorial coordinator at the Ensemble inter-contemporain (Cité de la musique).

Véronique Brindeau is a professor of music at INALCO and a specialist in Japanese classical music and early court music, as well as in the performing arts, including Noh theater. It was during an artistic residency at Villa Kujoyama, where she met the composer Takemistu Toru (1930-1996), that she became interested in mosses and their special place in Japanese culture.

Generally ignored in the West, mosses have interested the Japanese since ancient times. They are notably mentioned in ancient collections of classical poetry such as the Manyôshû (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves, 8^rd century) and the Kokin Waka Shu (Collection of poems from yesterday and today, 9^rd century). We find, for example, in the latter the following quintain insisting on moss as a symbol of the passing of time: “May your reign/ Last a thousand and a thousand generations / Until the stones / Form rocks / All covered with moss”. Furthermore, this interest in mosses is found in the gardening treatise of Sakutei-ki (11^rd century) which addresses the importance of the role of mosses in the natural change of the color of stones. Finally, let us note their representation in pictorial productions, notably in the scroll Kaguga Gongen Emaki (1309) depicting court ladies around a miniature landscape of a mossy garden surrounded by bonsai trees adorned with moss at their feet. It is all this classical imagery, both poetic and pictorial, that these discreet plants convey, symbols of another time.

Kaguga Gongen Emaki scroll (detail).1309.

Bonsail with moss at the base. ©V.Brindeau.

For this is the importance of this plant, which we pay little attention to: marking the passage of time independent of the presence of humans. For the Japanese, moss represents the nostalgia of “Yamato,” that is, distant Japan, before the Sinicization of the archipelago. This representation is translated in the gardens by a drape of green hills, untouched by any influence. The stones, witnesses of the mineral and immutable world, and the mosses, witnesses of the fleeting and transitory plant world, embody the idea of eternity for the informed public. This is why, not taking care of mosses is at the same time a form of crime against nature, against the gods but also against the Emperor.

Abandoned from the 13th^rd up to 15^rd century, mosses returned to the front of gardens thanks to the development of the tea ceremony. Their presence on lanterns, ablution basins, roofs or the “dew path” (roji) leading to the tea pavilion serves to create a spiritual atmosphere with accents of eternity, putting the visitor in a posture of meditative contemplation of time gone by and before which one must bow. In the Japanese imagination, dew is the land where the spirit is reborn. It is also in the 16^rd century that the notion of sabi, that is to say, the aesthetic dimension that the wear and tear of time can cause on an object that has been taken care of over the course of its uses. During this period, under the influence of masters such as Sen no Rikyun (1522-1591), tea tableware also took on a rustic style, austere but not devoid of personality. Each great tea master would offer his vision of sabi. This symbiosis between spirituality and sabi is also found in the “reused stones”, round slabs paving the garden paths, whose initial function was to serve as a foundation for a temple or sanctuary pillar. Walking on these reused stones, sometimes covered with moss, is like treading on a trace of time gone by, symbolically manifested.

Moss-covered stone lanterns at Kasuga Taisha.

Tea bowl in the style of Sen no Rikyun. ©V.Brindeau

In Buddhism, gardening is one of the many activities that allow one to achieve enlightenment in the practice of artistic expression. Saihô.ji (Temple of the Perfume of the West, also known today as the “Temple of Moss”) in Kyoto is perhaps the place where mosses have been best showcased. Thanks to a favorable humid topography, more than 100 varieties are meticulously maintained by gardeners working mainly by hand to give all their splendor to the moss carpets. This Zen Buddhist temple has had a very singular history. Decorated with dry gardens before being abandoned in the 15^rd century (period of troubles marked by numerous destructions and fires), it was not rehabilitated until the 19th^rd century. It was decided at that time to preserve the moss-covered garden with its paths winding around the central pool. These are undeniable witnesses to the past four centuries, far from human activity. This originality and the exceptional nature of the site earned Saiho.ji a UNESCO World Heritage Site designation in 1994.

Saiho.ji. Gardens. ©V.Brindeau.

Saiho.ji. Gardens. ©V.Brindeau.

Nowadays, mosses remain omnipresent in many private or public gardens (Villa Katsura Gepparo “Moon on the Wave Pavilion”, the Kyoto Museum of Contemporary Art), but also in open spaces such as the Odawara Noh stage built in stone and set with a carpet of moss that marks the transparent articulation between the profane and the sacred. The garden Hasso North of the Tôfuku.ji temple with its checkerboard of stones and mosses arranged by Mirei Shigemori (1896-1975) in 1940, creates “an accord of breaths” between two mineral slabs. The ShigemoriI family is also an old and illustrious family of gardeners whose residence in Kyoto can be visited. It is also interesting to note that Japanese architecture adapts to its gardens to pay attention to ordinary things. yukimi for example, low and elongated windows deliberately direct the gaze towards the bottom of the garden, towards the snow (yuki) in winter, or towards the moss carpet the rest of the year, when we are sitting on the floor inside. Because that is the poetry of mosses: to make us change our point of view and focus our attention on the “very low” and the world that preceded us.

Tôfuku.ji. Hasso North Garden.

Music Recommendation : Mu-sô (Dream/Window) by Toru Takemitsu. The work's name honors the Buddhist monk Muso Soseki (1275-1351), a famous garden designer. This composition is inspired by the garden of the Moss Temple in Kyoto and is distinguished by the original arrangement of the orchestra, with the harps in the center. The composer's goal was to make the interior (dream) and exterior (window) resonate simultaneously by arranging the orchestra in a particular way to change the perspective of the work, thus creating a sound impression of a reduced formation.