Elemente simbolice şi valori estetice complexe ale grădinii japoneze

Abstract

The traditional Japanese garden combines characteristics which have been developed over many centuries and which reflect the different influences prevailing during particular periods of history. The Japanese garden is a work of living art, imbued with a moral dimension, being penetrated by Zen Buddhism. Zen Buddhist monks played an important role in the development of garden design, and many of their principles have been incorporated into Japanese aesthetic values. As with all Japanese art forms and aesthetic principles, the Japanese garden is a manifestation of Japanese values, beliefs, and thoughts –in short a reflection of the Japanese spirit, characterised by modesty, moderation and sobriety. The present paper aims to demonstrate that although the Japanese garden has kept all the elements belonging to the Chinese aesthetics, it has nevertheless its own individuality, carried out by a special mystic and symbolism, based on the careful observation of the nature, on the aesthetics of the great refinement of the curved line, by the use of the symbolic geometrical forms (square, circle, rectangle), by the numeric essence of the composition, everything in the garden being organised depending on the numbers 3,5,7. The Japanese have created their gardens by restriction, by virtue of the order which is present in their inward nature: the moral order which becomes outside a spatial order. The Japanese spirit has „ritualised” the garden, providing it with a constant symbolism, ensuring the perfect order of the traditional Japanese garden, a garden almost „rational” all the time, which induces thinking, which must be seen with the mind, not just with the eyes to discover its deep spiritual meanings. Making a synthesis of the materials, presented in the vast specialised literature, concerning the art of gardens and traditional Japanese garden particularly, the following aesthetic principles present in the traditional Japanese garden may be evidenced: „meigakure”—the quality of remaining hidden from the ordinary view; minimalism; reverence for Nature; suggestion; asymmetry and movement; simplicity; naturalness; balance; unity of oppositions. The intellectual and spiritual tone of the traditional Japanese garden, the taste for abstraction and symbolism relate them to the modern Western art, this type of gardens being widely spread in the world.