Jikoin Garden

One Garden, Designated by the State in 1934

Jikoin Garden (慈光院庭園, Jikoin Teien) lies at Koizumi-cho, Yamatokoriyama City, Nara Prefecture, and was designated by the state on 28 December 1934. The category is that of historic sites, places of scenic beauty and natural monuments.

The city records that it was laid out in 1663, when the temple was founded.

It is a dry landscape garden made to be seen from the reception hall.

Hills Beyond the Garden Drawn Into It

Scenery outside the grounds is taken into the composition.

The city records a dry landscape garden of the reception-hall kind, known for borrowing its scenery: over a hedge of massed clipped shrubs, the hills east of the Yamato plain come into view.

Borrowed scenery takes a view beyond the garden as the garden's own backdrop. Here it is the hills to the east.

The record continues that what marks the garden out is the seasonal scenery of those distant hills, across the plain, seen directly from within the rooms.

At Rokuzankan, the building is said to shape the landscape of the summit. There the building makes the view.

Here the garden takes a view in. The direction is reversed.

Eight Views, Each with a Name

What can be seen from the garden is named and counted.

The city records a tablet hung in the reception hall giving the eight views of Jikoin.

Among them are the new moon over Mount Mikasa, a pair of pagodas among the pines, white cloud on Mount Katsuragi, and spring snow on Mount Omine.

Mikasa, Katsuragi and Omine are hills, all of them beyond the garden.

New moon, white cloud, spring snow: the weather and the season enter the names along with the hills.

A tablet is a horizontal board hung in a building. How the garden is to be seen is thus set down in writing inside the hall.

Planted and Self-Sown Together

Not everything growing in the garden was put there by hand.

The city records that massed clipping of azaleas and satsuki marks the garden, and that some 60 kinds of shrub and ground plant have been identified within it.

It continues that planting by hand and plants that took root of themselves grow mixed together, so that plain surroundings carry a rich play of colour.

Massed clipping shapes low shrubs into large rounded masses; the azaleas and satsuki are cut in this way.

Alongside them, plants that rooted of themselves are counted as part of the garden. The figure of 60 kinds covers both.

A garden is made by hand, and yet this one is held to include what was not made.

Visiting

The garden lies at Koizumi-cho, Yamatokoriyama City, Nara Prefecture.

It was laid out in 1663, at the founding of the temple.

The garden is of the dry landscape kind, using stone and sand rather than water to figure hills and streams.

It is a garden of the reception-hall kind, made to be looked at from within the hall.

The city records that a charge is made to view it. Terms of entry follow the temple's arrangements. Check before travelling.