DUO’S JOURNEY

Kyoto Shugakuin Imperial Villa

Like Entsu-ji, this is a detached palace built by Emperor Go-Mizunoo. It is a majestic palace with a total area of over 545,000m². It is divided into three areas: the Lower Imperial Palace, the Middle Imperial Palace, and the Upper Imperial Palace. There stretch the 80,000m² rice paddies, and a row of pine trees crossing the rice paddies connects the three palaces. The difference in elevation between the Lower and Upper Palaces is nearly 40 meters, and the view from the Upper Palace is dramatic, with the Yokuryu Pond just below and the mountains in the distance beyond as a shakkei.

Kumon:
The Shugakuin Imperial Villa was worth seeing: it was very spacious. I have been here several times, but it was a difficult place to work on the project.

Yamaguchi:
The Shugakuin Imperial Villa is located on top of a mountain, and the view from there is beautiful. There is an artificial pond in the garden, and you can see the mountains beyond the pond. So the villa is designed to look over the mountains in the distance from the top of the mountain. Viewing the mountains as shakkei is the conventional way of viewing the garden at Shugakuin, but I didn’t follow that this time. I knew that there were rice paddies, but I didn't pay much attention to them before I went there. I went there because I initially wanted Mr. Kumon to photograph the shakkei of the pond and the mountains, but rather, I decided to focus on the paddy fields as a functional element taking up a certain amount of space in the garden. Korakuen Garden in Okayama also has rice paddies, but it’s typically strange to have a paddy in a garden.

Why are there paddies in the villa?

Yamaguchi:
The emperor would ride in a basket from the city of Kyoto to the Imperial Villa and enjoy the garden all day long. The rice paddies, a low-status motif signifying farmers, are mixed into this garden. Perhaps the emperor enjoyed the sight of rice planting, but it’s still a bit incongruous. The paddy fields were on the other side of the row of well-kept pine trees. I felt that they should not be together in the same place, but I saw that they were placed side by side.

Kumon:
In the first place, rice fields differ greatly depending on whether they are maintained or not. The beauty is different. I feel that a rice field well looked after as part of a garden is synonymous with a well-kept pine tree. Speaking of the keyword "rice paddies," there was a context where rice paddies adjoined the perimeter of the Katsura Imperial Villa, and there was no boundary between them. The "food" part of "food, clothing, and shelter" is here, and right next to it is the untouchable presence of the emperor. I was not able to capture that border at the Katsura Imperial Villa.

Yamaguchi:
I understand the composition of the emperor watching the people cultivating the paddy fields. In the Katsura Imperial Villa, the emperor must have been looking at the neighboring paddy fields through the lattice of the tea room. However, it is also a strange composition that there were farmers' fields next to the villa. In China, there would be no fields around the Forbidden City, not even close to the emperor. However, in the case of the Shugakuin Imperial Villa, it is interesting to see that the functional rice paddies and the aesthetic gardens existed side by side on the same site.

Kumon:
The path from the main gate was also nice. Standing in front of the entrance, there was a beautiful white gravel path leading to the top of the mountain, and it was nice to walk up the path looking at the pine trees planted on both sides. It felt as if I was rising to heaven.

Yamaguchi:
That wasn't very clear to me, but... I thought the makers of the garden were trying to recreate the countryside. The pine trees on both sides of the path create a sense of dignity, while the rice paddies are a sight not found in the city.

Kumon:
I thought there was a story to be told: Through the gate of honor, one continues through the door with different textures, takes a break, enjoys the countryside scenery, and struggles to get to the top. The story is not dramatic, but very relaxed, and I could see that there was a sense of peace or luxury that could be enjoyed gracefully. The details are interesting, and the "hifumi (one, two, three)" stones, the paving stones scattered randomly in singles, pairs, or triples, create a texture on the ground. It was also nice to see a rhythm in the different textures of the stepping stones.

Yamaguchi:
In the photo, you can notice the color difference, but in the garden, this stepping stone is so small that it is easy to miss. By arranging stones of different colors and textures, it creates an exquisite atmosphere, or in other words, it creates a kind of charm that emerges by arranging things with "subtle differences." Mr. Kumon is capturing, in his photos, subtleties that might be overlooked with the naked eye.

So these landscapes are interesting because they are viewed through a camera.

Yamaguchi:
We can say the same for this picture. This is a rain gutter. Normally, the gutter would stop at the eave corner and go down to connect to the vertical gutter, but this gutter is extended and drops water down in a kind of violent manner. I think it is to keep the water away from the building, but it is very high, so it is overhanging and you have to look up from below. This is bold compared to a structure that controls minute differences, and I felt it was abrupt. I thought that this aspect of "no relationship" in the landscape might be the same sense as the way the mountains are in the shakkei. I thought that this lack of relationship might be one of the characteristics of Japanese culture. Although the effect is emphasized in the photo, I felt that the line of the rain gutter against the blue sky created a new, unexpected landscape.

Kumon:
Unfortunately, I was unable to take a picture that showed the rice paddies on the other side of the controlled pine trees during my trip.

Yamaguchi:
The first time I went there in the winter, the harvested rice fields were covered with frost, so I went back in the early summer when the fields were flooded, expecting the rice to be growing well, but it wasn’t. I was disappointed, and the composition I had in mind did not work out. In terms of the characteristics of this place, one of the factors that prevented me from shooting satisfactory photos was the fact that it was difficult to stand in the same spot since I was shooting in an environment where there were guides and other people.

Kumon:
If I had chosen a large 4×5 camera for this trip, I would have asked for permission in advance to take pictures as planned at the places designated by Mr. Yamaguchi. However, I don't think it would have resulted in the kind of rediscovery we both had in the gardens, as shown in the photos I snapped spontaneously.