History and Development of Garden Rockeries in China and Japan

摘要

An important component of traditional Chinese gardens, rockeries have a unique place for their representation of exquisite landscape, their profound sediments from culture and history, and their distinctive style and superb artistic level. For a period of time, Japanese culture was modeled on China. The creation and development of rockery art in Japan absorbed nutrients from ancient Chinese civilization. However, in the long process of evolution, Japanese rockeries have developed their own special features, forming a complete system of rockery creation.Modern Japanese gardening has resisted the call of total westernization, analyzed and utilized native rockery art, and extracted the essence from Japanese culture to create modern designs brimming with strong Japanese spirits. Such practice has not only set an example of how the western world can borrow from Japanese tradition, but also contributed to the development of Japanese gardening culture in the modern times. They have also supplied us Chinese with a successful model of exploring our own modern garden while carrying on the tradition.