Marc Keane on Gardens of Genji Kyoto
There is nothing that expresses the elements of Japanese culture more completely than a Japanese garden. It reflects the island nation's geography and climate, the people's relationship with nature, their evolving aesthetics, and the influence of religious notions. As gardens are often extensions of architecture, they also reflect the building styles and concepts of different times in Japanese history.
To learn more about Japanese gardens, we turned to Marc Peter Keane, Genji Kyoto's garden designer who has written extensively on the subject and is a scholar and landscape artist living in Kyoto.
First of all, we asked how it is that Marc decided to become a designer of Japanese gardens.
"The simplicity and unadorned quality of Japanese culture in general is what drew me to it at first," said the New York City born graduate of Cornell University, who majored in landscape architecture, went to Japan, settled in Kyoto in the mid-80s, and became the first person in Japan to receive a work visa as a landscape architect.
Marc has since designed gardens for private homes, companies, temples, parks, and recently for our hotel on the waterfront of Kyoto's Kamo River.
"The interesting characteristics of a Japanese garden is a broad question and hard to pin down. But one way I look at it is that the Japanese garden contains aspects that reflect wild nature and others that reflect the controlling human hand, and it is the harmonic balance of those two that underlie the beauty of the gardens," said Marc.
On this concept of nature vs. nurture, and the harmonic balance that gives rise to the beauty of the garden, an interesting passage in Yukio Mishima's famous novel Temple of the Golden Pavilion comes to mind. The narrator describes how his friend makes a flower arrangement, and brings to life the essence of nature for all to see:
"Gradually a flower arrangement of the Kansui school had taken shape.... The movement of Kashiwagi's hands could only be described as magnificent. One small decision followed another, and the effects of contrast and symmetry converged with infallible artistry. Nature's plants were brought vividly under the sway of an artificial order and made to conform to an established melody. The flowers and leaves, which had formerly existed as they were, had now been transformed into flowers and leaves as they ought to be. The cattails and the irises were no longer individual, anonymous plants belonging to their respective species, but had become terse, direct manifestations of what might be called the essence of the irises and the cattails." (Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima,
Perhaps this is what designers of Japanese gardens aimed to achieve over the centuries: to express an idealized vision of nature. To Marc, it goes further. The garden is also a venue where "the expressions of humans as an integral part of nature are revealed in their best light."
"There are certain aspects of a Japanese garden that flow from the intent of the person designing it: choices related to balance, form, texture, alignment, symbolic meaning, and so on," said Marc.
"Other aspects of a Japanese garden are not determined by the original designer. Rather, they gradually come into being over time. Some develop under the caring hands of the people who maintain the garden, and some arise from the passing of the seasons," said Marc.
Marc worked with our chief designer and architect Geoffrey P. Moussas to incorporate gardens and vegetation in all of the hotel's public spaces, including a Zen garden in the lobby courtyard, tsubo gardens for the rooms on each floor, and a forest-like garden on the roof to take advantage of the surrounding river, mountain and city views.
Moss and plants in Genji Kyoto's lobby Zen garden.
Tsubo garden with antique stone and river pebbles.
Plants and furniture in Sky Forest Garden on the roof.
Tsubo garden with tiles once common as roof material.
Genji Kyoto's bamboo-lined entranceway.
In our video, he explains some of his concepts for the gardens, and what he hopes to achieve for the enjoyment of our guests.
Marc has written fiction and non-fiction works related to gardens, gardening and nature, including Sakuteiki, a translation of Japan's oldest gardening treatise. His latest work, "Of Arcs and Circles”, is a collection of essays on gardens, art, nature and Buddhist concepts.