Recovery of visual structure in illustrated Japanese gardens

Abstract

The continued existence of superb Japanese gardens attests to their cultural significance during the last few centuries. Yet despite their special cultural status, factual ambiguities shroud the identity of garden creators, and historical records often omit details about alteration of original compositions. Fortunately some garden illustrations in old texts provide valuable information where original designs have been lost or altered.

This paper investigates the depiction of visual perspective in the work of the prolific garden illustrator, Akisato Ritoh, to propose a method for recovery of garden plans from his illustrations. The method capitalizes on the observation that Akisato’s work presents rectilinear structures in pseudo-parallel perspective while naturalistic objects are depicted in fronto-parallel views.

Visual structure of illustrated gardens is then computed via the medial axis transform, a method used in previous work to reveal global visual structure in the Ryoanji dry rock garden. Three examples show how the approach benefits pattern processing in cultural heritage. The first example provides the visual structure of an unrealized garden that was intended as exemplary of a specific style. The second suggests how fluctuations due to plant growth affect the structural balance of a garden composition. In the third case, plan recovery coupled with medial axis transformation hint at the cultural significance of an inaccessible and relatively unknown garden. Further analysis suggests that abstract visual structure of gardens may serve as a signature of their creators, analogous to the way in which shape of brush strokes may characterize the origins of a painting.

Introduction

Japanese gardens form an integral part of the cultural heritage of Japan. Left relatively unscathed by the destruction of the World War II, Kyoto is the nucleus of the Japanese garden heritage and home to no less than 16 temples designated as UNESCO world heritage sites. This is synonymous with assigning international cultural status to a number of Kyoto gardens, since most temples are best known for their court yard gardens. Even if Kyoto escaped the raids of the last war it has been ravaged during various upheavals in its long history. And with post-war development many Kyoto gardens, especially those belonging to minor temples or in private ownership have disappeared. Relatively few gardens remain in the old capital today.

Seeds of lost gardens can fortunately still be uncovered. Architectural drawings and photographs serve as the record of visual composition of gardens that have disappeared in the recent past. At least some significant, accurate details pertaining to these creations remain for future generations. Yet one especially feels the loss when finding the last remaining reference to a garden that does not exist anymore, be it a photograph or a hand drawn illustration.

In this paper I propose that invaluable ground plan details may be recovered from even one illustration of an original garden. The method is founded on a grasp of how Japanese artists depicted depth perspective in two dimensions. Four illustrations (Fig. 1) by Akisato Ritoh serve as inspiration for the ground plan recovery method. Few scholars have attempted garden plan reconstruction from illustrations, probably since the schematic appearance of hand drawings do not hint at an immediate link with veridical data of the garden composition.

Akisato Ritoh captured the scenery of famous Japanese gardens, depicting design styles and garden accessories in painstaking detail (Akisato, 1780, Akisato, 1799, Akisato, 1827, Akisato, 1828). An enthusiastic garden expert active in the latter half of the Edo period (1603–1867), he also created numerous gardens and published several authoritative works on the topic.

The following section gives an overview of the depiction of depth perspective in Japanese art and in particular the illustrations of Akisato. Comparing standard parallel, vertical and linear perspective systems I then show that vertical projective reconstruction yields acceptable maps for some of the illustrated gardens. Finally, the structural analysis in four of his illustrations serves as platform to demonstrate the utility of pattern processing in deepening our understanding of Japanese garden design.