context: gardens > modern gardens

Tofuku-ji

The excellent Gunter Nitschke says that this is where garden design changed from stereotypical imitation of the past into a genuinely modern artform. The gardens at Tofuku-ji were apparently originally designed by Sesshu, but here we are concerned with the post-fire rebuilding by Mirei Shigemori around 1940. He offered bold and unprecedented designs, with strong use of diagonals and grids and lots of strongly vertical stones. The image shows square paving stones set down into moss on an irregularly-filled grid.