The purpose of this study is to propose a scenery development method for the Japanese garden. The Japanese garden usually imitates the beautiful natural scenery. Historically, the garden was prepared for a person of high rank, but nowadays, ordinary people enjoy it in their dairy life. It is very common we make some kinds of garden in various scales, landscapes, streets, parks and houses. The buildings and houses with gardens are very common. However, it is not so easy to make good-looking gardens. We have several garden components, such as trees, grasses, ponds, waterfalls, bridges, and stones. The problem is how to arrange and combine these components in order to make a garden beautiful. To solve this problem, we investigated the Ninomaru garden of Nijo castle as a good example because it is one of the famous sightseeing spots in Kyoto and its scenery is highly appreciated by a number of people including foreigners. We have performed the evaluation experiment using 95 scenery garden photos by 40 subjects, and clarified the following points:
(1) Five viewpoints were identified in the Ninomaru garden. These five viewpoints were spaced at 20-30-meter interval.
(2) Viewpoints at the corner of the neighboring building have multiple gazing areas. This is because that the view angle at the corner of the building is wide and the flexibility of the placement of the garden elements is high.
(3) When a garden scenery has the structure of near side shrubs or gardens stone and far side of stone bridges or garden stones across the pond, it tends to become a pleasing scenery in the longest direction of the pond.
These findings would be of help to choose proper sites for viewpoints and to arrange various garden components when we design a new garden. We would like to evaluate other Japanese gardens in the same manner whether these findings are universally applied to Japanese gardens or only to the Ninomaru garden.
