The stylistic feature of this garden is in its abstractism. None of grasses and trees can be seen there, just 15 stones are arranged in five groups on the rectangular ground. This garden takes a "non-objective" expression and never means the natural landscape as in the average garden. The ground itself, which is covered by the white sand, is turned intoa n abstractspace where actuality is denied. These five groups of stones, following the physical nature of the man's eyes, develops one after another from left to right, and there, the development like the sonata form may be seen. The 1st theme signifies the height (strain), and 2nd the lowness (relaxation). The 1st and the 2nd groups are "exposition" suggesting both of themes. The 3rd and 4th groups are the "development", and make the variation of the two themes. Finally, the 5th group gives the synthetic "recapitulation". There may be found the two principles within this spatial arrangement. The one is the law of distance which has ever pervaded among the tea devotee as the rule of arrangement for the tea utensils and was called "kane-wari", meaning the proportional order, and the other is the centripetal rule, by which these five groups of stones are arranged on the arc with the same radius. Moreover, the broad blank space in the front is also noteworthy. Among these styles, the spirit of rationalism aiming at clarity is to be seen. Such characters were the common style of the fomative art which was prevailing in the first half of the seventeenth century, the outset of the Edo period in Japan. After giving a proof on this in the paintings of those days, the present writer, tried to set forth the new opinion that the construction should be around 1620 when the spirit of rationalism raised its head, thus putting aside the former theory according to which the garden was made early in the sixteenth century.
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