The Silver Pavilion and its gardens

"I love
My hut
At the foot of the Moon-awaiting Mountain
And the reflection
Of the sinking sky"

The Yamasa Institute reproduces this poem by Ashikaga Yoshimasa describing the "Silver Pavilion", Ginkaku-ji, in the foothills east of Kyoto.

Ginkaku-ji was intended to contrast with Kinkaju-ji, a spectacular pavilion covered in gold leaf located northwest of the city. Each began life as a villa for a member of the Ashikaga family, and became Zen temples. The grandson of the owner of Kinkaju-ji built his pavilion intending to cover it in silver leaf. But this plan was never realized.


Today, the temple complex is officially called Jisho-ji.

The original name of the building on the edge of the central pond persists in common use, and the impression it makes continues to be a personal retreat.

Unlike more massive Buddhist temples that overwhelm with the size of their buildings and the images contained inside, Ginkaku-ji is intimate, a cluster of buildings linked by mossy and raked gardens surrounding a small pool of water, nestled on the edge of the steep eastern mountains.

The raked garden is attributed in tourist guides to Soami, described as a a landscape gardener. He was much more: curator of the art collection of the Ashikaga shoguns, he practiced the arts of poetry, painting, flower arranging, and the tea ceremony, as well as designing gardens.

The dry garden, Ginshaden, Sea of Silver Sand, incorporates a tall conical mound of gravel. Guide books describe it as representing Mount Fuji, but its name-- Kogetsudai-- links it to viewing the moon, the activity described in Ashikaga Yoshimasa's poem.

 The raked garden was not mentioned in historic texts until long after the place was built. Its form may not directly owe its inspiration to Soami.

But the plantings and placement of stones around the pond in front of the Silver Pavilion were created as art works; the Yamasa Institute describes the views as "meant to conjure an image from classic Japanese or Chinese literature".




Individual stones in the garden are named. "Bridge of the Pillar of the Immortal" crosses the pool at one point. Directly in front of the pavilion, a single stone surrounded by water is called "Ecstatic Contemplation".


Despite the uncertainties in its history, the fabric of the surviving pavilion, the setting and the care in creating changing views that always remain striking all suggest that it was composed carefully-- if not by Soami then by another artist working with the very materials of place to create beauty and peacefulness.