PORTLAND JAPANESE GARDEN

We visited Portland Japanese Garden, which is really five "collected" styles of Japanese garden, housed on the former grounds of the Portland Zoo in Washington Park. We took a public tour and our guide was one of the directors of the board. She had us hold two Japanese concepts in mind while we explored the gardens: 間 / ma, which means something like "a pause in time" or "empty space" or "negative space;" and 見立絵 / mitate-e, which means something like "look and compare pictures" or "to liken to something else" or even "to see with one's own eyes." These two concepts provided us a framework to interpret the gardens and their elements of stone, water, and plants through our own lenses and worldviews. 

So this visit was much different than the last time we were there. It was June rather than May. It was warm rather than cool. It was bright and sunny rather than overcast and gray. It was dry rather than misty and or lightly raining. The gardens were filled with a lot of people rather than being sparsely populated.

But here were the things I noticed in the five gardens this time, with a couple of framing devices and a different set of circumstances to guide my attention.



Flat Garden. The flat garden is the "yard" of a large pavilion, the latter having been built in a traditional Japanese architectural style of the Tokugawa shogunate. The railing and the roof of the pavilion porch provide a frame for the picture of the yard. The landscaping of this garden represents the four seasons—a cherry tree representing spring; black pine trees representing summer; Japanese maple trees representing autumn; and the raked gravel representing summer, as well as water (essentially a dry, stone lake). 

Tea Garden. This garden features a tea house and the garden that surrounds it. But I was especially enamored by the canopy of small green maple leaves. I kept looking up. Last time I visited, the history of the tea house and tea ceremony was highlighted, so my attention wandered elsewhere this time. The colors and forms, swaying in a light breeze, were intriguing.



Strolling Pond Garden. This garden is about water and the shore that surrounds it. There is one elongated pond that feels as though it is two ponds, one significantly larger than the other and bisected by Moon Bridge and its lotus finials on the four posts. There is a waterfall and its accompanying large stones. But I was fascinated by the koi and watching them slowly swim along the water's edge searching for algae and insects.



Natural Garden. This "wild" garden is just as intricately planned as the others but feels as though it contains more, even cluttered, when compared to the relative sparseness of the other gardens. Our guide told us to look for moon imagery scattered throughout this garden and once suggested I noticed it everywhere. The gate to this garden has asymmetrical doors, the wider door representing a full moon, the narrower door representing a new or quarter moon. Stones had full and quarter moons carved into them or differently-colored tiles inlaid. And this lantern had a full moon on one side and a quarter moon on its opposite.



Sand and Stone Garden. This is my favorite garden of the five. It has seven stones that "face" a "Buddha stone." The garden illustrates a story of Shakyamani Buddha sacrificing himself to feed seven tiger cubs that are trapped in a valley or large depression. He offers his body as food to sustain them, knowing that he will be reborn to continue his work of awakening. Strangely enough, the story feels very eucharistic.

As in the Flat Garden, the raked gravel represents water. Each "tiger" stone appears to be an island with ripples emanating out from it. Or a head poking up from beneath the surface of a pond or lake. (In some versions of the story, other animals are saved—bears or crocodiles or dolphins. But the truth of the story remains the same.)