In London, artist June Mineyama-Smithson credits the principle of shakkei for breaking her out of an inspiration funk during the 2020 pandemic lockdown. “That represented my garden composition,” she says. The screens were made of her own clothes, dyed in food scraps such as avocados and onion skins. Lin created a series of woven screens that framed views of the friendship garden. But since I’ve always grown up here, it’s like those Japanese and Chinese cultures are like distant mountains that I’m trying to incorporate into my life,” she reveals. “My cultural roots are - I’m half Japanese and half Chinese. In early 2021, Lin drew inspiration from shakkei for her art installation at the Japanese Friendship Garden in San Diego, California. While landscape designers may not typically draw from shakkei directly, some modern artists have borrowed inspiration from the old landscaping tradition - translating the concept of shakkei into works of art. “I think you’re always borrowing and incorporating what is beyond your sight,” says Lin. Still, the shakkei approach isn’t lost in modern-day landscape design. “I never have heard of some contemporary landscape designer, I’m using shakkei,” she notes. Today, Lin sees shakkei being used as more of an underlying design concept rather than a style that designers explicitly incorporate into their work. ![]() Modern-day shakkei: Spilling onto the art scene A garden’s trellis, climbing rose archway, or tree planting can frame the borrowed element, incorporating the distant background into the garden. Shakkei also employs scale and perspective by using topography and plant size to frame views that seamlessly entwine background landscapes with its foreground. Do you frame a scene around a high-rise structure looming over the landscape? Or do you plant trees to obscure the building and borrow instead from the snow-capped mountain range, planting pine trees to echo the mountain’s forest terrain? Shakkei hinges on the designer’s intent of what view to incorporate into a space. Later, the design theory gained popularity during the Meiji and Taisho eras between 1868-1926. It’s thought to have originated during Japan’s Asuka period, sometime between 538-710. Shakkei is commonly aligned with Japanese gardens, but the concept can be identified in other East Asian gardens. Photographed by Beto Soto.) Origins: Shakkei stems back to ancient garden design ![]() Source: (“Borrowed Scenery” an installation by artist Kristi Lin. “The overall concept is harmony between the garden and the surrounding environment,” she explains. Teiji Itoh, author of Space and Illusion in the Japanese Garden, defines shakkei in almost spiritual terms, writing: “ It means a landscape captured alive … Understanding of the term shakkei does not mean a true understanding of the concept unless there is an actual sensation of what it signifies.”Īccording to Lin, that sensation includes harmony. The end result: a seamless connection between the distant landscape and the foreground. “The mountain is way off in the background, but the designer incorporates it into the garden composition.” “I always explain as, a designer takes a distant mountain,” describes Kristi Lin, a landscape designer, and artist who applied the shakkei concept to a 2021 art installation at the Japanese Friendship Garden in San Diego. Though not a direct translation, the essence of shakkei conveys the concept of “borrowed scenery.” The quandary comes courtesy of an ancient East Asian concept, known as shakkei in Japan and jièjǐng in China. It begs the question: Where does the Adachi garden end? Source (re-sized): ( 663highland via Creative Commons Legal Code) ![]() The view culminates to a mountain range horizon swathed in greenery. Its boundaries seem virtually impossible to identify as the emerald landscape stretches into the distance. The grounds appear endless when you gaze at the garden of the Adachi Museum of Art in Japan - vastly larger than its 40 acres (or 165,000 square meters).
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