Hidden Landscape: An Environmental Reading of the Garden of the Royal Villa of Katsura by a Philosopher, Tetsur™ Watsuji, 1999

Mount Atago to be seen beyond the Villa, Photographed by Kenzo Shiose, published in Katsura Villa by Osamu Mori, 1955

• Journal: Human and Environmental Studies

• Publisher : Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University

• ISSN : 0918-2829

• Date: November 30. 1999

• Pages:1-23

• Research Term : 1997-99

• This article was partly presented on 20 october 1997 in Paris, in an occasion of Symposium Jardin japonais d'Europe held by College international de Philosophie & Musˇe departemental Albert Kahn and totally revised in the course of my lecture in 1997 & 1998 in Graduate School of Human & Environmental Studies.

• Synopsis: The philosopher of Fudo, Tetsuro Watsuji, became interested in the garden of the Royal Villa of Katsura soon after his move to Kyoto in 1925. By the time he began writing the first drafts of Fudo in 1929 he had visited the garden six times. The Fudo was published in 1935, and in 1955 Watsuji published for the first time his ideas about the Villa. His hypothesis on the historical development of the Villa was immediately criticized by a historian of architecture and, in a different context, by a scholar of historical gardens. Watsuji was forced to re-edit his first edition and to publish a second in 1958. But in the controversy nobody mentioned or noticed Watsuji's principal idea concerning the Garden, namely, that it bore a relationship to the huge landscape of the Kyoto Basin, especially to the views of the mountains surrounding the city. The issue remains unexamined and hidden despite the complete renovation of the Villa that took place from 1976 until 1991, a process that unveiled the historical development of three corps of the main buildings. We take here Watsuji's first idea about the Garden, "Borrowing Scenery of Mount Hiei and Atago", and study his hypothesis by analyzing the space-structures of the garden in relation to views of the surrounding mountains.