For a while I died and went to heaven. Came across the story of Zenco Adachi and the Adachi Museum of Art. Its in a tiny village on the coast of Japan. The gardens are ...well you can see the exquisiteness. But more fascinating is the story behind it. So, four decades ago Zenco Adachi has a dream of building gardens and goes from province to province trying to convince the town to let him build his gardens. But alas, no one wanted his gardens.And he had a bit of a tough sell - see, Japan has 729 officially recognised national treasure gardens - most are centuries old and have been designed by shinto monks or revered designers. So here comes my man Adachi wanting to build one more? And by the way way - his are not based on any recognised Japanese garden style- but on Japanese landscape art that Adachi was inspired by! No thanks! So dejected he came back to his birthplace and they somehow allowed him to build it. And the rest ....well it beat out the 729 revered gardens to win the best garden in Japan - 7 years in a row ! (I read somewhere else that the tally is now at nine!). And the irony is brought out by his grandson when he says (the link to this film clip is in the comments) that it would have been a huge loss had he succeeded in any of the other towns - because what makes these gardens special is that the gardens blend into the unique surrounding landscape which would have been lost. I love this story because it is itself like a good Zen garden - answer is always here and now, but we need to travel the journey to find it.... Ps thanks Kent Burgess for bringing this gift of Adachi into my life.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 03:35:07 +0000
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