According to my observation of how our Japanese gardener pruned our trees (
such as in this photo), it seem to me that he usually pruned the main branch leaving the sub-branch to grow, reducing symmetry and straightness, and producing a 'more natural than natural' sur-natural effect. It is interesting that conversely in high European gardening and art that uses nature there is instead a reverse attempt to impose straightness (and other geometrical form) and symmetry to nature. Thus on the one hand one often hears in Japan that Westerners like to dominate nature, whereas Japanese prefer to reach a symbiosis with it, or even that they appreciate nature as it is. Japanese gardeners do not leave nature as it is, but rather instead control the nature of the garden to an idealised form (not unlike the Western idealised form, and no less controlled) of what they view nature to be. One attempts to impose conceptions and regularity on nature, the other attempts to remove those aspects of nature that appear to be conceptual or regular.
The above animation used an original photo "
isolated branches," with kind permission by
ecormany.
Labels: japan, japanese culture, nature, nihobunka, 日本文化
# posted by Timtak @ 1:49 PM
