Co-Creators: Nobuo Kanai and Yuriko Sawatani
"Have you ever felt mesmerized by gazing at a Zen Garden? As the calm washes over you, you observe a "flow" of beauty in the arrangement of stones. How and why did this come to be?
The style of Zen gardens known today as "Karesansui" or Japanese rock gardens was created in the Muromachi period (1336-1573). Karesansui were laid out in small spaces of temples, which were often surrounded by monks' living quarters.
This innovation of Karesansui gardens consists in the minimalism that can be easily understood by comparing them with gardens such as Tenryu-ji Temple Garden (Figure 11.8), which is the pinnacle of Japanese water gardens established in the early fourteenth century."