Note: The text below is the transcript of the YouTube video above.
Japanese gardens. Western gardens.
The difference goes far deeper than what you see. And that difference? It held the answer to why I had to return to Japan.
I’m Satomi Takayama, a Japanese artist. After working in London for eight years, I left my corporate job, packed up my flat, and flew back to Japan with one question I couldn’t ignore:
“Why does Japanese sensibility feel so different from anywhere else?”
Everywhere I went in Europe, I kept comparing things to Japan. But I still couldn’t explain what that “Japanese something” was. Even in my own work.
So I rented an apartment in Kyoto, and started looking for answers, beginning with the gardens.
When I started comparing Japanese with Western gardens, something surprised me. I realised it wasn’t just about design. It was about entirely different ways of seeing beauty, nature, and even life itself.
If you’re new here, welcome.
On this channel, I share inspirations I’m collecting for my creative journey ahead—art, craftsmanship, design, and the stories behind them.
Today, let’s explore the two philosophies these gardens reveal. And the answer I found in the end was far deeper—and far more fundamental—than I expected.
Okay, so I discovered three major differences.
First, the history. The development of gardens in Japan and the West was completely different.
Japanese gardens have long been deeply connected with Buddhism.
In the 6th century, Buddhism came to Japan through China. Gardens also evolved under Chinese influence, but developed into a uniquely Japanese form.
From the 8th to 12th centuries, whilst the West was in the Middle Ages, aristocratic estate gardens flourished in Japan—in Japanese, we call them shinden-zukuri.
They had ponds, islands, and artificial hills. The aesthetic was to miniaturise natural landscapes into the garden.
Interestingly, this concept of miniaturisation has been passed down for over a thousand years and still lives on in traditional townhouse courtyards across Japan.
Then, from the 12th to 16th centuries, gardens influenced by Zen Buddhism developed. Zen is a sect of Buddhism. Rather than words or scriptures, it seeks truth through meditation and direct experience. In Zen philosophy, beauty means “keeping only the essence and eliminating everything unnecessary.”
Monks and scholars had a rich culture of viewing gardens and composing poetry. What a beautiful tradition. So Zen temple gardens expressed Zen philosophy whilst also being visually beautiful.
Many were designed to be appreciated whilst sitting indoors, looking out over the garden, with deep philosophy and stories condensed into limited space.
Then, from the 14th to 16th centuries—exactly when the Renaissance was flourishing in the West—dry landscape gardens, or karesansui, matured in Japan, reaching one of the peaks of garden art. Using only rocks and sand, without water, to express mountains, rivers, and seas. This is the very essence of Zen’s philosophy of “seeing the essential.”In the late 16th century, samurai warriors competed to donate wealth to temples. This flow also greatly accelerated garden development.In Japan, gardens weren’t mere decoration—they were places tied to faith, meant to elevate spirituality.
But in the West, garden development took a completely different path.
Whilst Japanese gardens developed alongside Buddhism, in Christian Europe, major grand gardens rarely concentrated at religious sites. Churches and monasteries did have gardens with practical functions like herb cultivation, plus symbolic and contemplative roles, but instead, what flourished were “secular” gardens attached to castles and noble estates.
Think of these magnificent Western gardens—Italian Renaissance gardens, French Baroque gardens, English landscape gardens. Instead of being primarily religious spaces, many of these gardens were created by rulers to express their status, wealth, and vision of beauty.
The overwhelming scale and design always impress me.
But why do we see fewer grand ornamental gardens at churches and monasteries?
The answer lies in a fundamental difference in how they view nature.
In Christianity, mountains, seas, rivers, stones, water—everything is seen as God’s creation.
Nature exists under God’s will.
In many Christian traditions, people are encouraged to worship God rather than nature itself. So you don’t often see large ornamental gardens at churches and monasteries – that’s why these grand gardens flourished at castles and noble estates instead.
But this doesn’t mean Christian traditions don’t value nature – they just show that respect in different ways.
Japanese Buddhism sees nature itself as a tool for settling the mind.
Enlightenment—in other words, a state of seeing things as they are.
The presence of stones and moss serves as cues to adjust breathing, posture, and attention.
Like, a stone that conveys weight and stability becomes a cue to slow your breathing and settle your centre.
Moss, embodying age and quietness, becomes a switch to not rush and accept the present state.
This way of using nature as a tool to tune the mind has shaped temple garden-making.
This is how temples and gardens became deeply connected, and masterpiece gardens continued to be born.
The difference in how religions view nature is one of the major differences in garden culture between Japan and the West.
But how does this philosophical difference actually appear in garden design?
Well, take stones, for example. Japanese gardens don’t carve them into ideal shapes—they honour what the stone’s original form expresses. The main stones are basically left untouched, their natural shapes “seen as” turtles, cranes, or boats.
But why?
In Japan, stones have long been seen as sacred — influenced by Shinto and Buddhism. There’s also a long tradition of following a stone’s natural form, as described in Japan’s oldest garden design manual. Combined with the practice of “mitate”, which means seeing stones as turtles, cranes and countless other natural forms, the idea of utilising natural forms became established.
On the other hand, the West has had a strong tradition since ancient Greece and Rome of carving to approach an ideal form.
Michelangelo’s David and classical sculptures are symbols of this, right? Carving natural materials by human hands to elevate them to an ideal.
In other words, Japan asks: ‘What does this stone want to express?’ The West asks: ‘What can this stone become?’ Both honour the material—just in different ways. Different questions, both beautiful answers. It’s interesting, isn’t it?
Another example is water. In Japanese gardens, many styles incorporate waterfalls and streams. Water flows downward by gravity, right? This is the very principle of nature.
In Western formal gardens, fountains stand out—water shooting upward from below celebrates human ingenuity in engineering and design.
Some people see this as expressing a strong confidence in hu man creativity and design.
Also, if you look at Western gardens, especially French and Italian ones, you’ll notice most are symmetrical. Trees are trimmed into geometric shapes too.
This symmetry and geometry express the carefully composed beauty that the Renaissance valued—they shape nature with human vision, creating landscapes defined by structure and intention.
That’s the garden aesthetic cultivated especially in Italy and France.
By the way, later English landscape gardens moved away from geometric symmetry, pursuing naturalistic composition.
Japanese aesthetics recognise that nature always has subtle irregularities. So Japanese gardens intentionally choose asymmetry, recreating balance that isn’t overly perfect.
There’s something deeper here.
In Japanese aesthetics, beauty comes from contrasts—rough stone next to still water, a single branch in lots of empty space. light and shadow. Like a few rocks placed in white sand, with all that space around them. This celebrates asymmetry and “ma”—the meaningful emptiness that lets things breathe and echo each other.
Japanese gardens, Western gardens—both are beautiful. They just have different philosophies.
But the differences don’t stop there. There’s an even more fundamental difference.
That is: climate, topography, and the four seasons.
Japan is an extremely mountainous country. Can you believe that about 70% of the land is mountains?
If you’ve been to Japan and driven through the countryside, you especially feel this—surrounded by sea and mountains, you really sense nature’s closeness. That’s one of the things I love about Japan.
Kyoto, where many gardens are located, is surrounded by mountains on three sides, so it has abundant water—very suitable for making gardens.
Japan has four distinct seasons with clear contrasts. Temperature differences between day and night help to deepen autumn colour, and the year flows from plum and cherry blossom in spring to hydrangeas in summer, blazing autumn leaves, and winter snow. Japanese gardens are designed to savour the seasons themselves, showing an entirely different character with each change—that’s a big part of their appeal.
After returning to Japan, I also noticed something else: the softness of the sunlight. This is just my feeling, but with higher humidity and more clouds, colours in Japanese nature seem gentler, more nuanced.
Of course, European gardens also celebrate the seasons. But in the regions where Italian and French formal gardens developed, the focus is a little different. Dry summers and large estates encouraged designs with big fountains, broad lawns, long sightlines and geometric layouts. Evergreens give the garden its structures all year round, and seasonal planting adds colour within that frame, so the whole place feels both organised and alive. You could say that Japanese gardens treat the changing seasons as the “main character”, while many European formal gardens create a strong, lasting framework and let the seasons add their colours to it.
Climate and topography shape a place’s culture. Gardens are a perfect reflection of that.
Since quitting my full-time job in London, I’ve been facing myself.
“Who am I, really?”
And as I spent more and more time in Japanese gardens, I learnt something important from them.
As we’ve seen today, Japanese gardens don’t carve stones. Don’t change their form.
From what angle to show an existing stone. How to position it.
Just that brings out beauty.
Maybe we’re the same.
Sometimes we try to forcibly carve our own rough stone to fit someone else’s ideal.
But what’s truly important is how we polish that rough stone, from what angle we show it—I realised that’s what matters.
Our core can’t be changed, and doesn’t need to be.
You know, what I think makes someone really dignified as a person is when they truly understand themselves and know how to polish that well.
Those people are so refined, and that’s who I hope to become.
Western gardens lift my eyes outward – with their openness, they make me dream a little bigger and remind me of what humans can create together. They give me a kind of bright, uplifting energy.
Japanese gardens calm my mind. They give me time to look inward.
It’s not about which is better—I love both. Both are beautiful.
But what I needed right now was this “quietness.”
And this brings me to something personal I want to share with you.
Truth is, the footage you’re watching was filmed a year ago. I’ve been living in Japan for a year now, just… processing everything I’ve experienced and learnt.
And in that silence, what I want to create is becoming clearer.
I really want to create something that brings together the stillness I’m rediscovering here in Japan with the sensibility I cultivated in the West.
It might be a physical space. Honestly, I’m still figuring out the exact form.
But I’m serious about making this happen. And I want to share it with you, little by little, right here on this channel.
What do you need right now?
A place that lifts your spirits? Or a place that calms your mind?
Please let me know in the comments.
If you get a chance to visit Kyoto, find your favourite garden and pause for a moment.
What does this stone represent?
What is this garden trying to convey?
Not a single element is wasted. Everything has the garden maker’s intention.
Just trying to read that—it becomes a completely different experience.
Next time, I want to explore something fundamental: aesthetic sensibility. In today’s world, why does our ability to sense beauty matter more than ever? Let’s explore this mystery together.
If you found this exploration interesting, I’d love for you to subscribe to my YouTube channel and continue this journey together. Even just subscribing helps push my project forward, and your support truly means the world to me.
And as always, this space is for all of us. If a particular Western garden inspires you, or if there is a Japanese garden that you visited and can’t forget, I would be so happy if you shared it in the comments below. Reading your experiences and insights is one of the ways that we can all keep growing together.
And if this video resonated with you, I believe these ones will inspire you as well.
Thank you for watching, and I’ll see you in the next video.
