Tofuku-ji

Tofuku-ji is a Buddhist temple complex in southeast Kyoto in Japan. The temple was founded by Annie's monk in 1236. The temple belongs to the Rinjai Zen School. The name of the temple is combined from the names of the largest temples in Nara - Kofuku-ji and Todai-ji.

The Tofuku-ji Temple was built on the instructions of Kudzyo Mithie, a prominent Japanese politician from the Kamakur era. The gates of the sammon temple are the oldest of the gates of the Zen temples in Japan and are the national treasure. The height of the structure is 22 meters. The entire temple complex includes 24 temples, although previously there were 53, many buildings were not preserved. The temple is famous for its maples, the red leaves of which become very picturesque in the fall.

There are many gardens on the territory of the Tofuku-ji temple complex, the largest of which are North, South, West, East and Hodzø Garden. All parks are solved in different styles and directions. In fact, these gardens were re-created by garden designer Shigemori Mirei in 1939. Shigemori Mirei came to the realization that the true path of true creativity – is not a blind repetition of what has already been done before, but the creation of his own vision.

• The Northern Garden is a rectangular area on which moss curts and square stone tiles are located in a chess order. At the edges of the site are low trimmed shrubs.
• The southern garden is a stone garden consisting of 4 groups of stones and boulders located on a site sprinkled with gravel. In the extreme right corner of the western side there are five mossed « mountain » and a single bonsai in the correct straight style.
• The western garden is a combination of Azalea bushes formed in the form of parallelepipeds, individual shrubs and garden bonsai and « gazones » from moss.
• Oriental Garden - a garden of stones. Seven gray cylindrical stones of different heights are placed in such a way that they repeat the position of the stars in the constellation Ursa Major. These stones were originally used as foundation stones in various buildings of the temple. The stones are located on a typical rubble field.
• The Projou Garden is a stone garden near the building in which the servants of the temple live. The garden is a combination of Azalium bushes formed in the form of low parallelepipeds with a square base located on the crushed stone « field » and « lawn » from moss.

Shigemori literally painted the site with abstract flowing configurations, performing them from gravel of black, white and several shades of gray. This original technique in its own way resembles the shades of monochrome ink painting, which occupies an important place in the spiritual and artistic practice of zen. In order for the coloristic effect to remain unchanged, the author applied the innovation in the form of semicircular stone rollers separating the color zones. The stones of different sizes – are horizontal, in the form of sharp peaks, and elongated vertically, creating a sense of intense movement along with the active monochrome graph of the plane.