Bonseki
Videos
Bonseki is the ancient Japanese art of creating miniature landscapes on black trays using white sand, pebbles, and small rocks.
A woman making a tray landscape showing the full moon. Ukiyo-e woodblock print by Yōshū Chikanobu, 1899
Mt fuji bonseki
Bonseki artist at work
Kokan Shiren
Videos
Kokan Shiren, Japanese Rinzai Zen patriarch and celebrated poet. He preached Buddhism at the Imperial court, and was noted for his poetry in the Literature of the Five Mountains tradition. He was the
Bonseki
…Bonseki as a type of temporary blueprint. The rhymeprose essay, Rhymeprose on a Miniature Landscape Garden, written around 1300 by the Japanese Zen monk Kokan Shiren, outlines the aesthetic principles for bonseki and garden architecture itself. Under the aesthetically minded Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1443–1490…
Kokan Shiren
A poem and calligraphy in Chinese by Kokan