Japanese garden aesthetic principles, Borrowed scenery

Always searching for the perfect scenery, the Japanese garden designers are sometimes using a number of "tricks": one of the oldest techniques, called shakkei (commonly translated as "borrowed scenery") is to design the garden so that the surrounding scenery will offer a "background", dramatically improving the ambiance.

Thus, the garden can be placed nearby an old forest or in front of an important landmark, such as a temple or a castle. But most frequently, the garden designers are using nearby hills or mountains, like in this photo taken inside one of the oldest shakkei gardens in Japan, dating from the 14th century. This beautiful scenery, with the green Arashiyama mountain in the background, can be admired inside the Tenryū-ji Temple from Kyoto (near the famous Kyoto bamboo forest).