Okayama Castle towering over the Korakuen Garden

For the perfect Japanese garden, everything matters: the plants, the rocks, the ponds, the paths, and also the background. Actually, incorporating the background landscape into the garden's composition, is one of the Japanese garden aesthetic principles, called shakkei ("borrowed scenery") in Japanese.

To achieve this goal, the garden is designed by considering the surrounding mountains, hills or forests. And in some very special gardens, like the Okayama Korakuen garden, photographed here, even the Okayama Castle is used as a scenic shakkei element.