page_title: Japanese garden
section_title: Small urban gardens
hierarchical_section_title: Japanese garden / Garden styles / Small urban gardens
caption_attribution_description: English: Tsuboniwa (坪庭) garden in Shima (志摩), a former geisha house in Kanazawa. Trees are covered in straw matting to protect them from snow.
context_page_description: Japanese gardens are traditional gardens whose designs are accompanied by Japanese aesthetics and philosophical ideas, avoid artificial ornamentation, and highlight the natural landscape. Plants and worn, aged materials are generally used by Japanese garden designers to suggest an ancient and faraway natural landscape, and to express the fragility of existence as well as time's unstoppable advance.
  Ancient Japanese art inspired past garden designers. By the Edo period, the Japanese garden had its own distinct appearance.
context_section_description: Small gardens were originally found in the interior courtyards (naka-niwa, "inner garden") of Heian period palaces, and were designed to give a glimpse of nature and some privacy to the residents of the rear side of the building. They were as small as one tsubo, or about 3.3 square meters, whence the name tsubo-niwa. During the Edo period, merchants began building small gardens in the space behind their shops, which faced the street, and their residences, located at the rear. These tiny gardens were meant to be seen, not entered, and usually had a stone lantern, a water basin, stepping stones and a few plants. Today, tsubo-niwa are found in many Japanese residences, hotels, restaurants, and public buildings. A good example from the Meiji period is found in the villa of Murin-an in Kyoto. Totekiko is a famous courtyard rock garden.
caption: The naka-niwa or courtyard garden of a former geisha house in Kanazawa, Ishikawa. The trees are covered with straw to protect them from the snow.
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