Turning Gardens in Japan into Japanese Gardens

Nation, Nature, Heritage, and Modernity since the 1890s

Christian Tagsold

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040784341
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Japanese History

In the mid nineteenth century, as Japan rapidly modernized, garden building declined in popularity. Only in the late nineteenth century did a new class of political and business leaders revive interest in horticulture, seeking garden designs that broke away from established patterns. As a result, these innovative gardens were largely overlooked by early Japanese garden historians and excluded from the canon they sought to establish. In recent years, both scholars and the public have begun to reexamine and appreciate these gardens and their creators. Now recognized as part of Japan's national heritage, these sites are being integrated into the history of Japanese horticulture. Christian Tagsold's book examines this rediscovery, unraveling the complex dynamics of nature, heritage, nationhood, and modernity in Japan through the lens of these gardens.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Defining Gardens in/for Japan—From the Edo Era to the Mid-Meiji Period
• 2 Building New Gardens—The Meiji and TaishO Periods
• 3 Appreciating New Japanese Gardens in the West—From the Late Meiji to Early Showa Periods
• 4 The Nation and Japanese Gardens—From the Taishō Period to the End of World War II
• 5 The Garden in Our Backyard—The Postwar Decades
• 6 Gardens as National Heritage between Scholars and Bureaucrats —From the Postwar Era to the Heisei Period
• 7 Turning Gardens into Attractions—The Present Landscape
• 8 A Past Modernity as Heritage?
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index