Today’s Japan Photo: Ryoan-ji 竜安寺

Japan has quite a few UNESCO World Heritage Sites and Ryōan-ji (竜安寺) is one of them. For Today’s Japan Photo, we will be visiting this zen temple in Kyoto, and in particular its famous rock garden.

This shot of famous Japanese rock gardens (枯山水) in Ryoan-ji 竜安寺 was taken by rc!. You must be wondering why there are so many people sitting down and staring at boulders and tiny gravel. This is because they are all searching for the fifteen boulder.

A famous Japanese rock garden is at Ryōan-ji in northwest Kyoto, Japan.

The garden is 30 meters long from east to west and 10 meters from north to south. There are no trees, just 15 irregularly shaped rocks of varying sizes, some surrounded by moss, arranged in a bed of white gravel/sand that is raked every day.

The rocks of various sizes are arranged on small white pebbles in five groups, each comprising five, two, three, two, and three rocks.

The garden contains 15 rocks arranged on the surface of white pebbles in such a manner that visitors can see only 14 of them at once, from whichever angle the garden is viewed. It is traditionally said that only through attaining enlightenment would one be able to view the fifteenth boulder.

The garden is not attributed to any single designer, although it is commonly believed that a leading monochrome artist named Sōami (1480?-1525), in association with Daisen-in, designed and laid out the garden. However Ryoan-ji’s records are contradictory and indicate some other makers, and the back of one of the 15 stones is inscribed with the names of Kotaro and Hikojiro, who might have been two of the workers that did the actual construction.