Garden in Nara

A traditional Nara garden unfolds in the ordered calm typical of the old capital's temple and shrine precincts, where raked gravel, aged stones, and carefully shaped pines create an atmosphere of deliberate remove from worldly distraction. Nara's gardens differ from Kyoto's in their greater austerity, shaped by the monastic traditions of Todaiji and Kasuga rather than by aristocratic or tea-culture aesthetics. Kasamatsu renders the garden as a space of composed silence, his eye drawn to the shapes that centuries of cultivation have produced.