Adachi Museum, Japan

The Adachi Museum of Art is famous for its collection of around 1300 contemporary Japanese paintings, including works by Taikan Yokoyama and Shiho Sakakibara. There are also ceramics by Kanjiro Kawai and Rosanjin Kitaoji, as well as wood sculpture and gold lacquer ware.

Celebrated gardens

The landscape gardens surrounding the museum are also famous. They feature pine trees and wonderfully shaped rocks personally collected by the museum's founder, the late Zenko Adachi. Adachi had a passion for landscape gardens, which he described as 'a picture scroll'. The gardens around the museum are divided into four main areas - dry landscape garden, pond garden, white gravel and pine garden, moss garden.

Dry landscape garden

The dry landscape garden around the Adachi Museum makes use of 'borrowed' or existing views. Mountains make up the distant view and woods the mid-distant view, with the garden itself as the close-range view. The area of the garden has been shaped and mounded, with careful arrangements of natural rocks collected by Zenko Adachi in the mountains of Okayama. A straight-rippled design in the sand is used to symbolise flowing water. Shrubs are trimmed to represent woods, mountains and islands.

Pond garden

Built for contemplation, the pond is surrounded by a harmonious combination of large and small trees and tastefully arranged garden rocks. The pond is home to enormous koi carp almost one metre long, which swim serenely in the spring-fed water. Other features of this charming garden include a stone bridge and a tea house for serving green tea.

White gravel and pine garden

This garden recreates the image depicted in a Yokoyama painting. Its waterfall, white sand, pine trees and pond are placed in perfect harmony, with natural mountains in the background. The powerful arrangement of rocks from Tottori and Matsuyama makes use of a gardening technique from the feudal age.

Moss garden

Moss plays an important role in Japanese gardens, just as lawn does in Australian gardens. Mosses do very well in the gentle Japanese climate, with its short growing season and high humidity. In the moss garden of the Adachi Museum, cedar moss is used extensively alongside curved flagstones in white gravel. The wonderful colour contrast of white gravel and green moss is even more splendid with the addition of falling leaves from nearby red maple trees. Plantings in the surrounding area are carefully arranged in different layers, made up of tall trees, low trees and small rounded shrubs.

Further information

The Adachi Museum of Art is in Yasugi City, Shimane Prefecture, Honshu, Japan. For further details visit the website: www.adachi-museum.or.jp/top.html 

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