Zen Gardens The Complete Works of Shunmyo Masuno, Japan's Leading Garden Designer

Additional Reviews:

"Literacy is not the only skill needed to write a decent book, just as the ability to stick plants in the ground is not the only skill needed to make a decent garden. Zen Gardens gives a glimpse of the knowledge and dedication required to create a Japanese garden. Enthusiastic amateur garden designers should be forced to read itùparticularly the description of this Zen Buddhist priest's work at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa." — Financial Times

"Even just a quick riffle through the pages of Zen Gardens: The Complete Works of Shunmyo Masuno can cause a healthy lowering of one's blood pressure. Seeing such tranquil spaces in our generally chaotic world offers an escape to an oasis of serenity, or what Shunmyo Masuno himself calls an 'unmoving truth.'…Author Mira Locher, an architect and professor based in the United States and Japan, is an excellent guide to this tour of Masuno's work, explaining key elements of Zen and Japanese design and the complexity of such calm splendor." — ForeWord Reviews

"Like the gardens, the book is perfectly balanced. It is neither too abstract nor too heavy. As a result, the reader imaginatively enters this excellently produced book as one enters one of Masuno's gardens, becoming one with it and, in at least one sense, helping to create it…This book can be referred to over and over again. Each time the reader will see new relationships in the unchanging photographs. In addition to anyone with an interest in Japan, art, design, or gardens, I would highly recommend this book to all Zen students." — Sweeping Zen blog

Shunmyo Masuno, Japan's leading garden designer, is at once Japan's most highly acclaimed landscape architect and an 18th-generation Zen Buddhist priest, presiding over daily ceremonies at the Kenkoji Temple in Yokohama. He is celebrated for his unique ability to blend strikingly contemporary elements with the traditional design vernacular. He has worked in ultramodern urban hotels and some of Japan's most famous classic gardens. In each project, his work as a designer of landscape architecture is inseparable from his Buddhist practice. Each becomes a Zen garden, "a special spiritual place where the mind dwells."

This beautiful book, illustrated with more than 400 drawings and color photographs, is the first complete retrospective of Masuno's work to be published in English. It presents 37 major gardens around the world in a wide variety of types and settings: traditional and contemporary, urban and rural, public spaces and private residences, and including temple, office, hotel and campus venues. Masuno achieved fame for his work in Japan, but he is becoming increasingly known internationally, and in 2011 completed his first commission in the United States which is shown here.

Zen Gardens, divided into three chapters, covers: "Traditional Zen Gardens," "Contemporary Zen Gardens" and "Zen Gardens outside Japan." Each Zen garden design is described and analyzed by author Mira Locher, herself an architect and a scholar well versed in Japanese culture.

Celebrating the accomplishments of an influential, world-class designer, Zen Gardens also serves as something of a master class in Japanese garden design and appreciation: how to perceive a Japanese garden, how to understand one, even how to make one yourself. Like one of Masuno's gardens, the book can be a place for contemplation and mindful repose.