The Japanese Garden Art Periods and Symbolism in Japanese Gardens

The Japanese gardens are different from the world’s other garden cultures with their natural, exotics and mysterious features. They are important in terms of not only with their visual beauties but also with the meaning of their garden components. The Japanese garden art have been affected by Buddhism, Taoism and Shintoism religions during its historical periods. Landscape design has developed and formed completely with culture and fine arts. The Japanese garden is designed depending on sight and understanding of its viewer unlike the other traditional gardens. With this aim, it is important that the components which are included in Japanese gardens should be well understood. In Turkey, the scientific researches related with this subject are insufficient. In this research, periods of Japanese garden art and the symbolic meaning of the garden’s components was presented.