”The lantern is present in every single place”. That may be a rash assertion! But the obliquitous lantern is present in a stroll garden within an Imperial Villa or a courtyard garden in a private residence. I feel the lantern provides nice symbolism in a Japanese garden. The lantern presents a light source and a vertical image (Yang). The lantern suggests gentle after darkish and illumination of an object worthy of reflection. The lantern guides the way and gives the realm’s vacancy something of life (Yang) and substance. It has meaning. The lantern dissociated from crops and dwelling things, from the mosses and grasses and the Azaleas and densely clipped shrubs of Kyoto.
The lantern comes in so many shapes and sizes. Little question each shape represents a history and legacy steeped into time. And regardless of the web site requires no doubt a lantern fashion might be discovered to fill that space. Some lanterns no more than 30cm in height and others observed in Kyoto up to 1.6-1.eight metres tall. There have to be lantern factories somewhere. Smaller lanterns seen nearer to the pathway and larger ones set into the distance. Perhaps set onto the ground within a clump of timber to accentuate change.
Lantern constructed normally of stone or marble and containing a hood. A heart for the location of the flame, a stem to raise it from the ground and a base for attachment. It perhaps 3 sided, 4 sided coned hood, pyramid hood, round or rectangular stem, single leg or treble leg. Suggesting the lantern provides a flexible inclusion to a Japanese styled garden.
However why is it a obligatory inclusion? To information the visitor alongside a pathway after nightfall? To view from a distance to symbolise? To radiate gentle onto water for reflection or a plant or pebble or stone? Is the lantern a Yang intrusion so as to add life after darkish (and the Yin world of darkness)? Is the lantern a logo of life or inclusion of human intervention upon a setting?
The lantern provides Yang to cut back the dominance of Yin. The white circle in the black. The fireplace to defend from the cold. The life to enlighten and vitalise from the dark. The lantern to me holds a symbolic place and has practicalities. Yes I am a harmonious chi gardener and I will imagine all that.
The lantern is perfect . It provides Yang in a Yin environment. The lantern postures. It represents timeliness. Night time and day, yr after year. It transcends time and its physical construction and design completely attune to the local weather of Japan by offering a hood for the snow and ice and a roof and walls to protect the flame. The lantern can sit beside a pond, in the pond, within a nook of the garden, alongside a pathway. I wouldn’t locate it where the sha (detrimental) energy can extinguish it e.g., exposed on a hill in a gully or swamp where the constant damp will extinguish the flame or if used in a low place lifted above it on a pedestal to grow to be a beacon similar to a light on a seashore guiding ships at sea.
