If the Western garden is bulging with organic matter, the Japanese one is animate with deities, allegory, symbolism and mythology, hinting at a greater depth, a place of divine and metaphoric convergence.
Like all great gardens, Tenryu-ji's imparts a sense of exclusivity, as if the design had been customized for each viewer.
Norris Brock Johnson, a devotee of the temple grounds in the Arashiyama area of Kyoto, one who has spent many a long year examining its intricacies, situates the garden geoculturally and historically. He is the perfect guide, describing Tenryu-ji with intellectual conciseness and tenderness, for a site that has clearly come to represent more than just a sacred garden.