The powerful ambiguities of dry landscape arrangements, the inevitable questions they raise in relation to what constitutes a garden, the profundity of concepts and principals, many of them deriving from Taoism and Zen, never fail to baffle the uninitiated. Francoise Berthier, a professor of Japanese art and history, is singularly well qualified to explore the links between the aesthetics of the garden, its compositional elements, and the search for truth and enlightenment that the more accomplished and urbane landscape arrangements serve.