Sakuteiki

Visions of the Japanese Garden
by Jiro Takei and Marc P. Keane

This modern translation of Japan’s gardening classic, the Sakuteiki, or "Records of Garden Making," written by a court noble nearly one thousand years ago, makes the principles of Japanese gardening accessible to today’s gardeners in the West.

The Sakuteiki is the oldest existing text on Japanese gardening—or any kind of gardening—in the world. It contains the first systematic record of Heian-era gardening style—with both practical advice on garden building techniques (much of which is still followed in Japanese gardens) and philosophical discussions of the four central threads of allegorical meaning, which were integral features of Heian-era garden design.

In this newly translated and extensively annotated and illustrated edition of the Sakuteiki the authors provide both a fluent English-language translation of this classic work and an introduction to the cultural and historical context that led to the development of Japanese gardening.

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