Two different geomentalities,two different gardens: the French and the Japanese cases

The French Renaissance gardens and Japanese hill gardens have constrasting garden landscapes. Japanese gardens are naturalistic and intend to give illusions that they are the beautiful spots of unspoilt nature. In contrast, the appearances of French gardens are not an imitation of nature but boldly reorganised landscapes in geometric forms. These two contrasting types of garden landscapes represent two different sets of geomentalities (frames of mind regarding geographical environment).An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the Ninth New Zealand International Conference on Asian Studies, Hamilton, 23–26 August 1991. Its abridged version is published in D. Bing and K. Henshell (ed.)Japanese Perceptions of Nature and the Natural Order (Hamilton, NZ 1992), pp. 1–11. The present paper was developed from the first half of the conference paper, and was completed during my three month's tenure in 1993 as a Japan Foundation fellow. I am grateful to the Japan Foundation for their generous support of my research on the Japanese geomentality.