Featuring beautiful photographs and insightful commentary this Japanese gardening book is a must-have for any gardening or zen enthusiast.

At the heart of a Japanese garden is harmony with nature. More than simply a landscape of trees and flowering shrubs, a Japanese garden provides a place of serenity and rest, filled with peaceful spots that lend themselves to meditation and contemplation. Japanese Gardens celebrates and illustrates this ideal, showcasing the exquisite natural beauty of more than 20 quintessentially Japanese gardens—big and small, urban and rural, traditional and contemporary.

The expert author-and-photographer team behind this book excels at capturing and explaining the essential elements and techniques that distinguish Japanese garden design from that of other countries. The featured sites reflect a cross-section of Japanese culture and history including large feudal period gardens, temple and Zen gardens and private countryside gardens. The mountain flower garden, tea garden, rock garden and bonsai garden alike are all celebrated and appreciated in this beautiful book.

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Japanese homes speak to the soul and provide a contemplative environment from which to experience the world.

Japan Style offers rare glimpses into twenty exquisite traditional homes in Japan. The lavish photographs in this volume demonstrate how Japanese design achieves a timeless tranquility using a few very simple, natural elements.

Wood is the preferred building material since it is considered a “living” material; the country’s Shinto and Zen Buddhist roots have inculcated a deep respect for nature. The houses in this book are a wonderful reminder that there are alternatives to “big is beautiful”—and that neither timelessness nor modernity has to be about using cold steel, glass and concrete.

The wabi-sabi ideal, translated loosely by Frank Lloyd Wright as a “rusticity and simplicity that borders on loneliness,” is considered the epitome of sophistication in Japanese interior design. The houses in this book invite us to rethink the wisdom of our hurried modern lifestyle and return to a simpler, slower life.

The quintessential Japanese aesthetic can be seen in a 100-year-old minka farmhouse, an old merchant’s machiya townhouse in Kyoto, a sprawling country Samurai villa, and in a modern seaside cottage. This book offers insights for architects and homeowners alike by providing inspiring and surprising alternatives, relevant to the design of homes anywhere in the world today.

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