FOR AT LEAST a millennium before the coming of Zen to Japan, gardens had been constructed in China which were founded on underlying religious motives, but only with the rise of Zen in Japan did gardens become deliberately symbolic of the human quest for inner understanding. During the Heian era Japanese aristocrats copied Chinese pleasure parks, and during the Kamakura many of them were translated by practitioners of the Jodo sect into fanciful reproductions of Amida's Western Paradise. After the rise of Zen influence among artists and intellectuals of the Ashikaga age, the gay polychrome of these earlier gardens was supplanted by a sober blend of rocks, trees, sand, and water--Japanese copies of, first, Sung Chinese gardens and, later, Sung monochrome landscape paintings. In their landscape "painting" gardens, Zen artists captured the reverence for nature which, for them, was a cornerstone of Zen philosophy.
The origins of Far Eastern landscape gardens have been traced to an obscure Chinese legend which predates the Christian Era. It describes five holy islands, situated off the shores of Shantung province, whose peaks soared thousands of feet into the ocean mist and whose valleys were a paradise of perfumed flowers, snow-white birds, and immortals who plucked the trees for pearls. These islanders, who lived in palaces of precious metals, enjoyed eternal youth and had the capacity to levitate at will, although for extended journeys they might choose to ride on the backs of docile flying cranes. However, like Adam and Eve, these paradise dwellers wanted more. Since their islands were floating rather than attached to bedrock, they complained to the ruling deity, requesting more substantial support. The supreme ruler of ancient China was more understanding than the God of Mesopotamia; instead of evicting the island immortals, he obligingly sent out a flotilla of giant tortoises to hold the islands on their backs and secure them in place.
During the Han era (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) various Chinese emperors reportedly sent out expeditions to locate these islands, but they were always unsuccessful. Finally, the Han Emperor Wu hit upon the notion that if he were to construct an idealized landscape on his estate, the immortals might abandon their misty ocean isles for his park, bringing with them the secrets of eternal life. A garden park was built on a scale intended to rival that of paradise; and to make the immortals feel even more welcome, various rocks symbolizing cranes and tortoises were installed, items the Japanese would one day include in their gardens as symbols of longevity. No immortals materialized, but the Chinese landscape garden was launched in considerable style.