Tofuku-ji Hojo: Shigemori Mirei's Modernist Checkerboard Garden

Why is it significant?

Step onto the wide veranda surrounding the Abbot's Hojo hall and prepare to witness one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century Japanese garden design.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Step onto the wide veranda surrounding the Abbot's Hojo hall and prepare to witness one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century Japanese garden design. Unlike traditional temple precincts that feature a single contemplation garden, the Tofuku-ji Hojo is uniquely surrounded on all four cardinal directions by distinct dry landscape gardens, laid out in nineteen thirty-nine by the visionary landscape artist Shigemori Mirei. Each garden embodies a completely distinct philosophical mood, inviting you to circle the building in deep contemplative contemplation as shifting light transforms the courtyard stone and moss.

Walk around to the northern garden and pause in wonder. Here lies the world-famous Ichimatsu checkerboard: alternating square slabs of recycled grey paving stone and plush emerald haircap moss create a striking graphic pattern. As your eyes follow the pattern westward, the square stones gradually dissolve and scatter into continuous green moss, symbolizing the natural fading of human geometry into organic wilderness and cosmic harmony.

Mirei created this modern design using zero new quarry stone. The monastery had recently rebuilt several halls after a fire, leaving behind hundreds of discarded paving stones from medieval foundations. Shigemori insisted on salvaging these historic stones, reshaping them into geometric square tiles that bridged traditional Buddhist philosophy with Western cubism and modern Bauhaus aesthetics, creating a radical fusion of past and future.

Look south to the main courtyard, where colossal vertical boulders rise from raked gravel seas to represent the mythic Mount Horai and Isles of the Immortals, while the western garden displays clipped azaleas shaped into low checkerboard hedges that mimic tea plantations. Meanwhile, the eastern garden features seven cylindrical stone pillars arranged like the stars of the Big Dipper constellation hovering over mossy earth.

Follow the wooden covered corridor that extends northward over the deep forested ravine, leading onto the iconic Tsutenkyo Bridge.