Until this century, traditional gardens in Japan were closed to the public. They were built by the ruling elite and by monasteries as places for peaceful contemplation and worship, places away from the maddening strife that marked much of Japan's history. In their origins, the gardens may have represented a utopia of ancient Chinese gods in a mythology brought to Japan in the 6th century. Later they came to represent a paradise of Buddha. Zen Buddhism, much modified by indigenous ideas, has shaped the character of Japanese gardens since the 15th century. In garden design, the visible patterns in the Western sense of forms, textures, and colors are less important than the invisible philosophical, religious and symbolic elements.

Symbolism: The key elements are water, stones, and plants. From ancient times, the Japanese as an island people had an affinity for the sea. Water is crucial in garden design, not as a substance but as a symbol of the sea. In a chisen style garden, a pond or lake occupies the most significant portion. The presence of water is not even required; in the dry karasansui gardens, patterns raked in gravel or sand express the state of the sea.

A sea without islands is unthinkable and in designing islands in the garden, the Japanese developed various concepts. One of the earliest was that of a sacred place remote from ordinary human society; in the form of an island of immortal happiness, this was called horaisan. Crane and tortoise islands are especially auspicious because in Chinese mythology the crane lives a thousand years and the tortoise ten thousand. Such islands are inaccessible to human beings and no bridges are constructed to them.

Groups of stones representing a rocky seashore may be arranged by the edge of pool. Among the most orthodox styles of stone arrangement is sanson; it consists of three upright stones, the largest in the center representing the Buddha, the others two Bodhisattvas.
Plans are closely interwoven with the physical and spiritual life of the Japanese people. Pines are major structural elements in their gardens; being evergreen they express both long life and happiness. Japanese red and black pines symbolize in an yo, the soft, static female forces and the firm, dynamic male forces in the universe.

Esthetics: The complex esthetic values of traditional Japanese gardens stem mainly from Zen Buddhism. Among Zen concepts expressed in garden design are: asymmetry and a preference for the imperfect and for odd numbers, naturalness and avoidance of the forced and artificial, hiding a part of the whole to achieve profundity with mystery, the quality of maturity and mellowness that comes with age and time, tranquility, simplicity, and austerity.

The teahouse became a major element in gardens in the 16th century, when the tea ceremony became another way of Zen. The path to the teahouse was designed to be traversed slowly, giving participants a mood of tranquil otherworldliness.