This month I spoke with Andrew William, a landscape designer, who has started a company, An Design Kyoto, introducing foreign guests to the Zen Gardens of Kyoto. In the conversation we talk about Andrew’s initial interest and experience with Japanese gardens in America, his transition to Japan, starting his company, and creating an online offering so those unable to travel could still have a moment of peacefulness in the gardens.
You can listen to our interview or read the transcript below.
Q:
What attracted you to the art form of gardening and how did you initially engage with it?
When I really think back to the beginning, it was making dioramas in the first grade. When I was making these worlds, I just felt like I was making something out of nothing. I mean, it was just a shoebox and now I’ve made it into a world So from a very early age, I just had a strong connection to making spaces and to making something out of nothing. As I grew up I was very interested in painting and I always went to art camp in the summers. I was into pottery, and anything, and then I progressed into high school, and I was always in upper level art classes. But when I went to college I was pushed away from studying art, my mom wanted me to study business and be a good example for my younger brothers. I did what my mom said and I thought I’ll study marketing and I could do something creative and artsy that way, but that didn’t happen. So after my first year I switched out of that and went into the advertising school. And the whole time I was taking art classes, as electives, and excelling. One of the electives I took was a philosophy class, and I was introduced to zen, and all kinds of philosophies. I got really interested in zen, and the zen arts. I saw the image of the Japanese Garden, and you know with my interest in art, and I had recently become really interested in hiking and being outdoors in nature. And I was seeing images of the gardens and it was connecting the art, the philosophy, the nature, and then instantly -- there was no question of what to do next, that’s where it all came from.
A:
Did you graduate from college and immediately move to Japan?
Q:
That’s what I wished, but no. That philosophy class was in my junior year and at that moment it was like okay, what do I have to do, to get out of this in one piece, finish the degree, and I started researching, “how do I do Japanese Gardens in America?” I found a company in Boulder, CO run by an American* who 30 or 40 years ago had been studying Zen in Kyoto. During that time he became interested in gardens and came back to the US and made a garden company. I found out about that company, and then I found a graduate program in Denver, which is right there, and so before graduation I quickly went out to Boulder to meet the company and take a look at the program and what’s funny is I finished my degree in June, and I moved two weeks later.
*Martin, the founder of the gardening company still runs a Zen Temple in Boulder
A:
When you got there and stepped in the garden, did something inside of you change?
Q:
Totally, I felt everything changed. I was there moving a huge pile of rocks by hand, but still, I was super happy. And there was a crew of eight workers, and then there was the leader, and then there was Martin (the founder). There were three different groups on the site doing projects and I was bouncing in between them, and I had never done anything like this. The artistic nature of it and doing it as a group—which I had never done art simultaneous with other people—to have such a high level, high quality operation, being a part of that. It just made me say ‘Wow! What an amazing profession this is.” Before then, I didn’t even know garden making or landscape architecture really was. That was my first experience, I was blown away, I was so thrilled.
A:
When you are designing gardens at this time—because we started this conversation about the philosophy class and learning about the zen gardens—were you designing zen inspired places, how would you describe the body of work at this part in time?
Q:
I would say my designs were minimalistic, had a lot of ‘ma’* built in, they had a lot of uniform plantings, and not the English garden style with wild colors. But it was in Aspen and in Denver, so there is no moss there, but I do think I was working with some of the zen design techniques at that time.
A:
You worked for 11 years in America doing landscape design and I know that your last project was in Hawaii, how did you make the jump to Japan and what was that like?
Q:
When I was in Hawaii, I knew this is the closest I’m going to be to Japan, so I’m going to Japan! You know I’d always wanted to be in Japan, but I ended up having really good jobs in America for a while. But yeah, from Hawaii I just hopped over. But I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know anyone. I was very naive. I thought I’d be able to just get the job and get started, but it was quite complicated, without having contacts in the industry, without knowing any Japanese, except ‘Sumimasen’, I was pretty shocked.
I eventually got the English Teachers Visa, because I was dedicated to making my goal happen, so I thought just to stay in Japan, I’m going to get the English Teacher visa, do that, learn Japanese, make some contacts, and be able to visit these amazing gardens anytime I want. And through teaching at an ei-kai-wa, one of the language centers, I met a woman who was very good friends with the son of the Vice President at one of the highest ranking garden companies in Kyoto, and she got me an interview with him. He didn’t speak any English and at that point I speak some Japanese, but not polite Japanese. I felt very nervous always, but he helped me arrange with a lawyer. It cost a lot about $2,000 US, the company fronted me the money and I paid them back about $100 dollars a month for the next couple years.
The lawyer helped prepare a thick with my portfolio, all my education, letters of recommendation and photos. And then the business had to do a tremendous amount of work proving they were a sustainable business with an ‘X’ amount of money and that they could be guaranteed to pay my salary for a number of years. They had to do a lot of work. And I was very grateful that they did that because they didn’t know me.
A:
Everyone’s transition to Japan is so different, from those first three years teaching English, did you have any major takeaways?
Q:
Well I will say this about that time, the most amazing thing when you work teaching English is you get a direct portal into the psyche of the people here. You learn about how people think, what is acceptable, what is not, what people like, what is popular, the customs, the traditions, etc. It was an amazing education. I heard from the students that I was a good teacher, but I learned way more from them than I ever taught. And I feel if I had just showed up at the garden company and didn’t go through the years of teaching English, I would have been way worse off.
A:
I loved your description of your job, that you ‘get to be in the masterpieces of Kyoto’, and spend your time interpreting them for an audience that might not have the background or understanding, can you tell me a little bit more about how your tours came about?
Q:
I was having dinner one night at a restaurant and I was sitting next to a couple from Spain. I was with my wife, who is Japanese, and of course in a restaurant we can order anything we want, we can read the menus, we can communicate. But, I was looking at the table next to us, and I was seeing these folks and their menu, which was just one sheet of paper, and we had a full on book for a menu. And I was like this is an amazing restaurant, and I could see the options in English it was fried chicken, and a salad, and Ramen. They didn’t have any of the choices! I saw them looking at their menu and our menu, and so I reached out and I helped them order.
I’ve always felt that when you are an international person here and you cannot communicate fluently you miss a lot, you don’t really get deep into it. And then in that moment, I thought can I do a service to help folks coming here, maybe tour guiding? And it just kind of evolved into doing freelance tour guiding for a couple companies, while doing freelance gardening, I split my time between the two maybe 50/50 or 70/30. That’s how it all started, sitting at that table in the restaurant and thinking I could do something!
A:
So then you start guiding, and now with Corona you shifted your tours online. I got to experience it, and I was amazed that seeing something over video, you get almost the same curiosity that you would have if you were in the space. You designed the experience so we could ask questions and I really did feel transported. It was a two hour experience, and I felt like I had gone somewhere else and then I came back. Tell me about the transition to guiding online, have you restructured or changed the tour? Or have you found yourself focusing on new materials now that you are online?
Q:
Actually, no it hasn’t changed that much. Normally in our half-day in-person experience we visit three gardens and for this online tour we just visit one. I had a really interesting observation this morning, from an awesome guest that has gotten to experience the tour both here in Kyoto and then online. She said that when you are in the garden you are just overwhelmed you can move around, you don’t know where to begin. But watching the video, you have to focus in on one space, and you are really led to what you are viewing because you are looking at the video. She said she really liked it because now I could really notice it, whereas before it was everything at once.
I’ve found for a lot of guests when they visit a garden, the feeling is “wow this is beautiful, but I’m missing something, what’s going on here? what is this?” And what I do is give them an inroad, a story, that helps them visualize a mindset in the garden. If you can talk about it in that way, present it to someone, you are not only talking about this garden, but a mindset. And That’s very powerful.
A:
What defines a good garden for you?
Q:
I have no idea how to answer that actually, because as I’ve gotten deep into what I’m doing, which is not making gardens at the moment, but being in them, and researching about them, and trying to interpret them to my guests, I’ve come to feel like I have so much to learn, But somehow in any creation, the spirit and the heart of the person that made that comes out, and if it is a very deep feeling, that is what the person who inhabits that space can feel, and that’s what I think is the most important. So whatever it physically looks like I have no idea how to say good or bad, but the feeling of the person who created it, I think is actually really important.
A:
Are there any gardens that you appreciate, but you would never design yourself?
Q:
There is a designer in the Yokohama/Tokyo area, a zen monk, Shunmyo Masuno, who does work all over Japan. He has a certain sensibility that is completely different than anyone else. He designed the garden at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, and it is very minimalistic and stark, but it blew my mind. This guy is on a whole different level. He does a tremendous plaza, the size of a football field, and instead of sand in the garden, it’s cut stones, and then there are tremendous huge stones set, natural stones. His stone composition, I don’t think I would ever do an idea like that, but it blows my mind.
**You can see more of Shunmyo Masuno’s work here.
A:
What style of garden is your favorite and why?
Q:
I think it would have to be the karesansui style, with the sand and the stone because of the emptiness. The garden that got me interested in this style of garden is at Daisen-in within Daitokuji. It's a very tight space, you have the building, which is a square, and then the garden is basically a band around the square. And even though you are viewing it from the veranda you are in the garden and it just felt like a garden as painting or painting as a garden. You couldn’t say this is a garden, or this is a painting, or this is not a painting, or this is not a garden.
A:
Image by Robert Harding.
Do you think you need to study zen to be a good gardener?
Q:
In general, no. But if you want to make the style of Garden that I’m talking about in Daisen-in, then yes. But just to be a gardener in general, it could help, might make folks more patient, might make people like some of the demanding and physical hard work it takes to make and maintain the garden. It’s not easy and knowing a bit about zen or being aware of it, helps anyone in any situation. Not just gardening. Helps people through life. Very often in the morning before a tour I’ll read a koan and it will just kind of stay with me all day and it kind of sets the mood in a way.
A:
Is there anything from landscape architecture or “gardening” that you want to pass on to your children?
Q:
I’m not an eco-activist or anything like that, but instilling in my kids the importance of ecology and nature on a basic level, is something that we do as well and is really important.