Roji: a garden on the way to tea

Stepping stones guide individual foot placements, while paved stretches provide continuous routes. A waiting place allows guests to pause. A tsukubai is a low basin arrangement for rinsing hands and mouth, with stones positioned around it. Lanterns can provide light at night.

Some gardens use a middle gate to distinguish outer and inner spaces. Omotesenke defines an inner roji, in a two- or three-part garden, as the portion from the middle gate to the tea-room entrance. Other roji have different divisions or no middle gate.

Urban tea rooms and the roji

A roji began as an approach to a tea room. As townspeople incorporated tea into urban homes, their gardens could suggest a mountain retreat within the city. The earlier spelling 路地, meaning a passage, acquired a different interpretation through 露地 and its associations with purification. Late-medieval and Momoyama tea practice developed the paths, pauses and washing arrangements. JAANUS associates Rikyū mainly with single-part gardens and Oribe with increasingly elaborate layouts.

Garden changes under Oribe and Enshū

Planting also changed what guests encountered. A historical study by Jirō Asano and colleagues compares tea records, later writings and garden drawings. Material associated with Oribe places greater emphasis on scenery and includes palms and cycads. Drawings linked to Kobori Enshū suggest an interest in the shapes of individual trees and their arrangement, rather than a narrow list of approved species. The authors distinguish contemporary evidence from retrospective accounts; much of the material about Rikyū’s planting belongs to the latter.

The route through Fushin’an

Omotesenke describes a particular route at Fushin’an: pass through the Umemi-mon gate into the inner roji, with the inner waiting bench on the right and a sand latrine nearby. Small stepping stones lead toward the tsukubai and onward to the tea room’s low nijiriguchi entrance. A reused foundation stone forms the basin. The path links the waiting place, basin and entrance.

Rebuilding and modern settings

Surviving gardens also have histories of rebuilding. Kyoto City records that Kankyūan was founded in 1667, suffered three fires and acquired approximately its present form in 1881. Paths and washing places link several tea spaces on the site. Contemporary designers also use the tea-garden idea in commercial buildings: Ueyakato Landscape’s garden for Fukujuen’s Kyoto flagship store applies the urban mountain-retreat theme above the city.