Adding Flavor to Daily Life Water in Day-to-day Scenes Japanese-style garden Japanese people use water in their daily lives to feel cool, relax, and even to protect their livelihoods. Water symbolizes the spirit of the people who live with it. Karesansui Japanese-style gardens incorporate many aspects involving the appreciation of water. These include not only ponds and waterfalls but also karesansui, dry landscapes, which, instead of water, uses stones and sand to represent currents and waves. Being a miniature of nature, a Japanese-style garden serves to familiarize visitors with water and other elements of nature. It can be interpreted as a manifestation of the Japanese mind desiring to always seek the comforting nature of water in daily life. This traditional mentality is seen even today in modern parks with their fountains and artificial streams. Shishiodoshi The sounds of water are comforting, and Japanese people, who have learned over the centuries to find consolation in the sounds of water, have invented a variety of ways to enjoy these sounds. Suikinkutsu, for example, are often seen in traditional Japanese-style gardens. Using drops of water, these interesting devices produce sounds that resemble those of the koto, or Japanese harp. This invention consists of a bottle with a hole in the bottom buried upside down in the ground. Water is dripped through the hole, and the sound of each drip echoes inside the bottle. Another example is shishiodoshi, which consists of a section of bamboo cane supported in the middle on a fulcrum. Water flows into one end of the bamboo tube, and when that end becomes heavier than the other end, it drops. As the water empties, the other end naturally becomes the heavier of the two again and quickly reverses the direction of the cane, striking a stone set beneath and producing a high sound. In fact, this system was originally invented to protect crops by driving away harmful birds and animals. [How " Shishiodoshi" moves] One end of the bamboo should be closed, the other open. The bamboo must be balanced in the center atop a stick, like a seesaw. Water pours into the open end of the bamboo. Once the water fills the closed end of the bamboo and begins to fill the open end, the center of growing moves to the open end. The water from the closed end rushes forward causing the open end to tip completely. All the water streams out of the bamboo. When the bamboo is emptied, the center of gravity shifts again to the heavier,closed end. The bamboo tip back, and the closed end hits a stone, regaining its horizontal position. As the hollow bamboo strikes the stone, the natural sound is both simple and beautiful. Uchimizu The custom of sprinkling water in streets and gardens, called uchimizu, is a more well-known example of the use of water in Japan's daily living. People sprinkle water, especially in the summer time, in their house entrances and gardens or in front of their shops to lay the dust or to ease the heat. In this example, people use water to feel its coolness. Japanese people thus see, hear and feel water. The close relationship between people and water in their daily lives is universal. The sensitivity that seeks taste and poetic sentiment in water, however, perhaps has developed only in Japan, where people have long lived with nature as it changes from season to season. TOP All images Copyright. 1999 Kansai International Public Relations Promotion Office. All Rights Reserved.