John Cage’s Ryoanji

          As I was born and raised in Japan, there are certain sceneries that take me back home instantly. These could have been the sites I have visited in-person as I grew up or the views I used to see in various places, such as school textbook, TV, and magazines. The memories of these places are personal and sentimental as the time being away from home passes. My interest in the musical piece, Ryoanji by John Cage grew as the garden in Ryoan-ji is one of these sceneries I think of “home” and memories from my childhood, and John Cage has been an important figure to me in a relation to Japanese composers post World War II. Two underline questions I would like to explore through this paper are how Cage aimed to transform the garden into music, and whether he attempted to create the composition based on the philosophical and historical ideas about the garden or based on his own observation and exploration of the garden. I argue that Cage invented his version of Ryoanji from his trip to Japan when he visited Ryoan-ji, and the composition is the representation of his impression that is based on his prior notion of Zen Buddhism. I also argue that Ryoanji is “experimental” in two aspects: the piece explores the idea of three dimensionality of the garden and transforming it to the sound, and the process of the composition is based on the visual art, called Where R=Ryoanji created by composer himself with his signature chance operation method. The piece represents many layers of dualism, including the cultural representations, space and time, visual and sonic experiences, and stillness and movement. I would like to begin by introducing Ryoanji in details highlighting the cultural importance of the garden of Ryoan-ji to provide more context of what the piece is about.

          Ryoan-ji is a Buddhist temple located in the northern part of Kyoto city. After several ownership of the estate since Emperor Enyu (984), Katsumoto Hosokawa, a powerful samurai leader built the initial version of Ryoan-ji in 1450. The temple had been burnt a total of three times due to the war and some accidents, however, it maintains the most of the original shape to this day. The temple is internationally famous for its garden, which is built in the style of Karesansui, gardening style portraying mountain and river with the use of rock and sand, but water. The white sand that is carefully raked everyday by the monks is filled the garden that is surrounded by the wall. There are 15 stones placed in a specific way on the white sand in which it is impossible to view 15 stones at once from any angles as one of the stones are hidden from each angle. 15 stones are divided and placed in a group of five, and each group of stones are surrounded by some moss. Due to the destructions for three times in the past, the literature about the garden was lost in the fire, therefore, it is unclear who designed and built the garden, what is the meaning of the garden and 15 rocks that are placed on the raked sand. The garden is often referred as a Zen garden as the type of Buddhism that Ryoan-ji belongs to is derived from the brunch of Zen Buddhism. Additionally, the simplicity of the design of the garden, particularly the  Karesansui style is associated with the elements of Zen aestheticism, although I find this claim to be focused more often in the Western literature than Japanese literature.

          John Cage visited Ryoan-ji when he toured in Japan with David Tudor, Toshi Ichiyanagi, and Yoko Ono in 1962. 20 years later, he started the project that involves with Ryoan-ji as he remembers:

In recent years I have made a number of works, some of them graphic, some musical, all having the Japanese word Ryoanji or a reference to it, in the title. These began in 1982 when I was asked by Andre Dimanche to design a cover for Pierre Lartigues translation into French of my Mushroom Book. ... My suggestion for the cover of my book that I draw around fifteen stones (fifteen is the number of stones in the Ryoanji garden in Kyoto) placed at I Ching-determined points on a grid the size of the cover plus the flaps was accepted. (Cage 2009, 58)

Cage’s creative output of the garden of Ryoan-ji was initially through visual arts, which is the 13 drawings, called Where R=Ryoanji. It is important to note that his work was not a drawing of his impression of Ryoan-ji he saw 20 years prior to this project, but rather, it is a complete original work that utilizes 15 stones to trace the perimeters of the stones incorporating the change methods to determine which stone he uses in which order, the softness of pencil, and where on the page he places the stones to trace around them. It seems to me that he had no intension to create the reproduction of the garden through his work. The only component he uses from the garden of Ryoan-ji is the uses of 15 stones, and everything else seems to have no connections to the essence of Karesansui. For example, one of the series of his drawings, R3 (where R=Ryoanji) represents 15 stones, each traced 225 times to produce a total of 3,375 stone silhouettes. It is difficult to draw the connection between his visual art and the actual garden of Ryoan-ji other than Cage’s particular abstract ideas that could bring the two together.

          In 1983, an assistant principal oboist of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra then, James Ostryniec reached out to Cage and asked him to write the oboe solo piece for him to play in Japan, which became the first Ryoanji (musical composition). Between 1983 and 1985, he wrote the same piece for four different solo instruments: flute, voice, double bass, and trombone. All the versions also entail the accompaniment part played by the percussion instruments (1 player) or the orchestra of 20 members. It is unclear that he composed the piece based on the actual garden of the Ryoan-ji or his drawing of the garden of the Ryoan-ji as the scores look unique from both the garden and the drawings. The score has two rectangular systems per page, and each system has various glissandi written on the chart-like figure with specific pitches on the vertical line. Cage claims that glissandi represents the part of the perimeters of the stones he used for the drawings. When there are more lines than on where drawn in the same vertical space, one line is played by the solo instrument, and the other is played by the pre-recorded sound. Cage writes further about a “garden” of sounds in the score:

Each two pages are a “garden” of sounds. Approximately two minutes each. The glissandi are to be sung smoothly, non vibrato and as much as is possible like sound events in nature rather than sounds in music. The dynamics, not given, are to be soft rather than loud, as a rule, a rule that has exceptions… The score is a “still” photograph of mobile circumstances. That is, where there are two or more parts active at the same time their relationship in time need not be exactly the one delineated. (Cage 2009, 64)

The percussion or orchestral accompaniment part is written in the obbligato and notated with meters of 12, 13, 14, and 15 beats per measure. According to Cage’s instruction, two percussion instruments should not be played completely together (Korean unison) and should use two different elements, such as metal and wood. Cage indicates that “(Obbligato parts) should have some life (slight changes of imperceptible dynamic) as though the light on them is changing.” In contrast of solo glissandi representing the stones of the garden, Cage claims that the accompaniment part represents the raked sand. All the versions are written and devised into eight songs except the one for a solo voice, which contains nice numbers. The text for the solo voice is from Cage’s own Haikus with some alternation of vowel to accommodate his chance operation.

          Even though from Cage’s writings, it is unclear whether or not the musical compositions were based on his own drawing Where R=Ryoanji, it is undeniable to say that he had some influence from his own visual art when he conceived Ryoan-ji in music. Through this composition, Cage makes three layers of the transformation of the garden of Ryoan-ji from the three dimensional garden to the two dimensional drawing and the score to the sonic experience. This transformation is guided by Cage’s chance operation, I Ching-determined points, which determines the time and space relationship between the objects and the sounds. If the viewers and listeners conceive Cage’s visual work and musical work of Ryoan-ji without any conceptual elements of the transformation, it is likely that their attention goes to the shape and the contour of each stone to make the comparison before and after the transformation since that is the only element that seems consistent between the transformation. The ultimate question is do we “hear” the garden from Ryoanji? or do we “see” the garden from Ryoanji? I argue that Cage’s transformation between 3 phases of the garden of Ryoan-ji makes it possible to go back and forth each transformation in our experience when we perceive the work as we hear and see the shape of the stones in undetermined space and time, which is relevant to my personal experience first time when I experienced the garden of Ryoan-ji.

          With the multi layers of the transformation to achieve a “garden” of sounds, these transformations are abstract and vague. Since it is primarily driven by the chance operation, it is not obvious in what level and what extent Cage intended to incorporate the basic symbolism and deeper meanings from the garden and other Japanese cultural characteristics into Ryoanji. There are a few considerations when artists create the work based on the Karesansui style garden like the one in Ryoan-ji. The word Karesansui is used for the first time in Sakuteiki, the oldest book on garden-making in the world published in Heian period (794-1185). The book focuses on multiple subjects of gardening such as the use and the establishment of stones, creek, bridge, island, waterfall, mountain, and tree. Each subject seems to be connected through one theme in which the garden exists within the surrounding nature in the most natural state, and it needs to be built as part of the large context in the specific landscape where it’s built. In other words, the garden of Ryoan-ji exists as part of the Mt. Kinukasa, which is located in the north of the temple, and it exists as part of the pond Kyoyo that fills a majority of southern estate of the temple. This concept seems a valid translation into Cage’s Ryoanji as he emphasizes on the production of the sound as part of nature rather than sound events in music.

          There are other aspects of the garden the artist could take into the consideration of the creation of the work. As I mentioned before, 15 stones in the garden of Ryoan-ji are placed in a way that viewers cannot see one stone from every angle. It is said that this is because the placement of the stones are designed to have overlaps in each pair of stones, which symbolizes Kasanari-Shiko, which literally means the tendency of overlaps, and you can see this “overlaps” in various occasion in Japanese culture from the daily custom to the architecture. There is also a saying about the lack of one stone from the view that it symbolizes the imperfection of human life. The wall that surrounds the garden and the landscape of the garden also hold the importance of the design of the garden. If you look closely, you will notice that the southeast corner of the garden is lower than west, and the western earthen wall is higher than north side. Many scholars pointed that the garden is designed with the method of perspective that is often used as part of drawing technique. It is unknown that the creator of the garden had knowledge and technique of perspective and intended to use it, however, the hight of the ground and earthen wall surround the garden suggest that it meant to give a special visual experiences for viewers and provides with a sense of distortion rather than a normal square garden. Cage seemed to pour his attention to 15 stones themselves and some spacial aspects of garden, however, there are some other aspects in this garden that could symbolize the uniqueness of the garden and major Japanese cultural elements.

          In conclusion, I believe there are some detachment between John Cage’s Ryoanji and the essence of the garden in Ryoan-ji. However, it is likely that Cage intended to pursue his version of the garden of Ryoan-ji through the layers of transformation and the chance operation. In my personal experience of listening to Ryoanji, I do not perceive fundamental characters and symbolism that the Karesansui has based on my personal view of the garden, yet Cage achieved experimental attempts to create the multi dimensional experiences through the process of his creations of the visual work and musical work. It was a fresh take on Karesansui for me through Cage’s lens and his work, and if I were to perform Ryoanji, I believe it is an important question to ask myself how much of liberty I would take with my prior knowledge and my personal memory with the garden as opposed what Cage indicated in his score.

Biography

Cage, John. “Ryoanji : Solos for Oboe, Flute, Contrabass, Voice, Trombone With Percussion or

          Orchestral Obbligato (1983–85).” PAJ (Baltimore, Md.), vol. 31, no. 3, 2009, pp. 57–64,

          https://doi.org/10.1162/pajj.2009.31.3.58.

Fowler, Michael D. “An Analysis of Pitch-Class Segmentation in John Cage’s Ryoanji for Oboe

          Using Morphological Image Analysis and Formal Concept Analysis.” Journal of

          Mathematics and Music (Society for Mathematics and Computation in Music), vol. 14, no.

          1, 2020, pp. 21–47, https://doi.org/10.1080/17459737.2019.1639082.

“(The Mystery - Vol.1) Getting Closer to the Mystery of the Garden at Ryoan-Ji Temple.” YouTube, YouTube, 16 July 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldVz7XQFky0&ab_channel=JapaneseGardenTV.

Ishii, Takayuki. 「重なり志向」の日本文化, 『言語文化学会論集』第33号, file:///Users/ryohasegawa/Downloads/%E3%80%8C%E9%87%8D%E3%81%AA%E3%82%8A%E5%BF%97%E5%90%91%E3%80%8D%E3%81%AE%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E6%96%87%E5%8C%96%EF%BC%88%E3%82%B5%E3%83%B3%E3%83%97%E3%83%AB%EF%BC%89%20(1).pdf.

“John Cage, Where R=Ryoanji, 1983.” Yes No Maybe Cage Ryoanji, National Gallery of Art  , www.nga.gov/features/yes-no-maybe/cage/ryo.html#:~:text=Cage’s%20Where%20R%3DRyoanji%20prints,bed%20of%20carefully%20raked%20gravel. Accessed 14 May 2024.

“Ryoanji.” John Cage Complete Works, www.johncage.org/pp/John-Cage-Work-Detail.cfm?work_ID=165. Accessed 14 May 2024.

Simone, Katelyn. “60 Years on, Exploring Resonance between John Cage and Japan: Classical Voice North America.” Classical Voice North America , 6 Oct. 2023, classicalvoiceamerica.org/2023/09/27/six-decades-later-cage-in-musical-spirit-meets-the-japanese-once-more/.

Weiss, Allen S. “On the Limits of Representation: Ryōan-Ji, Ryoanji , Where R =

          Ryoanji.” Resonance (Oakland, Calif.), vol. 3, no. 1, 2022, pp. 6–27, https://doi.org

          10.1525/res.2022.3.1.6.

Yamamura, Takanobu. 千年前の造園指南書「作庭記」について, https://peshimane.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/2019_08_%E5%8D%83%E5%B9%B4%E5%89%8D%E3%81%AE%E9%80%A0%E5%9C%92%E6%8C%87%E5%8D%97%E6%9B%B8%EF%BC%88%E5%B1%B1%E6%9D%91%E8%B3%A2%E6%B2%BB%EF%BC%89.pdf

“素晴らしい!!! 日本庭園 龍安寺紹介.” YouTube, YouTube, 10 May 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=34kJcmtbFj4&ab_channel=Lalique.

“龍安寺.” 大雲山　龍安寺｜ryoanji, www.ryoanji.jp/smph/index.html. Accessed 14 May 2024.