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According to Tanso Ishihara's book, written in the 1970s, Hakone
Garden, the 'mon', or main gate, was built by Shinzaburo
Nishiura, a native of Nara prefecture, who also was the designer
and builder of San Jose's first two Buddhist temples. He built
the gate and the corridor leading up to the shin, or finished
style of the garden. It is built according to the canons of
formal gate construction, and with influence of
sukiya-zukuri architecture. There are many temple
adornments to the gate, in its bracketing and carving which
derive from Buddhist architecture. Ishihara says that other
elements of the gates and the corridor fences come from a later
architectural tradition of the lighter sukiya-zukuri, or
tea house style. The surroundings of the gate in the hills of
Hakone must have suggested to Nishiura a mountain temple. He
designed the corridor fences to form a yin yang relationship
brought into unity by the mon with its design based in the Zen
Temple. When approaching the mon, note the architectural
differences between the fence on your left and the one on your
right; a tangible expression of the Asian aspiration for balance
in the yin and yang experience of existence. Over the past five
years these fences have been restored by a special friend of
Hakone, Bruce Heister.
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