I think your right, the client's (or viewer's) culture has to be accounted for in order to make the garden relevant. I guess the question is to what degree, and should we therefore be incorporating objects and materials which we are intrinsically familiar with from our own cultures when creating Japanese gardens in our own countries? And if so, it makes me wonder what does the American, Canadian, or European culture have that equates to the tsukubai, the stone lantern, the bamboo fence, the teahouse? These elements, through many stages of refinement, have achieved an almost perfected balance of function and form, of nature and man, of earthly and spiritual. American culture, as an example, is so (relatively) young that there seems to be a very shallow pool do draw something from with a meaningful cultural significance. Perhaps i am just being creatively lazy, but it seems much more efficient to use icons from other much older cultures and explain their meanings to the uninformed (who ask) than it is to start from scratch finding our own icons where few seem to have any relevance. At the same time, while the specific cultural cues give the details of the story and distinguish the garden from nature-at-large, it is the universal themes and relationships which are probably the most effective way to convey the essence of the garden's design/intent/idea/message/lesson/feeling/mood/fuzei to the 'average' client/viewer. These things often tend to be psychological responses and instincts cued by the senses. -christian

Gerald --- Yes, Andrea is right. Of course Tamao Goda (Doug's wife) is also participating in their little ruse, so that accounts for stylistic differences. In addition, Tim Hansken (their "copy editor") is also weighing in under psuedonyms. This is what several of us have been complaining about for some time now. It's the group we've been referring to as the "Fantastic Five," etc. They've gotten more clever about planting red herrings to mask their identity. Remember "Watanabe-san"? He was a pretty transparent pseudonym. Be suspicious of any poster who apprears in 2005 out of nowhere, seems to know tons about Japanese gardens, lists no personal information, usually lists no e-mail contact, is fiercly loyal to JOJG, parrots JOJG themes and pet peeves, etc. These psuedonyms are also usually fishing for information (which sometimes appears later in JOJG articles) on broad subjects, and they rarely share any detailed personal experience or information. Never pictures. Of course now that I've said all this it will allow them to adjust their next rash of shills to dodge the profile. As further evidence of this, since I started complaining about it here on GW my name and business information disappeared from the JOJG website as a designer and builder of Japanese gardens in Maine. I'm honored to join the ranks of the likes of Julie Moir Messervy, Pat Chasse, Marc Peter Keane and Matsuhiko Seko, all Japanese garden designers of the northeast U.S. who are now shunned by JOJG due to their failure to kowtow. Lee

A&AE, I have been following this discussion with great interest, because I am going to be decorating with some pieces in the future that are "Japonisme," which is Chinoiserie's cousin, lol! My mom lived in Japan for a year back in the mid 50's and brought back a ton of stuff. Some of it was made more for European tastes. Also, she lived in SF for three years after that and bought a lot of Japanese influenced things to go with what she brought back. I have inherited it all now. So I tend to love Asian influenced things but also I have a style that can be described as "sentimental" or as I call it, "cozy granny" because most of the stuff I like hasn't been in style since granny's day or even great great grandma. I've always liked antiques, but at my age, things that are considered antiques today are the MCM stuff I grew up with. When I was a kid back then, that was NOT the definition of antique! I like stuff from the late 1800's through Art Deco. I like Victorian, but couldn't live with most of it. Arts and crafts is one of my favorite styles and that definitely had an Asian influence. I don't know if Chinoiserie has ever been extremely popular, but right now I am up against a couple of trends which I think are also influencing how a younger generation might view Chinoiserie. One is gender, because my SO for whatever reason, is very strongly against floral things. My dad didn't like floral things all that much either, but he often just acquiesced to my mom and that was fairly typical I think of male/female relationships in the last century and maybe even the one before that. The home was the typical purvey of the "woman of the house" and Chinoiserie was popular with them. I think there is a great deal of sexism in considering certain colors and motif's "feminine" but it's out there and prevalent so there you go. My SO certainly suffers from that cultural conditioning. So now that men are taking a more active role in home-making (at least some men, my SO included) and marital relations are looked at more as a partnership, there's a lot more influence of taste that might be considered "masculine" in the home, from color palettes to art and furniture styles, like the "industrial" trend. Not to say that men don't like florals and women don't like gears, but I know in my decorating dilemmas, it is often gears vs flowers and we tend to compromise on styles and designs that are less extreme--abstracts, geometric stuff, etc. I'm not sure what will bring about a revival of the taste for Chinoiserie or even Victorian or antique anything. Folks are more transient nowdays and aren't as inclined to devote themselves to a set aesthetic in their homes. They want a flexible look. So I think individual pieces of Chinoiserie will always be popular, like art, dishes, fabrics and accent furniture. I think the total look will remain popular with only a few folks who can afford it. Because of the transience, I am afraid the days of those gorgeous Chinoiserie influence wallpapers are gone forever, at least in big common spaces in homes. While I love the look, even I myself would not go for it, because I would want to be able to more easily change out the look of a room from season to season or year to year. But I have little vignettes of Japonisme all around my current home. When I have some time, I may post some of them. Here's a quickie, just something I totally threw together. The framed pictures are very old calendar pics that my mom had from back in the 50's in SF. They are just there right now to fill up the space and hide the very ugly white back of the shelving units. They will go on the wall eventually, and my mom's collection of Japanese dolls will go in the unit when I get it properly set up and the glass doors installed.

That was definitely an unusual ranking. I was lucky enough to visit Seattle two years ago and was thrilled with the absolutely beautiful weather we had. We stayed at the Olympic and I was able to spend several days walking around the town and touring the sites and enjoyed many great dinners. A close friend of mine recently moved to a suburb just outside the city and sent me this article - definitely a chilling read. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one My area of NJ (near Philadelphia) has hot humid summers but winter isn't particularly evil - some are better than others. It varies - some years there is no recorded snowfall, a few years ago we had a record 80" in one winter. Since I'm retired I don't mind the winters like I did when I commuted to work. As others have said - every area has pros and cons. And many people I come across like where they are living. Maybe it's just because it's what they know.