Japanese gardens open landscapes of exploration for Misako Murata

Misako Murata in front of bamboo paneling she helped construct for the teahouse installation on the lawn of Cornell's Johnson Museum of Art. She is a landscape architecture major in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences from Scarsdale, N.Y. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

By Briana Collins '03

Like many seniors taking their final exams and making their last trips to Wegman's supermarket, Misako Murata is preparing for graduation and looking forward to the road ahead. Unlike many seniors, however, Murata could have graduated almost five months ago -- a semester early -- due to her accelerated course work.

Instead, Murata stayed the extra months because she "wanted to take the opportunity to do my own research." Indeed, the most delicate of research: tsukubai, the element of water in the design of Japanese tea gardens.

It was visiting professor Marc Keane, a Lawrence Halprin Fellow in the Department of Landscape Architecture, who recommended Murata to the Research Center for Japanese Garden Art at the Kyoto University of Art and Design, where he also is a fellow. Misako was accepted, he said, "because of her serious desire to study Japanese gardens and because of her Japanese language capability."

In Kyoto, Murata -- who grew up speaking Japanese with her parents -- volunteered as a translator for world-famous potter Abe Anjin, who makes modern Bizen pottery. But it was the study of tsukubai that interested Murata the most and, consequently, has become the focus of her thesis, "Water as a Transitory Element: The Japanese Tea Garden." The thesis also is the foundation for Murata's work with the design and creation of a water basin for Keane's three-sided teahouse, an installation for Cornell's Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art's series of events and exhibits celebrating "Cha -- The Sublime Art of East Asian Tea."

Central to the creation of tea gardens, explains Murata, is "designing in a compact space." As she graduates, she thinks she would like to combine her studies of tea gardens with her interest in urban design, which often can include displaced or lost spaces. Although Murata would like to work for a landscape architecture firm on the West Coast, "at this moment," she said, "I am still unsure of my plans for post-graduation."

But, she stressed, her experience in the Japanese tea garden "has enlivened my passion for landscape."