Although the layout of my tea garden in combination with the remaining Western garden area will not lend itself to a traditional arrangement of inner and outer roji, I have always wanted to have a roofed gate somewhere.
The perfect expression of the Japanese roofed gate is without doubt the beautiful 'umbrella gate' (amigasa-mon) at MushanokÅji Senke in Kyoto, a photo of which can be found in Marc Peter Keane's book The Japanese Tea Garden. The roof is a remarkable subtly curved construction of cedar bark which is way beyond my capabilities, let alone the challenge of sourcing cedar bark in the UK. For similar reasons as for the tea house, I also decided against attempting a thatched roof.
The design that I eventually came up with is broadly based on a photo of one at Nishida Gyokusen in Kanazawa which is on the cover of Marc Peter Keane's book and shown here. Like most traditional roofed gates, this one would probably have been made from Japanese cypress (hinoki) and I wanted to do something similar displaying the natural beauty of the wood rather than using treated softwood and staining it as I had done for the tea house and fence posts. I would also make a roof of Western red cedar shingles capped with stout bamboo rather than cedar ridge caps. And there would need to be two doors, each attached to a post to swing outward to both sides.
next