The Pagoda in a Japanese Garden
The history of the gorintō, and the Buddhist traditions of Japan’s stone towers
The Pagoda in a Japanese Garden can catch our attention before we understand what it means. We notice its proportions, the shape of its upper stones or the way its surface has weathered. Understanding the form brings another part of the scene into view: the beliefs and people behind it.
The gorintō, often translated as “five-ring pagoda,” is one such monument. Its five different geometric forms represent earth, water, fire, wind and space. Within Buddhist practice, it has served as a memorial, an object of devotion and a vessel for relics.
The name needs some care. “Pagoda” covers a broad family of Buddhist towers. A gorintō is a particular member of that family, recognizable by its changing shapes. The little garden pagoda with several repeated roofs belongs to a different form. Learning that distinction is a useful first step toward understanding both.
From the Indian Stupa to the Japanese Pagoda
The pagoda’s history begins in India with the stupa. Rooted in the tradition of funerary mounds, Buddhist stupas housed relics associated with the Buddha. They also became places of reverence, making the Buddha and his teachings present through a physical monument.
As Buddhism traveled across Asia, the monument changed. In China, the stupa tradition encountered an established tradition of tower building, contributing to the tall structure with successive roofed levels that many people now picture when they hear “pagoda.” This architectural tradition passed through Korea to Japan.
Buddhism reached Japan in the middle of the sixth century through the Korean Peninsula. Pagodas became prominent features of early temple compounds, where the preservation and veneration of Buddhist relics gave them an important religious role. Their position within a temple’s buildings reflected that significance.
Hōryū-ji in Nara Prefecture provides an early surviving example. Its five-story pagoda was built during the Asuka period, which ended in 710, to enshrine relics of the Buddha. At its base, four groups of clay figures depict Buddhist scenes. Here we can see how a tower brought architecture, sacred remains and religious teaching together within the life of a temple.
This history helps explain why a small stone tower deserves attention. Its form carries associations with worship and remembrance that developed long before its adoption as a garden feature.
How the Gorintō Developed
The gorintō took shape in Japan through the interpretation of Buddhist teachings about the elements. Its development is associated with esoteric Buddhism, particularly Shingon and Tendai. The Jōdo-shū Buddhist dictionary describes it as a distinctively Japanese form, grounded in ideas of Indian origin and developed during the Heian period.
A firm historical reference survives at Shakuson-in, within Chūson-ji in Hiraizumi, Iwate Prefecture. Its stone gorintō bears an inscription dated 1169, placing this enduring form within the religious life of twelfth-century Japan.
Stone gorintō became well established in medieval Japan, with particular acceptance among the warrior class. Their uses included memorial offerings for the dead and ancestors. The surviving tradition encompasses both substantial monuments assembled from several stones and much smaller examples.
The form also appears in wood, metal and crystal. Although stone examples are the ones most relevant to a garden visit, the religious idea was never limited to an outdoor stone object.
Reading the Five Elements
A gorintō is read from the ground upward. Its five components express the godai, the five great elements. These are part of a Buddhist understanding of the material world and the human body. Each form has a place in the whole.
Each change in shape marks a different element. Together, the five forms connect the visible structure of the tower with a Buddhist understanding of the world.
Earth therefore extends beyond the soil beneath the monument. It includes solidity itself. Water concerns moisture and the way things gather together; fire includes warmth; and wind includes movement. These qualities allow the elements to describe the body as well as the surrounding world.
Engaku-ji, the Zen temple in Kamakura, offers a familiar way to understand this relationship: the hardness of bones, the circulation of bodily fluids, body warmth and breathing. These are everyday experiences through which a visitor can begin to understand an unfamiliar Buddhist vocabulary.
The uppermost element, kū, is commonly rendered as space or void. In the Shingon explanation, it refers to the absence of obstruction. “Space” is a useful starting point for readers encountering the idea for the first time.
Five symbolic parts do not always mean five separate pieces of stone. The wind and space sections can be carved together. This is one reason to look at the complete profile when identifying a gorintō, rather than simply counting the joints.
The Teaching Carried by the Stones
Many gorintō carry Sanskrit characters representing the elements. Shingon’s explanation gives their sequence, from bottom to top, as a, va, ra, ha, kha. The inscriptions make the connection between the sculptural form and Buddhist teaching explicit.
In Shingon Buddhism, the five material elements are considered together with a sixth: consciousness. Consciousness has no separate stone in the gorintō because it is not physical. The highest stone represents space.
These teachings relate the person and the universe to Dainichi Nyorai, also known as Mahāvairocana, the central Buddha of Shingon. Shingon references describe the use of the gorintō as a grave marker as expressing the deceased person’s return to the universal nature of this Buddha.
That interpretation helps explain the monument’s place in a temple landscape. Its geometry gives visible form to an understanding of existence, while its memorial use brings that teaching into the experience of loss and remembrance.
Inscriptions also vary. The Jōdo-shū dictionary records examples bearing the six-character invocation of Amida Buddha. The monument’s history includes different devotional settings, so the writing on a particular stone deserves as much attention as its overall silhouette.
Within the Temple Landscape
At Gangō-ji in Nara, that religious history remains visible in the temple grounds. In the area called Futoden, stone Buddhist images and towers stand in ordered groups. The temple explains that monuments previously gathered elsewhere on the grounds were arranged in their present form in 1988.
Gorintō are prominent among them. Their inscriptions preserve traces of the people associated with the temple, including clergy and laypeople. Some carry the term gyakushu, indicating offerings commissioned during the donor’s lifetime in the hope of rebirth in the Pure Land.
These details change how we read the setting. The stones preserve personal acts of devotion within an arrangement visitors can appreciate visually. A composed temple landscape can bring beauty and remembrance into the same field of view. Understanding its history allows both to remain visible.
At Nikkō’s Rinnō-ji, a gorintō marks the grave of Shōdō Shōnin, the monk associated with the founding of the Nikkō religious complex. Rinnō-ji is a Tendai temple. Here the monument’s purpose is specific: it identifies a revered founder’s grave.
These examples encourage us to look beyond the broad label “Japanese garden.” Within temple grounds, a tower may belong to a memorial area, a place of worship or a later arrangement of historic objects. The temple’s account of that particular monument gives the setting its meaning.
Other Names and Forms to Recognize
The vocabulary becomes easier when broad terms are separated from names for specific shapes. Tō means a tower or pagoda in this context; buttō identifies a Buddhist pagoda; and sekitō is a broad term for stone pagodas and related stone monuments. A stone gorintō may also be called gorin sekitō.
The 'Votive' stupa is a miniature stupa. These are often used to place ashes or fragments of a respected teacher, or spiritual master. Scrolls of text from mantras are also common. Think of it as a place for items of spiritual importance meant to honor a person, place or memory.
Another related word is sotoba, derived from Sanskrit stupa. Its shortened form, tōba, also names the tall wooden memorial tablets placed beside graves. These belong to the same wider Buddhist vocabulary, although their appearance differs from a stone tower.
When the Pagoda Becomes a Garden Feature
Miniature tiered pagodas were frequently used in gardens from the early Edo period, helping suggest a larger landscape within a smaller space. Their repeated roofs could evoke a distant temple building. The architectural reference JAANUS also records the adaptation of such forms into pagoda lanterns.
Portland Japanese Garden provides a familiar example. Its Sapporo Pagoda Lantern, a gift delivered from its Japanese sister city in 1964, takes the form of a five-story pagoda. It illustrates how a Buddhist architectural form can acquire an additional meaning as an expression of friendship between communities.
The setting also shapes how the monument is experienced. In the Strolling Pond Garden, Douglas firs and cedars shelter the lantern, while evergreen hedges stand behind it and stones are arranged in front. The tower becomes part of a living landscape. Looking at the surrounding composition allows us to appreciate how its constructed form relates to the garden around it.
Older stone components could also find new uses. JAANUS records the reuse of gorintō sections as handwashing basins, including an example at Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto. Such reuse is another reminder that an object’s original form and its later garden function may tell different parts of its history.
For visitors and photographers, a useful approach is to begin with the shape, then seek the story of the individual object. Look for the five changing forms of a gorintō, repeated roofs on a tiered pagoda, or the chamber intended to hold a light in a lantern.
Then allow the setting to come back into view. The surrounding planting and stonework remain part of what makes the scene worth studying. Knowing whether the tower commemorates a person, expresses a Buddhist teaching or belongs to the history of the garden gives us a fuller understanding of what we are looking at.
That knowledge need not interrupt the pleasure of being there. It gives our attention somewhere further to go.
