Shakkei and the picturesque

Borrowed scenery
Borrowed scenery in the style of Song and Ming Dynasty gardens located at the Zhishan Garden
Chinese name
Chinese	借景
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin jièjǐng
Japanese name
Kanji	借景
Transcriptions Romanization shakkei

Borrowed scenery (借景; Japanese: shakkei; Chinese: jièjǐng) is the principle of "incorporating background landscape into the composition of a garden" found in traditional East Asian garden design. The term borrowing of scenery ("shakkei") is Chinese in origin, and appears in the 17th century garden treatise Yuanye.

A garden that borrows scenery is viewed from a building and designed as a composition with four design essentials: 1) The garden should be within the premises of the building; 2) The presence of an object to be captured alive as borrowed scenery, i.e. a view on a distant mountain for example; 3) Trimming (by the designer) of the view to the features he wishes to show; and 4) Linking the borrowed scenery with the foreground of the garden.

Borrowing scenery, as a technique of design was conceptualized in modernist architectural theory in the 1960s. This understanding was made explicit among Japanese architects, for whom it was the utmost effort to design continuity of interior and exterior space, a major topic in modernist architecture. Architects from the International Style in modern architecture acclaimed things like simplicity and space in Japanese architecture. Seen from the perspective of architecture theory borrowing scenery was seen as a fixed three-dimensional plasticity, whence shakkei is usually translated as "borrowed" scenery.

According to the 1635 CE Chinese garden manual Yuanye (園冶), there are four categories of borrowed scenery, namely: yuanjie (遠借 "distant borrowing", e.g., mountains, lakes), linjie (隣借 "adjacent borrowing", neighboring buildings and features), yangjie (仰借 "upward borrowing", clouds, stars), and fujie (俯借 "downward borrowing", rocks, ponds). The Yuanye has a last chapter titled "Jiejing", "Borrowed Scenery". This chapter makes clear that borrowing scenery is not a single design idea but the essence of landscape design philosophy in its entirety. The ever-changing moods and appearances of landscape in full action are an independent function that becomes an agent for garden making. To be able to make a garden, the garden maker needs to meld with the landscape on the site. It is about the ecology of nature, including man that moves design. This extended meaning of borrowing scenery jiejing is recently getting attention in landscape architecture theory in China.