Visual Impression of Japanese Rock Garden (Kare-sansui): From the Point of View of Spatial Structure and Perspective Cues

The Japanese rock garden with the hidden order (fractal structure) is said to give the quiet and sophisticated impression. The perspective devices which are hard to notice are also said to be useful to show the narrow garden widely. This research was carried out to confirm the effect of such hidden devices in the rock garden using 2D-CG pictures. The whole impression of the gardens was examined by method of semantic differential (SD method), and the width and depth impression of them was examined by method of paired comparisons. The result of method of paired comparison showed that the decrease of stones brought the increase of the impression of width and depth, while the increase of stones and random perturbation of the spatial arrangement brought the decrease of them. The result of factor analysis and cluster analysis based on SD method showed that goodness and quietness were highly appreciated in the gardens with hidden order and with decreased stones. It is suggested that the hidden factor which observers do not notice affects the various impressions of gardens, and that unlike a general pattern layout, too much regular arrangement was not evaluated in gardens.