Shunmyo Masuno, Japan's leading garden designer, is at once Japan's most highly acclaimed landscape architect and an 18th-generation Zen Buddhist priest, presiding over daily ceremonies at the Kenkoji Temple in Yokohama. He is celebrated for his unique ability to blend strikingly contemporary elements with the traditional design vernacular. He has worked in ultramodern urban hotels and in some of Japan's most famous classic gardens. In each project, his work as a designer of landscape architecture is inseparable from his Buddhist practice. Each becomes a Zen garden, "a special spiritual place...

Thick thatched roofs and rough mud plaster walls. An intricate carved wood transom and a precisely woven tatami mat--each element of traditional Japanese architecture tells a story.

In Japanese Architecture, author Mira Locher explores how each of these stories encompasses the particular development, construction, function and symbolism inherent in historic architectural elements. From roofs, walls and floors to door pulls and kettle hangers, Japanese Architecture situates these elements firmly within the natural environment and traditional Japanese culture....