The Japanese Garden

THE JAPANESE GARDEN

The Japanese Garden

Between the Main (Gailey) Building and East Wing is our small but valued and loved Japanese Garden with its distinctive toro or Ishidourou , – a type of Japanese stone shrine originally used as devotional votives in a Buddhist shrine and later in time to illuminate the path to the shrine. Various features crop up repeatedly in Japanese gardens including one or more of these stone lanterns. It is believed that these lanterns serve to add to the balance, harmony, and enduring nature of the garden and have become almost iconic in their significance. The light held in the lamp may represent the teachings of the Buddha that help overcome the darkness of ignorance. As such, the lanterns represented important symbolic offerings to the Buddha.

In the late 1970s, there was a growth in Australia in interest in the Japanese language and culture. With the increasing number of students studying the language at Brisbane Girls Grammar School, (one of the first Queensland schools to offer this language in their curriculum), our school undertook to create a formal relationship agreement in August 1978 with a school in Japan. The two schools pledged to contribute to the mutual understanding and friendship between students of both schools with exchanges and joint activities. Seirinkan High School, then known as Hirayama Gakuen Tsushima Girls High, located in Tsushima City was our first Affiliate Sister School. At that time, this was a girls only school, like BGGS. In the early 1990s, due to changing demographics in that region of Japan, it transitioned to a co educational school. The former owner and Chairman of Seirinkan High School, Mr Tetsuryo Hirayama, decided that a garden was how he would like to commemorate the tenth anniversary of our mutual friendship and exchange. With then Principal Dr Judith Hancock, an agreement was reached by both schools to construct this garden. Mr Hirayama brought his own school gardener, Mr Yoshinori Ishihara, to Australia and his educational colleagues, Mr Ishihara with Mr Masayoshi Uchiyama, both from Sydney, surveyed the area, purchased all the construction materials and equipment to bring the garden to life on our campus. Mr Ishihara, familiar in his grey jodhpurs, carefully selected every rock and, as if sculpting a work of art, carefully determined the placement and orientation of each.

1988 Installation by Yoshinori Ishihara

The garden was formally opened on 4 th August 1988 by Principal, Judith Hancock, with a small ceremony in the presence of Mr Hirayama, the Chair of the Board of Trustees, Macrae Grassie, and the Japanese Vice Consul to Brisbane. In a reciprocal gesture, Brisbane Girls Grammar School awarded a gold medallion to the student of Tsushima Girls High School who received the highest marks in English language. The award was to encourage and stimulate even greater interest in the study of English.

Every year Brisbane Girls Grammar School has welcomed students from Seirinkan. In the early years, these students came for twelve months but more recently the visit has been short term only. In return, many of our students over the years have also had the opportunity to go to Tsushima city, live with a Japanese family and attend the school. At that time, the Japanese Cultural Group existed to strongly support the exchange program. This group consisted of a band of mothers who helped with finding and supporting host families and other organisation to ensure the visit to Brisbane Girls Grammar School was a happy and productive experience for students visiting from Japan. The generous and extraordinary gesture of gifting our school a Japanese garden gave pause for us to consider our relationship between our two schools and to understand the common values and educational goals. Like Brisbane Girls Grammar School, Seirinkan High School has as its intent to encourage students to share the world as a family and to nurture a spirit of altruism and service with a view to contributing positively to our global and local society. Both schools aim to develop well rounded and autonomous citizens with high academic goals. In her speech that August at the opening of the garden, Principal Dr Judith Hancock commended Mr Hirayama on his foresight and international outlook in initiating an educational and cultural bond between the two schools, long before it became fashionable for Japanese schools to have Australian links. She also spoke about the “abundant goodwill and understanding on both sides”, and the hope that the” harmony and friendship” would continue into the future. Other sister school relationships across the world in countries of corresponding to our language learning programs have been established since our pivotal and historical undertaking with Hirayama Gakuen. This Japanese garden remains testament to our ongoing intent to encourage and guide our students to share the world in understanding.

Shaded by a large, now mature Lillypilly tree and surrounded by flowering shrubs and grasses, it provides a moment of beauty, reflection, and peace.