Evidently there is an all-embracing dialogue between some sort of stable and clearly marked places in the sense of the Greek term 'topos'. And these 'topoi' are usually surrounded by arrangements which imply vastness, dynamics, mobility. Evidently not the objects are most important but rather a relative element which creates dialogues between these objects and their characteristics. Trees are related to a source of water, rocks define movements of water, a waterfall is created by an arrangement of rocks, stones are markers in an 'ocean' of gravel, bushes, fixed in their forms by cyclic cutting are found dialogueing with surrounding mosses amorphously growing. It is a kind of contradictive relatedness which counts.
Modern man classifies immediately, thus isolates the objects and covers up the relational essence.
But what we call 'relational essence' here is nothing else than the heartbeat of art. We know it too in the West. Black ink and white paper are the conditio sine qua non of any drawing. Thus, of course, the Japanese garden is part of the wider domain which we call art. It is this ambivalence between art and nature which makes it so particular among other types of art.