Geomancy in East Asia

By Robert J. Poor, 1 September 1995

Geomancy (Feng shui, in Chinese; I am not positive about the Japanese romanization of the wind character, ? sui) is indeed still important in contemporary Japan as well as in China and other Asian communities around the world. At the theoretical level, fengshui ideas are employed by modern architects, site planners etc. As an item of popular belief, fengshui governs everything form locating a new business to the orientation of house-hold furniture. I cannot speak in detail about Japanese practices as they apply to modern buildings (other than traditional forms like temples, Noh stages, gardens). However, since the topic is continental by nature and the writer also inquired about mountains, here are a few remarks to open up the discussion of the modern fengshui practices in general.

Feng-shui is a Chinese system developed prior to the Chinese contact with Buddhism. As a result of the historical consequence one may encounter hybrid situations with Buddhist ideas taking precedence in one situation but not another (e.g. Buddhist temples are oriented to the east, but the civic architecture outside the wall of a temple complex, including tombs and burial sites would be oriented to the south in accord with Feng-shui practices). In a similar vein, mountains have their own characteristics and individual differences in ritual rhetoric; Penglai mythology is different than Kunlun mythology and both are distinct from the shifting Five Mountains or individual mountains like Taishan in China or Fuji in Japan. Adjustments must also be made for Shinto and, to a lesser extent, Daoist beliefs.

This is a very large subject. I suggest that you start with an encyclopedia of Asian subjects (e.g. The Columbia work edited by Ambree) for a general introduction then go to the books on architecture for modern practices (the building of Hong Kong office buildings, architects at MIT looking at fengshui as a theoretical approach to site planning, things of that sort). Two inexpensive publications illustrate modern adaptations of fengshui ideas. Derek Walters, Feng Shui; the Chinese Art of Designing a Harmonious Environment (Simon and Schuster, Inc. A Fireside Book, 1988), takes on everything from Five Element theory to laying out your bathroom. Walters gives a good popular view of fengshui and the other Chinese ways of dealing with the total environment. Derham Groves, Feng-Shui and Western Building Ceremonies (Graham Brash (PTE) LTD, Singapore / Tynron Press, Scotland, 1991) does the same but also illustrates some interesting popular instances of the application on fengshui on the street in overseas Asian communities in Australia.

An interesting subject. Please keep me informed f your progress and especially if you come up with much on Korea.

Robert J Poor <poorx001@maroon.tc.umn.edu>

An interesting sidelight on fengshui is that it influenced the design of Canberra, the Australian capital. The present design was the work of Walter Burley Griffin, a member of the Prairie school of architecture associated with Frank Lloyd Wright. Griffin won an international competition for a capital city design early in the twentieth century, although the work of building was not to begin until the late 1920s. Among the eclectic Griffin's many mystical influences was fengshui, a fact documented in memoirs later written by his wife. The upshot is that Canberra has a mountain and a water axis, the latter being the artificially engineered Lake Burley Griffin.

See Peter R. Proudfoot, _The Secret Plan of Canberra_, Kensington (New South Wales, Australia) University of New South Wales Press, 1994.

David Kelly
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