 Raked sand, particularly white raked sand (shirakawasuna) is a feature of many Japanese gardens. If the conjectures of historians regarding the early history of Shinto are correct, the earliest shrines of Japan's native religion may have been forest clearings in which the ground was purified and made hospitable to the spirits (kami) by putting down a layer of washed sand or gravel. The practice appears to live on in those areas of historical Shinto shrines in which a simple rectangle of white sand appears among the architectural structures. That the tradition was associated with the divine ancestry of the Imperial family is suggested by the broad expanses of white sand located in front of important palace buildings, the Imperial Palace in Kyoto being a prime example. In the Heian Period, the area between the main hall of a noble residence—the shinden—and the pond to the south was often covered with white sand, an echo of which can be seen today at Daikaku-ji in Kyoto. |
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| While the sacred associations of white sand were probably never far from the minds of their designers, the gardens of later periods also employed this element in ways that appear to simulate rivers or seas, the raking of the sand apparently intended to evoke waves or currents. In some instances, this simulation was clearly intentional, as in the corner garden at the Daisen-in in Kyoto, where the raked sand is meant to represent a stream flowing from the mountains. In other gardens—that of Ryoan-ji, for example—the sand-equals-water equation is more problematic, although many interpreters insist upon that association.
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