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What are the three degrees of elaboration used in Japanese garden design?
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Japanese garden
A Japanese garden.
In Japanese garden design, the three degrees of elaboration are used to categorize the level of detail and complexity in a garden's layout. These three styles are:
- Shin: The "elaborate" style.
- Gyo: The "intermediate" style.
- So: The "abbreviated" style.
Each type of Japanese garden—whether it is a tsuki-yama (artificial hill) or hira-niwa (level ground) garden—can be designed using any one of these three degrees of elaboration.1