Attempt at Japanification of a Landscape

Consider Angus O'Briain. One of the richest men in the world, playboy, philanthropist, gambler, and – according to his ex-wife Tomoko – suffering from an unhealthy obsession with everything Japanese. Collecting objects made in Japan (including his wife) or imbued with a strong Japanese character (except for his wife however, very occidentally oriented) was of course part of his obsession and easily indulged thanks to his ever growing fortune, but Angus O'Briain lost his mind, and his wife, when he turned his attention to gardening.

He started small enough by turning the courtyard of his Miami mansion into a Japanese mini garden; then – not entirely satisfied with the scope of his endeavours – he started working on the park surrounding the building, trying to find an equipoise between Zen and magnificence. It was of course a complete disaster. Totally disgusted with her husband's achievements, Tomoko told him impatiently to occupy himself with more serious and socially correct projects. The world was starving and many places needed thorough terraforming before being turned into profitable vegetable-growing lands.

This laudable but somehow foolish remark from Tomoko who otherwise was totally uninterested in the poverty or wealth of the world, was the start of the final demise of Angus O'Briain. He bought a valley in the Smoky Mountains, bribing the National Park administrators and a score of other state and federal officials. He then dislodged the complete population, human and animal, cut down about ninety percent of the trees, and started to fill the valley bottom with stones imported from another state. Artificial rocks and islands were brought in, Japanese paraphernalia was strewn about, and a half-hearted attempt was made to shape the stones in the valley with a giant rake.

When all was done, Angus O'Briain flew in his wife and showed her what he had achieved. Tomoko was outraged. She raged and shouted and stamped about telling Angus that she felt humiliated, that he had made a fool of her and her country, and that Japanese gardens were small, not valley-sized, and that he had understood nothing at all. And that she had had enough. And that she was leaving him for a Texan oil baron she had met the previous month in Las Vegas.

Angus then lost his mind. To make the valley look small he had a giant bridge built over the valley, and when it was finished he threw himself from the top to his death on the stones below.

The bridge was downloaded from the internet and lovingly restored and improved in Silo2. The torii were built originally in Moray for another project. The POV-Ray output has been stream-lined for version 3.7. The grass patches come with Poser while the trees were made with POVtree. This scene makes use of Sam Benge's textured fog macro.