JA

UNIVERSITY OF B.C. LIBRARY

3 9424 00126 1475

GARDENS

MRS. BASIL TAYLOR

SlOKACiE ITEM
PROCESS I^G-CNE

Lpl-FISD

U.B.C. LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY OF
BRITISH COLUMBIA

TllV

JAPANESE GARDENS

BY WALTER TYNDALE
Japan and the Japanese

I .» ' ■ m' 1

JAPANESE
GARDENS

BY

MRS. BASIL TAYLOR

(HARRIET OSGOOD)

WITH TWENTY-EIGHT PICTURES IN COLOUR BY

WALTER TYNDALE, R.I.

METHUEN & GO. LTD.

36 ESSEX STREET W.G.

LONDON

First Published in igi2

TO

EVELYN D. TYNDALE

AND

BASIL TAYLOR

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

BY THE

ARTIST AND THE AUTHOR

A

PREFACE

NOTHER book on Japanese gardens
would need an apology, rather than a
preface, were it not that Mr. Tyndale's
beautiful pictures, to which my words are but
as the tail to a soaring and many-coloured kite,
have already made excuse unnecessary.

But I do not presume, in spite of my great
love of, and admiration for, the most subtle
and highly wrought art of landscape garden-
ing that exists in the world to-day, to offer a
technical treatise on the subject. That, Mr.
Josiah Conder (who, perhaps I may be allowed
to say, was to have written this book, but,
owing to stress of work, was at the last unable
to undertake it, so the privilege fell to me)
has already so perfectly done, that those who
wish for expert information must go to him
for it.

But while I acknowledge most gratefully
the help his books have been, and have quoted
directly from them whenever the space at my

viii JAPANESE GARDENS

disposal allowed it, I do not present a compli-
cated crib on the theme, which some one who
has never seen a Japanese garden, nor even
sniffed the strange, not over-sweet, odour of
Japan at all, could do. I promise to intrude
with the hideous technicalities; that only bristle
for the subject on paper, as little as may be
for a grasp of the ideas that are the foundation
of the art. If, with the sympathy which I
feel for all forms of Japanese art, and for this
gentle one in particular, I can convey to others
anything of the peace and restful charm, the
delicate and fine delight, that a well-arranged
Japanese garden can give (and they always
are well-arranged, from the best to the poorest) ;
if I can help the traveller to a little more under-
standing, which also means a greater pleasure,
in them, or assist memory in recalling them ;
or, last to name, but first in reality, if I can
add even a little to an appreciation of Mr.
Tyndale's lovely garden studies, I shall be
content.

I regret very much that I have not been
able to retain the seasonal sequence of the
illustrations. I have had to compromise by
placing the pictures as nearly as possible in
the order of the flowering time when they were
painted, and where this was not possible with-

PREFACE ix

out a sacrifice to the intelligibility of the text,
by referring the reader to other parts of the
book. Also, I have not been able in technical
descriptions to illustrate my meaning as often as
I should like, and in such cases, where obscurity
exists, I can only refer the reader to the clear
and lucid descriptions, full of drawings and
diagrams explaining them, in Mr. Josiah Conder's
book on Japanese Landscape Gardening.

I must again acknowledge my indebted-
ness to this book, as well as to Miss Du
Cane's delightful volume on the Flowers of
Japan ; also to my friend. Sir Francis Piggott,
for the botanical names of many plants, as
well as to Mr. Stephen Troyte Dunn of Kew,
formerly of Hong-Kong, who has helped me in
more ways than I can name. I owe much, also,
to Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain, although I
have had the impertinence to disagree with
him often in his strictures on the various arts
of the country, which he knows so much better
than does any other foreigner. I should also
speak of the late Mr. Arthur Lloyd of Tokio,
probably the greatest home (foreign) authority
on Buddhism, whose kindly talks no less than
whose books have been a help to me. It would
be absurd to include Lafcadio Hearn's beautiful
tales and myths of Japan in this list, because it

X JAPANESE GARDENS

goes without saying that anyone who goes to
Japan, or who writes of anything Japanese,
must have read them.

I have drawn on many other books both for
facts and garden lore, but have acknowledged it
always in the accompanying text, but as far
as I know no other book on this exact topic —
Japanese Gardens — exists.

While I do not mention them by name, my
deep thanks are also due to numerous Japanese
friends, made in Hong-Kong and London as well
as during several long sojourns in their country,
and to many garden owners, both rich and
poor, peasant and noble, in that pleasant land,
who, through the medium of mutual sympathy
and enthusiasm, helped me to love and keenly
to appreciate the beautiful results — as well as
the art that created them — of the gardens of
Japan.

HARRIET OSGOOD TAYLOR

Holland Lodge, Addison Road

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. On Japanese Gardens in General
II. Japanese Gardening History .

III. Gardening Principles

IV. Garden Stones . • • •
V. Garden Accessories (Lanterns and Pagodas)

VI. Garden Fences and Hedges
VII. Garden Architecture (Gates, Summer-Houses

and Bridges) . . • •

VIII. Wells, Water-Basins, etc.
IX. Landscape Gardens
X. Green Gardens . . • •

XL Water Gardens and Dried-up Water Scenery
XII. Miniature Gardens

XIII. Some Particular Gardens

XIV. Flower Arrangement
XV. Garden Folk-Lore and Legends— (I) .

XVI. Garden Folk-Lore and Legends— (II) .
XVII. Flower Festivals.
XVIII. The Four Seasons of Flowers .

1

13
26
41
59

73

93
107
121
133
145
161
173
190
209
231
251
271

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Maples at Omori, near Tokio

Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

Plum Trees at Atami

Azaleas by an Old Stairway

A Hillside Garden at Kyoto .

Nanjenji Buddhist Temple Garden, Kyoto

A Rock Garden at Nikko, with Kwannon Image

Cherry Blossoms and Stone Lantern, at Ueno Park

Temple Fence and Gate, Higashi Otani, Kyoto

A Rock and Water Garden, Hakone .

Bignonia-covered Trellis, Maruyama Park, Kyoto

Wistaria at Kameido

White Lotus, the Castle Moat, Kofu

Buddhist Temple Garden, Kofu

Kuradani Temple Garden, Kyoto

Specimen Irises .

Garden at Ashinoyu

Nami Kawa San's Water Garden, Kyoto

A Classical Garden Design, Kyoto

Azaleas in the Choin-in Temple Garden, Kyoto

Hydrangeas in Tea-Garden at Nichi Otani, Kyoto

Irises at Kitano, Kyoto ....

10
20
34
40

50
60
72
82
92
104

116
126
136
142
156
160
170
176
182
194

XIV

JAPANESE GARDENS

FACING PACE

Pine and Pink Lotus, at Kofu . . .212

P.EONIES IN A Tea-Garden, Kyoto . 234

Gateway of Shakwa Gardens, near Tokio 244'

Fishing kor Goldfish at a Winter Fete, Atami . 254

Viewing Chrysanthemums, Mukojima, Tokio . 266

Rock Garden at Nikko (Cosmos and Maple) 284

Single Camellias at Ueno Park, Tokio . 290

" He who knows the most, he who knows what sweets and
virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens,
and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal
man. Only as far as the masters of the world have called in
Nature to their aid can they reach the height of magnificence."

Emerson

" Moreover, it tends to edify the heart if we plant trees and
herbs in our garden, and love them." — Kaibara Yekken

(W. G. Aston's Translation)

JAPANESE GARDENS

CHAPTER I

ON JAPANESE GARDENS IN GENERAL

" Here in my leafy garden where I sit,
Protected by the big trees, kind and green,
I learn to love contentment more than wit.
The lure of known things less than those unseen."

"T "V THILE the gardens of the Japanese have
\ /\ / much of material charm, of rich and
^ ^ plentiful vegetation, of rare and
splendid as well as exquisite though less striking
flowers, of gracious bodily attraction (if I may so
name it), it is to the inner sense, to the mind and
the heart, that they make their chiefest appeal.
In its most real meaning a garden, to them,
must be a place of repose, of contemplation, of
spiritual communion with Nature. There can
a man loaf, and invite his soul ; and, though that
soul may be shrivelled and shrunk to the
dimensions of a withered Jerusalem Rose, it will
swell and grow and blossom in the atmosphere
of the place. The very shopkeeper who may
have done you an ill turn in business (just as a
I

2 JAPANESE GARDENS

child with a stick hits you joyously and without
malice) will retire to the tiny scrap of a place
behind his premises, and, as if whirled away on
the wonderful carpet of the Arabian Nights, he is
another man, in another world, instantly ; and,
with all that is kindly and beautiful and poetic
uppermost, he will contemplate his frail little
Morning Glory in its pot, or tenderly lift his
butterfly-winged babies up to watch the pretty,
swift flashings of the goldfish in the basin. He
no longer represents the somewhat sordid new
Japan, which makes money by selling silk to
foreigners ; which so often models itself on the bad,
not on the good side of their business methods.
He is no longer the harassed innkeeper, the big
mill-owner, the busy, important Government
official ; he has turned back the years, as one
might the red petals of a Lotus — back to the
golden heart of old Japan. He is the brave
follower of the samurai, whose whole creed is
keeping faith ; or he is the samurai himself, a
poet, though a soldier ; or the great daimyo, who
is an artist, though a courtier.

In the old days every common thing to a
Japanese was hedged about with divinity. A god
guarded each humblest tool, lived in every stone
or stump, inspired the simplest act. A spirit was
invoked of peace and joy by a man's putting him-
self in the attitude to receive it. He walked into
his garden, and, as if he had rubbed his magic
ring, the Djin of the garden appeared to soothe,

JAPANESE GARDENS IN GENERAL 3

to comfort, to bless. I once heard Bishop
Brent, that most practical of spiritual men, in
speaking to a congregation of sailors say that
to put themselves en rapport with God and
goodness was as easy as to turn a cock that let
in the Pacific Ocean. So a Japanese enters into
the peace that passeth understanding when he
takes his weary body and tired mind, but open
soul, into that place dedicated to peace. It is
the survival of the Japanese garden, and all
that the love of it still implies, which has saved
Japan from being brutalized by improvement,
from being crushed beneath the responsibility
of transformation into a great Power, that has
redeemed her from the curse that money-making
brings. In the overturning of old ideals, while
love of beauty and living things remains, Japan,
thank God, can never grow into one of the sordid
countries that the West knows so well.

But not only does the average Japanese bring
with him the temperament to realise these deli-
cate delights : the inspiration, the impulse to en-
joy with the soul, as it were, is there before him.
The artist who designed the grounds has already
deliberately put it there, and, in these days,
when mental suggestion has become almost a
commonplace, it would be foolish to deny the
possibility^ of such a sentiment persisting in a
garden.

I dare say the reader may fancy this a far-
fetched idea — both my interpretation and the

4 JAPANESE GARDENS

Japanese original notion, into which I am trying
to put a mystical sense of poetry — but it is
very literally true. The artist plans the grounds,
after a study of the owner's personality and
temperament, as well as of a very complete
review of the capabilities of the place and of the
material at hand to assist in the work. After
this he decides — probably with the owner's help
and largely biased by his wishes — on the style
of garden that is to be evolved. Shall it be
great and grand, a wonderful and striking
artist's picture of some big and famous landscape,
modified and altered, so that it is not merely a
bald and otherwise unconvincing copy but an
illuminating interpretation ? Or shall it repre-
sent instead the last word in finished and elegant
grounds with clipped trees and stone lanterns,
and yet still, in its artificiality and careful finish,
seeming only to suggest a richer phase of Nature ?
Or is it to be one of the many thousands of small
gardens whose plot of ground, scarcely bigger
than a tablecloth, has still the space to present
one of the intimate, serene, and sweet little
glimpses of water and stones and flowering tree
that bring gladness into many of what would
otherwise be such drab, colourless backyards,
such grey and dingy lives ?

I hope it is to be one of the last, for of all
the many lovely things in Japan — high courage
and patriotism, kindness and courtesy to the
old and to the stranger, eternal cheerfulness and

JAPANESE GARDENS IN GENERAL 5

eternal industry, gentleness to children and to birds
and to all timid wild things — I think that one of
the loveliest is their love of beauty, their insist-
ence on it as one of the primary needs of life, and
their belief in it as a moral and spiritual uplifter.
I remember a poor little dwarf, whose tiny
house on the shores of Lake Hakone stood in
front of, but did not conceal, such a scrap of a
garden for the worship of Nature. How she
had cursed him one knew, not only from his
physical affliction, but by his wretched little half-
witted child, a cretin, whose dull, hopeless eyes
were so often seen at the cracks of the shoji.^
But no, he w^as not even ^aZ/-witted, this poor
little creature, for he could not move about as
other young animals can, nor make an intelli-
gible sound. Nevertheless, his father, who might
have been working all day in the hotel garden —
the poor back, with its short legs, pitifully near
the ground he was weeding — would, with his
snatches of song, attract the child's attention
before he reached his home, and would hold up
the flowers he had brought for him, causing even
those poor dull eyes to brighten a little. Never
was that minute plot of earth less than well
cared for ; the little Azalea bushes were clipped,
the stepping-stones were bright, the poor little
shrine in a niche w^as tidy and well tended ; and
yet, handicapped by Nature, ugly and revolting to
look at, poor, of a poverty w^e cannot guess, this

1 Paper-covered sliding windows.

6 JAPANESE GARDENS

man had a poet's heart. The nation is great
whieli even in the souls of the eommon people
shews sueh gentle and beautiful ideas.

The thing that most struek me years ago
when I first went to Japan, and even after
repeated visits and an intimate aequaintance
with many gardens, was, " What luck, what
wonderful luek, these people have ! They do
not need to make their gardens : Nature has
done it for them. It is not that they are so
artistic in composing, but only so wise in not
changing a single stone or tree from the place
in which it was found." And still, after studying
their methods of gardening, and knowing, from
hard work on my own part, the intricacy and
finesse of system that is brought to the subject
by their landscape artists : after seeing a garden
made — hill and stream and projecting rocks and
overhanging trees, from an almost flat and
perfectly bare and unwatered bit of ground — I
find it hard not to think still — so natural is the
result — that theirs is only the good taste which
selects, not the artist mind which creates.

And so one feels that the garden had to be
arranged as it was, because it would have been
impossible to move the great boulders that are
its backbone ; that the lake and the trickling
stream and the cascade must have been set
there by the Divine Landscape Gardener Himself,
and that the beautiful old trees had grown to
that precision of shape and loveliness by the help

JAPANESE GARDENS IN GENERAL 7

of Nature alone. We cannot believe that
enormous sums have probably been paid for
these stones, Vv^hich may have been brought from
hundreds of miles away (perhaps having been
broken in pieces, marked, and stuck together
again). We cannot understand how water,
which, like the wind, goeth where it listeth, has
had its bed of white stones built for it, and has
been trained, as pet dogs are, to run and tumble
and lie down at the will of the master. We cannot
even understand, unless we have seen it done,
that these age-old trees, and the young but
sturdy blossoming ones, have perhaps been
transplanted a few months before to this site.
It is one of the constant wonders of this wonderful
land that a new garden may, in so short a time,
seem an old one.

If a rich man in Japan makes his house
bigger, it goes without saying that he has to
increase the size of his grounds, for, from least
to largest, the one inflexible rule is to keep to
scale in gardens and all surroundings. And this
scale is not only one of size, of feet and inches ;
it means also character, sentiment, adornment :
all must continue the idea, and work towards
a harmonious whole. You would never find
one part of a Japanese garden decorated with a
Greek temple, approached by an Italian pergola,
and surrounded by ' old-fashioned ' flower-beds,
as you might in home places. The whole garden
would be subtly and delicately Japanese.

8 JAPANESE GARDENS

Wherever any ideas are taken from China — as
so many have been — they are incorporated into
the garden poHtic by a process of ' benevolent
assimilation ' ; they arc no longer foreign, but
indefinably though perfectly Japanese — of the
soil, because the work of man attempts only a
transcription of natural scenery. A well-known
story bears on this point. A wealthy man in
England had laid out, at great expense, what he
fondly thought was a Japanese garden. There
were grotesquely clipped trees, stone lanterns,
a gimcrack pagoda, a creaking and unsafe
moon-shaped bridge thrown across an arbitrarily
trained stream of water. In his pride, the owner
took a Japanese gentleman to see it, who
innocently summed up his conventionally polite
praise of the place by saying, "It is truly
wonderful : I have never seen anything like it."
As much can be said of most Japanese gardens
outside Japan. If the soul is absent, how can
dead lips deliver a message ?

The nouveau riche in Japan does not, as in
Western lands, at once set up motor cars, and
huge houses with swarms of servants, but he
enlarges his garden, or gets new ones ; and such
absolute connoisseurs are even this class (and
from them straight down to the lowliest coolie
does the same innate good taste appear) that
he may produce, as I say, in a few months or
years, as the case may be, a garden fit to compare
with the best in the land.

JAPANESE GARDENS IN GENERAL 9

Almost incredible sums are paid for stones ;
for trees, that are wonderfully transplanted,
even when of great size ; for dwarf plants, for
flower-pots, for particularly choice Chrysan-
themums ; for specimen Irises ; for beautifully
designed stone lanterns or bridges, or well-
covers, or pagodas. A New York millionaire's
trained architect or decorator could not more
carefully consider and compare all the little
details of ornament and design of the house, the
appropriateness as to period and colour and make
of the pictures, furniture, rugs, and bibelots
with which he adorns it, than would a Japanese
for his garden. Yet it is not this monetary
value that makes their worth, but their appro-
priateness to the general scheme, the harmony
each separate note brings to the whole. That
may be valuable to one man which is worthless
to another, and the priceless ornament useless
to the owner of a simple garden.

In the Tempo Period (1830 to 1844) such
great sums were spent on stones that an Imperial
Edict was issued, restricting the amount that
might be paid. Venice, in her opulent days,
gave no greater sums for gold-decked gondolas ;
and Holland, in spite of her thrift and her
riches, was not so extravagant in the sums spent
on Tulips as were the Japanese noblemen with
their specimen Chrysanthemums, their Morning
Glories, their Irises, and their garden stones.
To this day no foreigner will pay what they will

10 JAPANESE GARDENS

spend for such things, because the one exquisite
touch means less to us.

A Japanese, in his garden, — or in some one
else's, perhaps, — sits in the particular spot allotted
to him ; in his own garden, on the Master's
Stone ; in another's, on the Guest's Seat of
Honour, or on the Guest's Isle, and drinks in
the beauty as though it were golden sake,^
tasting each honeyed, burning drop as it goes
down, but never satiated. Sometimes he sits —
like an image of Buddha, with a sensual face,
perhaps, but with a spiritual mind teaching him
how to look — sunk absorbed in the peaceful
scene before him, in a very Nirvana of happiness
— not himself, it would seem, but part of the
spirit of the place.

I remember once, at Shimonoseki, — which,
together with Moji, makes the Liverpool and
Manchester, the New York and Pittsburg, of
Japan ; busy, bustling, dreadful places from the
Oriental point of view, — seeing a young man in
contemplation before a Rose. It was in a little
nursery garden to which we had found our way
by back streets and rather foul alleys, in search
of flowers to take on board ship, and a stone
lantern for our garden in Hong-Kong. A poor
little spot it was, and the old Okka San,^ who
seemed the only one in charge of the place, had
no word of English, and could not understand
the few we had of Japanese. A lean young man

^ Native wine. ■^ House mistress.

iiiiiilliiiiiiliiilil^

uamrnKKOmmmimamimmmmmmtsiiam

JAPANESE GARDENS IN GENERAL 11

of perhaps five-and-twenty was standing, or
rather leaning, beside a framework of flower-pots,
watching a Tea Rose open. My husband, who
had already visited the spot before breakfast,
had seen him there thus early, drooping before
an opening flower, and said that he did not
appear to have budged an inch since, though
this was an hour or two later. He was pale
and languid, and seemed so absorbed by his
rosebud that, although he was evidently a
gentleman (and they almost always speak a
little English), we did not like to ask him to
translate for us, until our negotiations for a
beautiful stone lantern seemed likely to fall
through because of no medium of tongues.
But as soon as we had begged for his assistance
he roused himself, and at once went off to find
the master of the place and to bring him to us.
They were so long away that finally we gave up
in despair, and went off to a near-by temple
to look around ; but by great good luck we met
our aesthetic friend again, the garden's master
with him, returning to his preserves. This
man, the master, spoke English, but, as even a
small transaction takes an age in Japan (and
this was a big one, for the lantern weighed
nearly a ton), we negotiated for a good while :
and all the time the visiting man of the pallid
countenance stood in his grey kimono worship-
ping, oblivious of his surroundings, in front of his
Rose.

12 JAPANESE GARDENS

And the recollection that counts for me of
dusty, noisy, Western-imitating Shimonoseki is
not of its bold and painted nesans ^ at the hotel ;
not of its rough and boisterous boys ; not of its
noise and rush and business ; not of our perilous
passage across the straits, when we thought our
little steam-launch would be carried out to sea,
stone lantern and all, by the tremendous tide,
and that we were about to be engulfed in the
boiling tide-rips ; but of the quiet poet before
his Rose.

For a garden in Japan may be only one flower
in a pot, if its message, which is from God, is
heard and understood by the god which is the
divine spark in each human soul.

Japanese gardens have not only the fair
external beauty of a pretty woman, of a rosy,
dimpled child : they have the inner grace which
makes its appeal to the heart long after colour
has faded and the lustre and freshness of youth
are past. They have the potential interest of
the child, all youth's wondering, iridescent possi-
bilities, added to the deep heart, the sympathetic
power of the woman, and the strength, the
virility, the tonic force of the fine and large-
souled man.

If you find no more in a Japanese garden
than the look, or the lack, of a pretty face, you
have never learned its magic, you have not got
at the true spirit of its conception.

' Literally " miss daughters," i.e. serving maids.

CHAPTER II

JAPANESE GARDENING HISTORY

" The stranger who has wandered far,
The friend with welcome smile.
All sorts of men who come and go.
Meet at this mountain stile —
They meet and rest awhile."

A Hundred Verses from old Japan
(Wm. N. Porter)

THE history of Japanese landscape art, like
that of its country, is one of the most
interesting parts of an interesting
subject, because so much myth, so much poetry
is intermingled with its facts and its never dull
prose. It is a very human art, and it is pleasant
to think that priest and prince and pauper
alike have all had a hand in the making of it.
In the case of the pauper, this perhaps has been
by the obedient following of the dictates of the
masters, so hardening the rules ; but, however
this may be, all classes have, sooner or later,
been concerned in it, and, if the next greatest
man to him who utters a wise or beautiful
thought is that one who repeats it, then these
others have shown their greatness by appre-

14 JAPANESE GARDENS

ciation. Imitation has been the sincerest
flattery.

The art of landscape gardening is said to
have been introduced into Japan from India,
via China; or, perliaps, from India, via Cliina,
via Korea, as so many of the Japanese arts
are supposed to have come, but it seems more
probable that Buddhism influenced religious
sentiment — which, in its turn, had its effect
on the arrangement of temple gardens, and,
through those, on other gardens — than that
Indian originals served in any concrete form
as models. No one who knows the formality
and regularity and artificiality of Indian gardens
could seriously suppose those of the Japanese
to be copies of them. And, in the same way,
whatever they have taken from China — and all
their arts came first from there — they have so
adapted to their own needs and ideas, developed
so much by their own genius, that they have
evolved them into products wholly Japanese.
It is almost as foolish to imagine that India or
China created Japanese art influences as to say
that, because Shakespeare took his plots from
other writers and from other countries than his
own, he is not the actual author of his plays;
and that they are really Italian or French, as
the case may be, because the post on which he
flung the mantle of his world-enveloping genius
happened to have come from this or that country.

Buddhism has undoubtedly been responsible

JAPANESE GARDENING HISTORY 15

for more changes in things Japanese that count
to the philosopher than has any other outward or
moral force. The landing of Commodore Perry,
and the subsequent development of Japan into a
world Power, was as nothing compared with the
all-pervasive sentiment which grew from this
into the hearts, the religion, the very warp and
woof of the national life, so that no one could
say what issues had not been affected by it.
But it did not change the people, their habits,
their ideals ; it simply grew into them.

And so the influence of China on Japan, of
which we hear so much, was by suggestion rather
than by setting her a formal copy. In painting,
how far has Japan advanced since she first began
to work along the same lines ! Comparisons are
odious, but, to instance language, although
Japan has taken so many words bodily from
the other yellow race, — almost all her gardening
names are incorporated direct from them, — how
she has turned these words from the hideous,
chopped, hasty noise, all consonants, gutturals,
and nasals, which it was, into musical sounds,
liquid as Italian, only those who have heard both
can say. In poetry (although Mr. Chamberlain
speaks of it as puerile), how have the Japanese
surpassed their masters, and given the world
some of the most exquisite (even in transla-
tion), most poignant passages in any literature !
While in gardening, how have they evolved,
from a formal and pretentious Chinese model

16 JAPANESE GARDENS

(which is not without its charms, and here are
Mr. Conder's ' quaint and fanciful conceits ' if
you will) the most spontaneous - seeming,
perfectly balanced, and most fascinating art of
landscape gardening in the w orld !

Mr Conder tells us that the sixth century
saw the introduction of Chinese ideas into
Japan — in monasteries, of course ; for priests,
in every country, were the cultivators and
earliest workers in all the arts. The Chinese
originator is supposed to be Yohan Koan Han,
wdio made great artificial hills, a hundred or
more feet high (' Coal ' Hill, near the Tartar
City in Peking, is one of this sort), and brought
water by pipes to form artificial lakes and ponds.
Later, in the time of the ' Son ' Dynasty, another
artist, Chu - Men - Ton - Kwan, adorned other
artificial rockeries of equal height with flower-
ing trees and shrubs. But before this time the
Japanese had a style of their own, called the
Shindai Shiki, or the ' Imperial Hall ' style,
which shows that the impulse towards artistic
gardening, together with a love of Nature,
already existed. Although not much is known
concerning it, except that the quadrangle,
about three sides of which the palace was built,
contained an irregular lake, with an island
and a little bridge connecting it with the shore,
and that a Plum and an Orange tree grew one
on each side of the entrance to the hall, it is
enough to show that formalism, even then,

JAPANESE GARDENING HISTORY 17

did not reign any more than it does now. The
palace to which I refer was that used for Imperial
receptions, but unfortunately Mr. Conder, my
authority, does not mention where it was
situated.

The next great impulse to gardening, as
well as to other arts, was during the Kamakura
Period (from the middle of the twelfth to the
beginning of the fourteenth century), when
the Buddhist priests cultivated and refined it.
To them, and not to the Chinese (although
the names are of Chinese origin), belongs the
credit of designating stones by fanciful names,
and attributing sentiments and moral qualities
to them. If thinking a thing so makes it so,
then this charming and poetic idea well deserves
its long-continued perpetuation. I cannot but
prefer — even in this materialistic age when
we are only just beginning to turn towards
the influences of spiritual notions on hard,
everyday things — a rock which rejoices in the
name of the ' Guardian Stone,' and has its
place and functions all prescribed for it, to
an ordinary stone without a name or associations
of any sort. To know something of geology,
of botany, of any natural science, helps to
interest the most casual walker or stroller in a
garden : the artist is never bored by the quietest
country life where he can find a picture (and
he is not an artist if he cannot) ; and so, when
it is remembered that, in addition to all these

18 JAPANESE GARDENS

gifts of the gods which the ordinary Japanese
may bring to his garden love, he may also
add the more human one of historical, or mytho-
logical (they are much the same thing to him),
as well as poetical and ethical, ideas too, it
is not to be wondered at that gardens are a
national passion.

The priests, then (to go back to history
again), ascribed imaginary religious and moral
attributes to the grouping of the stones, a
custom which has more or less survived to this
day ; and gave charming and poetic names,
such as ' Cloud-shaped Island,' ' Pine-bark
Island,' ' Spouting,' and ' Thread-Fall,' etc.,
to little islets (which, with lakes, were now
considered indispensable) and to cascades. At
that time there was a great insistence on the
water part of a garden, whether as pond,
flowing river, or leaping mountain cataract ;
but a little later the ' Dried-up-Water Scenery '
came into vogue, and still remains a most
popular method of indicating, if not the presence,
at least the influence of water. Some of these
examples are so charming and so convincing that
I cannot pass them without a word or two more.
Sometimes a dry cascade is formed, a rough-
and-tumble torrent of grey and mossy green
stones, which would almost make the observer
believe that real water had but that moment
ceased to fling itself headlong over them, or
at least that a tiny stream still trickled there.

JAPANESE GARDENING HISTORY 19

More often, however, the scene suggested is
the shallow bed of a river, with round white
pebbles, and a few of the more prominent
prescribed rocks of classical rules, with perhaps
also a pretty sandy beach which still shows the
marks of the receding water, as if drought
had but just overtaken it. Hills artificially
arrived at, valleys and paths winding through
natural-looking plantations, all help the effect
and show the art, which reached its height
under the direction of Soseki, a priest who
flourished during the Muro Machi Period, in
the fifteenth century. He laid down many rules
which are still observed, although no treatise
of his, so far as is known, remains.

At this time, — that of the Ashikaga Regents,
— poetry, and those two arts which are so nearly
allied to gardening, and which influenced it
largely, — the Tea Ceremonial and Flower Arrange-
ment,— also became popular. As more and
more ceremony surrounded the dignified tea-
drinking, the grounds about the room set
apart for the purpose received greater attention
too ; and it was for this that the classic rules
and standards of beauty became so fixed that,
later, no man of taste dared to disagree with
the opinions of the master, lest he should
argue himself without taste ; while an ugly design
was declared by the experts ' unlucky,' so as
to keep up the standard of the art. It is as
if in our day a bold man might laugh at Dante,

20 JAPANESE GARDENS

and call the Divi?ie Comedy ' all rot ' ! As if
another Bernard Shaw might scoff at Shake-
speare, and (chuckling with inward joy and
amusement) declare himself his equal ! As if
another Robert Ingersoll should thunder out de-
nunciations of the Bible, and jeer at Holy Writ.

Almost the only novelty which these great
exponents of the art introduced were clipped
shrubs and trees. While the shapes of these
were never so exorbitantly ugly as those of the
Dutch, they remain to this day, to my mind,
the least attractive feature of Japanese gardens.
This tree-clipping, one fancies, must have been
introduced from Holland, — although it may
have been the other way about, — for the Dutch
were very early in the field, and at this time
were more or less at home in Japan, where they
introduced many European ideas. Or the
Portuguese, who gained a footing there about
this time, may have had something to do with
it, for they certainly left their names, at least,
behind them, as one can tell by the present
pronunciation and spelling of many words.

The Official Catalogue, sent me from the
Kyoto Commercial Museum, gives the history
of landscape gardening so fully, though in such
short measure, that, at the risk of repeating
myself, I insert it verbatim, including spelling,
which is not always that recognized : —

" At first, when the Chinese style of archi-

JAPANESE GARDENING HISTORY 21

lecture was adopted in Japan, especially in
palace buildings, the gardens were quite inde-
pendent of the buildings. It was so when the
Emperor Kammu constructed a garden called
Shizenen south of his palace in Kyoto. The
traces of this fact can still be seen in the garden,
though it has suffered some changes. During
the Fujiwara Period, a style of architecture
called Shinden-zukuri {Shinden Shiki) prevailed
among the upper classes. It was at this time
that gardens were laid out in connexion with
buildings. Besides ponds, bridges, and other
ornaments, small cottages called Tsuridono
were introduced into the gardens.

" The influence of the Zen sect of Buddhism
and of Tea Ceremony began to tell on the gardens
and buildings, especially in the Ashikaga Era.
It was from this time on that the garden was
laid out in harmony with the buildings. This
was a decided step towards the perfection of
the art. Much credit is due the masters such
as the priest named Muso (1276-1351), and
Soami (1435-1490), who laid out the garden
of Ginkakuji, still in excellent preservation,
and Kobori Enshu (1579-1647), whose masterly
works are still to be admired in Katsura-no-
Rikyu, the detached palace at Katsura, Kodaiji,
Daitokuji, Yuboan.

"Kyoto has many gardens of note in good
preservation. They show the characteristic
superiority of Japanese landscape gardening

22 JAPANESE GARDENS

in that each is so laid out that the distant
natural scenery appears a part of it, giving
the effect of unlimited expanse. Although the
actual size of a garden may be but a small
fraction of an acre, it is so constructed as to
appear to extend to the distant hills."

Other great exponents of Cha-no-yu
(' Tea Ceremony ') became, because of the
bearing of the one on the other, the veritable
dictators of the art. Enshiu and Sen-no-Rikiu
were the most famous. The latter is named
with the great general patron of all the arts,
Hideyoshi, for whom he designed many gardens,
and who made him in return an abbot. How-
ever, even in Japan, the favour of princes is
not to be depended on, for the poor man ended
by having to commit Hara-kiri, when he was
over seventy years of age. Sen-no-Rikiu's man-
dates have become law, but, as they are rules
founded on common sense, as well as informed
by poetical and ethical sentiment, they have
deservedly been long-lived.

Kobori Enshiu has left many gardens to
carry on his fame that, even in their present
state of comparative neglect, are lovely as a
poet's dream. The Konchi-in gardens of the
Nanzenji Temple, the Kodaiji Temple grounds,
and a part of the old Awata Palace, all in Kyoto,
may be named as beautiful monuments of
his artistic genius. The first is said by the

JAPANESE GARDENING HISTORY 23

guide-books, through the arrangement of its
important stones, to form the Chinese character
or ideograph for ' heart ' ( /fiv ). Another, Mr.
Conder tells us, is meant to suggest in miniature
the Garden of Paradise ; but each might be that.
While these temple and palace grounds are
stately and rather formal, and of the highly
finished style of composition, tea - gardens,
which have most affected the artistic impulses
of other gardens, have, as a rule, been kept
wild, and more or less rough in character.
Here is what the three greatest exponents of
the art of landscape gardens and Tea Ceremonial
have bequeathed to us as their ideals for a tea
garden. Sen-no-Rikiu's was : " The lovely
precincts of a secluded mountain shrine, with
the red leaves of autumn scattered around."
Enshiu's was : " The sweet solitude of a
landscape in clouded moonlight, with a half
gloom between the trees." Ogari Sotau's
was : "A grassy wilderness in autumn, with
plenty of wild flowers." All are different, but
all are for Nature. Contrast these ideals
(which are most assuredly put into practice
by even modern garden makers in the Flowery
Kingdom) with the gardens for tea that one
sees in England — earwiggy places of toppling
arbour and untidy formality, often enough :
or with German, or German-American beer
gardens or picnic grounds, with their noise,
and plank tables, and smell of beer (and

24 JAPANESE GARDENS

humanity) : or even with the open-air cafes
of France and Italy, with the pathos of their
vines, and their strugghng plants in pots or
tubs!

So, from the end of the fourteenth century
for two hundred years, the ' Tea Garden '
Style — or what might be called the ' Classical
Japanese idea ' of gardens — reigned supreme ;
and although the modern, more ornate, more
artificial modes were adopted later (so that
the extravagance and luxury in garden adorn-
ment had to be curbed by Imperial Edict
near the middle of the last century), yet we see
in this style a sweet and poetic interpretation
of Nature whch has grown into the bone and
sinew of the art, and which is to this day the
most persistent feature in their gardens. Just
as Buddhism has grown into the very lives of
the people, has mingled itself with their ancient
Shinto religion, — so that, though you may be
born a Shintoist, you must die a Buddhist,^
— so these ' back-to-nature ' ideas in gardening
have grown into the innermost hearts of the
people, rich and poor, wise and simple, and
have become an expression of their character.

People are born poets and artists or they are
not. In Japan generally they are ; and even
the mercenary and ' progressive ' (save the

* The Buddhist ceremonial is almost invariably used for funerals,
even among the most rigid Shintoists. Indeed, there is no Shinto
funeral ceremony.

JAPANESE GARDENING HISTORY 25

mark !) spirit of this mechanical, boiler-hammer-
ing, railway-laying, factory-building age cannot
wholly wrest from them their inheritance.
From history to prophecy : if ever it should,
then the day that Japan ceases to love her gentle-
spirited gardens, and to rejoice in their peace
and their healing restfulness to the soul, that
day also will she lose her love for children and
youth ; she will lose her pity and her kindliness,
her art and her poetry, and with them her
wonderful patriotism, her fearless courage, her
strength and power in war, her steadfast devotion
and self-sacrifice. She will lose all, in a word,
that makes her not only greatest in the Orient,
but one of the greatest nations in the whole
world ; for these things are of the spirit, and
when the spirit dies, the man, the nation, is
doubly and eternally dead.

CHAPTER III

GARDENING PRINCIPLES

" Oh I Adamant Art I The Garden Artist says :
Thus may you plant, and thus and thus may move.
You love your garden, set in such strict ways ?
My sweetheart's small, but limits not my love."

A

N art whose only limits are those set by
Nature herself is not a restricted one;
and, although a little study of the
involved considerations of the Japanese land-
scape artist makes one suppose that it is too
much hedged about by classic formalism to
have any spontaneity or freshness left in it, a
deeper scrutiny convinces one that the boundaries
of this science are only those of Nature's own
making. She is the fountain-head, the great
teacher ; hers is the infallible pronouncement.

Put simply, landscape gardening in Japan is
a reproduction, more or less reduced in scale,
of the scenery of the surrounding country. This
is its material foundation ; but, just as every
scene from Nature, of whatever composition of
rock and river and hedgerow, has its effect on
the feelings and the imagination, so the Japanese

GARDENING PRINCIPLES 27

garden has, beneath the beautiful body that
meets the eye, the aesthetic sentiment that is
perceived only by the mind, the heart, the soul.
This is the primary aim of a garden, not simply
to tickle the eye, to display the owner's wealth,
or to give a background to a garden fete, but
definitely to suggest tranquillity or awe, homely
pleasure and the simplicity of open country,
or the exhilaration and inspiration of rugged
and wild Nature.

And when so many people — Mr. Basil Hall
Chamberlain among them — declare that they
see nothing more in Japanese gardens than a
certain charm of quaintness, — hardly more beauty
than that of strangeness, — they simply announce
that they see with the eyes only, and not with
the true insight of the soul. I do not complain
of them any more than I do of those unhappy
mortals who are unable to find anything in the
pictures of the old masters, who are bored by
what is not called popular music, who cannot
read those poets whose alchemy has changed
the drab lead of life into the gold and iridescence
of a dream.

Even Mr. Josiah Conder, who, by his great
knowledge of the science of Japanese landscape
gardening, has made himself almost its prophet,
thinks that these gardens could not be trans-
ferred to another land and clime lest they might
appear affected ' examples of a quaint conceit.'
And yet I venture to say that if the most rigid

28 JAPANESE GARDENS

principles of the art were applied to the making
of such gardens in Europe or America, omitting
only the typical architectural adjuncts, — which
are not essentials, — no one, although instantly
struck by their quiet appeal to the heart, would
consider them the product of a different and
alien art and land. Unluckily, it is just those
needless features which are reproduced, and the
true principles of the science are disregarded —
not even so much as the letter, much less the
spirit being put there. But if a presentation
informed by the real intentions of Japanese
landscape gardening were offered, it would be a
different thing. Such gardens would not be
found unusual, except for beauty, and the sense
of repose and tranquillity they might give. They
would, after all, never appear as exotic as do
the beautiful Japanese Lilies, golden-barred,
and crimson-and-brown-freckled, and red, whose
bulbs, imported in such large quantities by us,
have now become a recognized feature in English
gardens. They would soon be regarded like the
many beautiful flowering trees and shrubs we
cultivate nowadays, which only bear, or suggest,
the description ' japonica ' to the expert.
Dwarf trees, except in flower-pots, cannot be
considered typical of their gardens, as, if they
are planted in the ground, they cannot be
stunted. Trees twisted and bent into the
curious, weird shapes that the Japanese gardener
alone seems to know how to get, look as though

GARDENING PRINCIPLES 29

the hand of Nature, not of man, had wrought
them into such strange Hnes of beauty. Of
course these shapes are sometimes exaggerated,
as who can say that Nature could thus often
be at once so perverse and so kind — could, by
the effect of age, and almost of deformity, give
so many trees these lines of rugged strength,
and such curves, or rather angles, of beauty ?

If their art did not conceal its methods —
if the eye could detect the craftsman in the
artist — it would not pass muster as an art at
all. Probably in our transplanted garden only
the pounded-down, purple-brown earth, or the
use of pebbles or drifted sand in place of green
grass, would strike one as unusual, or as ' quaint
and fanciful in conceit.'

In the case of Mr. Chamberlain, I simply do
not believe that he does not see. He is too
deeply imbued with the very spirit of Japan
not to see. He pokes mild ridicule at Japanese
poetry, and even dissects it coldly, but he
belies all this on the next page by a charming
and sympathetic interpretation of those nearly
untranslatable things, Japanese poems. So I
believe his other strictures on their arts, which
he always damns with faint praise, or dismisses
finally as puerile ; his dictum that their gardens
may do well enough to please these pleasant
children, but are hardly worth the grown-up
consideration of the foreigner — are only the
insistence of the Briton that whatever is British

80 JAPANESE GARDENS

is best, even when a little inward voice tells
him plainly not to be too sure of that. I like
this fine British scorn for any art that, even if
it has not arisen on its island soil (and what
art did ?) has not the sanction at least of long
use there. It has taken thirty years for Whistler,
— an American by birth and the acrid strength
of him, though claimed by France for his art
methods, and by England for his long residence
there, — with his great power with the brush,
and his stinging wit, to open the British eyes to
the wonderful suggestion and beauty that lie
in Japanese methods of painting ; and it will
surely take more than another thirty years
(unless such another prophet shall arise) before
any writer or painter can do the same for
Japanese gardens.

Already in America our great landscape
artists — whether directly influenced by the
Japanese or no I cannot pretend to say — have
gone to the same authority — Nature — for in-
spiration. Central and Morningside Parks in
New York, the Fens in Boston, as well as the
Fells, a little farther away towards Maiden, and
a dozen other garden spaces in and about that
city. Riverside Park in Philadelphia, and many
others in the Western Cities, could be named as
having bits of them arranged according to such
ideals, even if their designers were not directly
influenced by the study of Japanese garden
principles. I say it steadily, and with a fairly

GARDENING PRINCIPLES 31

wide acquaintance with parks, public gardens,
and pleasaunces all over the world, that the
parks in the United States are the most beautiful
to be found anywhere, because, like Japanese
gardens, they base the science of their art on
Nature. I do not include Japanese public
parks, with the single exception of Ueno, and
the remains of one or two others done in the
old style, in Tokio, because, whenever they have
laid out public grounds according to so-called
modern Western methods, they are so vilely
ugly that I prefer not to speak of them at all.
As a matter of fact, wherever their landscape
art has been affected by our ideas they have
degenerated, and wherever our gardens have
been inspired by the same fundamental ideas
as their classical models it has been to their
betterment. But, while I have not one word
of praise for the mid- Victorian hideousness of
their new official grounds and buildings, I feel
serenely confident that such an artistic people
must in time return to their own old ideals of
the gardener's art. The feeling for the poetry
of Nature, the sympathetic response to the appeal
of natural beauty, is so great in the whole people,
from Emperor to rickshaw coolie, that no amount
of national pride — which thinks it ranks itself
with the great nations of the West in assuming
their bad taste — can for long be so misguided.
Some of the delicate attention to detail will
have gone with the replacing of hand and heart

82 JAPANESE GARDENS

labour by machine-made articles, but, in the stead
of it, may come a breadth and bigness of effect
and of outlook that is not, perhaps, now a
distinguishing feature of their artistic expression.
But we must return from the realms of prophecy
as to the future of landscape gardening in Japan,
and explain some of its guiding principles.

The one infallible and inexorable rule is that
everything must be to scale, and that one part
must never violate the laws of classic proportion
by overweighting any other part. For instance,
a small house, if it has not always a small
garden, will admit no objects such as trees,
lanterns, or any architectural features near it
so much out of proportion as to send it out of
its true place in the plan. Also, no greater
finish is allowed in one part of the scheme than
in another ; the three grades of finish — rough,
intermediate, and highly wrought — are always
adhered to throughout. All ornaments, build-
ings, fences, stones, lake borders, even the shapes
of trees and shrubs, must harmonize in this
respect. As a consequence, even the detractors
of Japanese gardens have to confess that in no
others is there a more assured sense of unity and
of harmony of purpose.

The garden is planned from all points of
view, and the scene from Nature from which it
is a reduced but never literal transcript has been
sketched and mapped and forgotten before it
can be revived again. It may be that a small-

GARDENING PRINCIPLES 33

sized copy of some famous scene has been chosen,
— for the landscape artist loves to hitch his
wagon to a star, — just as we might, if imitating
some one else, pick on a great man, or a very-
noble and charming woman. The only differ-
ence would be that we should probably hit on
some angularity of character, some extravagance
that seemed to make for individuality, — for
how often are bad manners copied because they
are the unhappy endowment of a famous
politician, or of a duchess, or a well-known
beauty ! — instead of eliminating the ugly details,
as the Japanese does in his landscape picture,
using only those salient features that will at
once adorn the place and yet carry on the real
spirit of the model.

All this having been done, the pattern is
fitted to the cloth, and carefully cut, having had
its design already modified, according to the
size and character of the ground, and — though
this is of less importance — due consideration
having been given to such stones and lanterns
and existing trees as the owner may have on
hand, and may wish to use. Of course, this
has all been studied out beforehand, and the
artist has taken as his leitmotiv the best thing —
whether lake, or waterfall, or rocky hill — he finds
there. If the place commands a view (only it
seldom does, except in miniature, as they build
in valleys mostly, and leave the hill -tops for
temples), then the garden is made the foreground,
3

84 JAPANESE GARDENS

as it were, so as to seem to take possession of
the whole thing.^ Perhaps the ground is flat,
and a scene including hills, a tumbling cascade,
or a lake is desired — for the ideal landscape
includes water scenery in combination with
land and trees. If hills are wanted, they and
the hollows for valleys are first made, and then
the lake bed, or the pebbly trough for the
brook, is dug. Fujiyama's cone, sometimes a
mere doll's plaything, is included in the repre-
sentation of this favourite scene. The scale of
comparative size diminishes from a goodly sized
Fuji, two hundred feet high, to the little porcelain
ones used in the tea-plate garden.

Exposure, or what comes to more than that,
for it includes the idea of moral influences from
different quarters (the Fung Shut of the Chinese),
is a most important point to be considered. It
is unlucky, literally as well as superstitiously,
to face North, because of evil spirits, and evil,
biting winds. The West is also taboo, unless,
as sometimes happens, Fuji or some other
well -loved mountain can be seen from that
side, for the summer sun from that quarter
burns and parches. The Southern exposure,
as in most other places in the Northern Hemi-
sphere, is the most desired, as it provides the
warm sun in winter, the cool breeze in summer,

* The accompanying picture of Mr. Blow's garden on a hill-side in
Kyoto is an example of this. Even the Yasaka Pagoda seems a part
of the same domain.

GARDENING PRINCIPLES 35

and the kind and pleasant influences that come
with it. Next after that the East is considered
lucky, for its sun in the mornings in winter is
the warmest, and in the summer the least trying.
Water, too, must come from these directions.
I thought it only a coincidence at first that the
little streams which irrigate and adorn more
than half the gardens of Japan did this, until
I saw a lusty brook being diverted and coaxed,
apparently uphill, in order to have it run from
South to North, so that it might not bring into
the place the goblins and adverse influences of
the North !

The gardens are almost always at the back
of the house, for seclusion, and the best rooms
face upon them. As the garden is a sanctuary,
the private chapel, the religious retreat of the
family, as well as its place of pleasure and relaxa-
tion, it can readily be seen that the adornment
of the street, at which the altruistic American
' front yard ' aims, is not considered.

One of the constantly repeated fallacies
about the Japanese is that they have no idea
of perspective. While it cannot be claimed that
in drawing with pen or brush they always
respect its laws, no landscape artists in the
world lay more stress upon it in the making of
their outdoor pictures, their gardens. There
are two well-known schools of perspective which
are employed. One sets the big trees and
ornaments, such as lanterns, pagodas, bridges,

86 JAPANESE GARDENS

etc., in the foreground (that is, near the house),
putting smaller ones farther off so that they
appear to be getting smaller as they recede into
the distance. This might be called the scientific
school, and its method was employed by the
famous master of the ' Tea-Drinking Ceremony '
(Cha-no-ya) and of landscape gardening (Sen-
no-Rikiu). It is very successful, especially in
small gardens, where big trees at the back of
the premises would make its boundaries more
pronounced, and would seem to shut the place in.
In this plan distant hills are smaller than near
ones, but the artificial water, because it is flat,
and lowers the look of the land about it, is
higher in the background, so as to send this
farther off. This is called the ' Distance-
lowering Style.'

The opposite, which might be considered
the natural Perspective School, is called the
' Distance - raising Style ' ; it places its small
things in the front, and lets distance and Nature
herself lower the size and create the perspective
for the larger objects and big trees on the
horizon line. Even in a small garden there is
something to be said for this plan ; the eye is
carried on and up, so that it gives a sense of
more beyond. It is, however, best suited to
large grounds, where big scenic effects are aimed
at. Furuba Oribe was the prophet of this
method. In either style the paths would turn
and twist, the stepping-stones be laid at delightful

GARDENING PRINCIPLES 3T

angles in attractive groups; for even the tyro
knows that a curved road seems — and is — longer
than a straight one.

As so much of the foundation of this art is
to get the effect of natural scenery, it is essential
to work always towards the object of making
the garden appear larger than it really is ; for
most gardens are small, and even the big ones
want to look bigger, and to suggest stretches
of scenery. To attain this, other rules of art
enter : horizontal objects are placed in front
of standing ones — as a ' Recumbent Stone '
beside a 'Statue Rock,' or a Standard lantern;
a smooth stretch of turf (if it is used) set off by
a group of trees ; or a lake nestling beneath a
rocky hill.

Japanese artists declare that it is far easier
to design a big than a small garden ; and one
can see that the balance of value in the micro-
scopic garden becomes so delicate that apothe-
cary's scale would, figuratively, have to be used.
The large garden can afford big open spaces,
the relief of plainness to the eye tired by a com-
plexity of objects of interest, but small ones
must, by infinite detail, give the effect of size ;
just as a little woman in a dress with a big floral
pattern upon it seems fatter and larger, while
a big woman in a plain dark colour seems to
reduce her dimensions, so the least scrap of a
garden, by a multiplicity of points of interest,
carrying attention from one spot to another.

88 JAPANESE GARDENS

appears to gain in breadth and size. Again, as
lengthwise stripes give height, so plantations of
slender trees earry the eyes of the mind up,
and by their columns, one behind the other on-
wards, give distance and, that best thing of all,
mystery.

But with all this attention to detail, to a
complex and intricate appeal to the sight, and
in spite of the national passion for the look of
age, no litter or untidiness is ever permitted.
Lichens and weather stains, which a Japanese
gardener will take any amount of pains to get,
must not imply disorder ; the natural decay of
wood, which is so beautiful, must not go so far
as rottenness, or imperil the safety of the object
for which it is used ; velvety mosses must not
suggest uncleanliness or neglect. Just as in
houses everything is scrupulously clean and
well cared for, so in gardens no slovenliness is
permitted. Although water is so freely used,
and the hardly pounded earth, that takes the
place of our grass, is always kept cool and
damp with constant sprinkling, no puddles are
allowed, no mud may exist for more than an
hour or two.

Coolness is a great desideratum, and shady
Wistaria-covered arbours and rustic pavilions
are often seen, while trees are trimmed to
afford shade as much as for beauty. But shadows
and coolness, however much desired, are not
obtained by overcrowding. The relief of open

GARDENING PRINCIPLES 39

spaces must always be given, no matter how
small the trees have to be kept to ensure this.

I remember a lovely garden at Karuizawa,
where the British Ambassador's wife spent a
summer, which, to the Japanese idea, was
ruined because of neglect in this point. The
plan had doubtless been all right in the beginning,
but, as the place was let to foreigners, less
pains were taken to keep its values right, and
the trees grew too big, and open spaces were
crowded. Even to our ideas the trees and
shrubbery were too close to the house, stifling
it, keeping out the breeze, and harbouring
insects in their damp shadows. All these errors
brought it strikingly home to one who battled
with mosquitoes at tea on the lawn how right
Japanese gardening principles are, even from
their and our different view-points.

One idea of theirs, with regard to trees,
might be adopted by the foreigner who wishes
to have it appear that he owns more country
than is really his. If vegetation of a distinct
and characteristic sort is seen beyond a man's
limits, he at once plants other trees of the
same sort on his ground, so that it looks as if
all were part of his own domain. And if one
rare tree were found at a distance from the
house, another would be planted near, to give
a ' family ' look to it. But this does not cause
a cheapening of effect by too much repetition.
It is exactly a parallel of the method of a painter

40 JAPANESE GARDENS

who repeats a striking note of colour in dimin-
uendo in the distance, so as to heighten its
telling qualities in the foreground. The Japanese
says, just as our painters do, that the important
parts are the back- and fore-grounds, and that
the middle distances can take care of themselves.

But, however rigid garden rules may appear,
there is always in them a delightful elasticity
in their application, a really wonderful indi-
viduality in the carrying out of them. Faces
have each a nose, a pair of eyes, and a mouth,
hair, ears, teeth, but who shall say that their
only difference occurs in the loss of one of these
features ? Let no man chafe at the laws,
then, for without laws there is licence, ugliness,
death, instead of re-birth in decay. Nature,
who seems so lawless, so untrammelled, is the
most relentless mistress man can have. But
if she is severe, she is tender ; if cruel, she is
altogether lovely, and so, in their bending
to her rules, are Japanese gardens.

Maurice Hewlett makes one of his characters
say somewhere that " Horticulture is, next
to music, the most sensitive of the fine arts.
Properly allied to Architecture, garden making
is as near as a man may get to the Divine
functions."

And the Japanese are very near !

CHAPTER IV

GARDEN STONES

" So wise was Buddha's prophet in old days,
He spoke, and lo !
The very stones which Nature locks
In silence, listened, and to give him praise.
The great gods changed them into living rocks."

Old Japanese Legend

A

T first glance it would seem rather absurd
to devote a whole chapter to stones,
since this book does not pretend to go
into the geology of Japan, or even into that
of its gardens only ; but to slight this subject
would be as if, in one's study of the human
body, one neglected the skeleton. The rocks
and stones of a garden in Japan are its bones
and ribs. Its muscles, nervous system, veins
and arteries, and beautiful outer covering of
flesh, are its trees and shrubs, its watercourses,
pools and wells, its flowering plants. I cannot
quote Walt Whitman and say, as he did to the
child who asked, " What is the grass ? " — " And
now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of
graves," because a lawn is, more often than
not, absent from a Japanese garden, and hard-

42 JAPANESE GARDENS

beaten, piirply red earth, or finely raked sand,
or beautifully patterned gravel, takes its place.
From a plan of the distribution and situation
of its principal stones an expert could determine,
as scientific men make up the picture of a
prehistoric beast from a few bones, the cha-
racter— I had almost said the age and sex — of
the garden, but that would be hardly accurate,
as some of the bones are masculine and some
feminine, and both come into the same plan,
the one to strengthen, the other to soften and
beautify the whole.

But if I do not go into the geology of the
country it does not mean that the landscape
gardener has not done so. He has studied it
in a very thorough way, and has applied with
a most careful and subtle art the deductions
he has drawn from his observations. As usual,
in this subject as in that of any other art or
craft in Japan, there are classical rules made
by the masters of their profession which are
founded upon perfectly scientific principles,
as well as upon aesthetic ones, handed on and
rigidly adhered to by those who come after.
But although the rules are rigid, much latitude
is not only allowed, but almost demanded, in
the carrying out of details. For it must never
be forgotten in anything bearing on this subject
of landscape gardening in Japan, that the first
and greatest master is Nature. As the idea
is, primarily, to present an interpretation of

GARDEN STONES 43

Nature — a transcription, but not a literal copy
— so licence within certain limits is allowed.
The great brute force of Nature, however, is
acknowledged to be capable of effects stupendous,
extraordinary, even w/inatural, that a man
would be a fool to try to imitate. Rocks, for
instance, that in mountain scenery frowningly
overhang a valley, like the shaggy eyebrows
of a stern and scowling god, are not copied
by the landscape artist, because they would
give the observer a sense of insecurity, exactly
opposite to the effect which the natural object
has. Balanced rocks, and gigantic boulders
poised on insecure-looking foundations, are also
barred, and rightly, from the garden, although
they are immensely admired, perhaps even
worshipped, in Nature. Rocks which are larger
at the top than at the bottom would not be
employed, for the same reason. Those with
distorted tops, twisted, seamed, or with holes
in their sides, are called ' Diseased Stones,'
and should not be — although I fear occasionally
they are — admitted into a proper garden.
Vertical stones which more or less resemble
the human body (what the Japanese call Taido-
seki, and Mr. Conder translates as ' Statue
Stones') are never, if they have fallen flat
instead of standing upright, permitted in a
well-conducted garden. They call them ' Dead
Stones,' and they instil life into them by setting
them up on end, or else oust them altogether.

44 JAPANESE GARDENS

The Japanese in no way resemble the ancient
Romans in wanting a skeleton at the feast, or
a skull crowned with roses and filled with wine.
They never, as most Western nations do,
even make their cemeteries into parks, where
young lovers may wander, and mingle present
hopes with past sorrows, sentiment with grief.
Gardens are for contemplation, recreation,
communion with Nature and one's own soul,
and into them death, except as it comes in the
falling petal, the withered leaf, the flaming
embers of the dying fires of the Maple, is not
permitted to intrude.

I never saw a pet dog's grave, or even that
of one of their little friends the birds, in a
Japanese garden, though I know of many such
fondly loved spots, in stately as well as humble
gardens, in my two homelands, America and
England.

Stones which have a haphazard appearance,
which fulfil no useful purpose, either as stepping-
stones or in carrying out the design of the
artist, are called ' Poor Stones.' They are
treated with far scantier courtesy than are poor
relations in this kind and pleasant land, for
they are incontinently cast forth if they cannot
be fitted into the family of rocks in the garden,
or if they cannot be made to do their share
towards its uses or pleasures.

There is never any Early Victorian profusion
of unmeaning alleged ornament in these little

GARDEN STONES 45

paradises. Like the exquisite simplicity of a
Japanese room, each stone has a certain use, a
certain meaning, a certain sentiment attached
to it. It usually fills a double purpose, and is
of use as well as a thing of beauty ; for although,
if any people ever did believe that beauty is its
own excuse for being, these do, they make their
beautiful things useful, and their useful things
are invariably beautiful.

Again, as in all this gentle people's arts, the
most delicate and perfect sense of proportion
prevails. Large stones and boulders are for
large gardens, for big scenic effects ; small stones
for small and intimate scenes. The same careful
grading is again observed as regards the number
of stones employed. In a large garden there
are a hundred and thirty- eight principal rocks
and stones (as well as others not so important),
all named and classified, which may be employed,
according to size and scope. This number
reduces itself, until it reaches, in a tiny garden,
— and there are thousands of them in this land,
where every one, rich and poor, has something
of the kind, — what is practically the irreducible
minimum, five.

This sounds perhaps arbitrary and artificial
— as who should say of one of the usually
horrible montrosities which we call a ' rockery '
or a ' rock grotto ' that it may contain so many
rocks, of such and such a prescribed shape and
size, and no more. But when we compare the

46 JAPANESE GARDENS

finished products of the two systems, tlie sweet
reasonableness of the Eastern method becomes
apparent. In no other particular do our home
gardens suffer so much by contrast as in the
arrangement of rocks. Ours are clumsy, hide-
ously artificial, futile, altogether acts of super-
erogation itself, compared with theirs. In a very
few points we can teach the Japanese something
in gardening — but not in this. I think (apologies
for the implied pun) rocks are the very strongest
features of their gardens.

Our methods in this line, although perhaps
governed by that inscrutable thing called the
law of chance, which we are assured is a deep
but definite science, give, instead of the unstudied
and casual effect desired, only one of laboured
ignorance and haphazard ugliness. Their ways,
governed by rules which are based on careful
and exact observation of Nature herself, give
an effect at once beautiful and, as it were,
inevitable. We feel as if only a happy accident
has made their stony beds for water, that by
good luck they have stumbled on their felicitous
combinations of trees and shrubs ; and, with a
self-accusing excuse, we pretend to believe that
since Nature has really made the garden for
them, anyone, even we ourselves, must have
had the sense to leave it so !

The high monetary as well as aesthetic
value with which Japanese gardens are adorned
would probably amaze the average foreigner

GARDEN STONES 47

beyond words. Their designers will bring great
boulders from almost incredible distances (not,
however, from foreign countries, as a rule, for
that would not be in line with their artistic
notions as to the fitness of things), and will pay-
large sums for them. So extravagant were the
prices paid for beautiful and appropriate stones
in the Tempo Period (1830 to 1844), that an
Imperial Edict had to be issued to curb the
liberality of rock fanciers, and a limit was
placed on the sum that might be paid for one
stone.

Great ingenuity is sometimes shown in trans-
porting the big boulders which are considered so
necessary to any garden in the attempt to
portray mountain scenery or that of a rocky
river bed. These great blocks are, with the
most delicate precision (for the Japanese are
wonderful stone masons), split apart into port-
able pieces, each of which is marked and arranged,
so that it may, like a Japanese puzzle, be put
together again. On arrival at the scene of its
new home, it is stuck together without any break
being left to show, with the universal cement
of the Far East, chunam — clay mixed with
lime.

But to return to the stones, and their quaint
but intelligent method and rules for employment,
I feel that I cannot do better than quote from
Mr. Conder's illuminating book. For although
my Japanese friends, who were always almost

48 JAPANESE GARDENS

gratefully glad to help me to information on a
subject at the same time so near to their hearts
and so deeply interesting to me, have given me
almost the same facts and many of the same
names, I could not begin to present the rules
as clearly as he does, or to be sure that, in my
inability to read the Japanese characters, I could
even approach it in the same spirit.

The five radical shapes for garden stones are
given as follows : —

" A tall vertical stone, bulging out towards
the middle and finishing conically at the top,
called the Taido-sekiy — the nearest intelligible
translation of which is ' Statue Stone,' — on
account of its supposed resemblance in form to
that of the human body.

" A shorter vertical stone, rounded slightly
at the base, finishing in an irregular blunted
cone, and resembling the bud of a Magnolia
flower, the name applied to which is Reijo-seki,
which may be rendered as ' Low Vertical
Stone.'

" A low broad stone of irregular shape and
horizontal character, with a flat top, rather
higher than the ordinary stepping-stone, and
called the Shintai-seki, or ' Flat Stone.'

" Another stone of medium height, with a
broad flat top, bent over to one side in an arched
manner : this is called the Shigio-sek% here
freely translated as ' Arching Stone.'

GARDEN STONES 49

"' The fifth is a long curved and bent boulder
of horizontal character, rising higher at one end
than at the other, and somewhat resembling
the trunk of a recumbent animal ; it is called
the Kikiaku-seki, or ' Recumbent-ox Stone.'

" Of the above five shapes, the Statue Stone,
the Low Vertical Stone, and the Arching Stone
are vertical in character, or what henceforth
will be termed ' Standing Stones,' and the Flat
Stone and Recumbent-ox Stone are of horizontal
character, or ' Reclining Stones.' They are
variously arranged in combinations of two,
three, and five to form groups in the different
parts of gardens, assisted by trees, shrubs,
grasses, water-basins, and other ornamental
objects. It is not to be supposed that such
shapes are by any means exact; but natural
rocks are chosen which approach as nearly as
possible to the character indicated."

These form the basis of the garden's arrange-
ment, and are almost invariably placed so that
the upright stones serve as a foil for the recumbent
ones. I may add that the artistic principle of
triangles in composition — the eye being carried
from the plane of the two sides to the apex
— is practically never forgotten in any form of
Japanese art, and reigns subtly and unobtrusively,
but supremely, in their rock arrangements.
Their gardens always ' compose.' Even a person
who is not an artist will sit down at the ' best
4

50 JAPANESE GARDENS

viewing point ' in any Japanese landscape ; he
will ' find a picture,' and one ruled by this
simple but excellent law of the triangle of beauty.
The highest parts of a garden are usually
made to represent the hills or mountains of the
particular scene which has been chosen to be
represented. The stones which may be em-
ployed to assist in this scheme — perhaps as
hills themselves of lesser height, or as the
debris on the sides — have their names and func-
tions also laid down by the laws of classical
precedent. The main ones used Mr. Conder
gives as follows : —

" Mountain-summit Stone (Sancho-seki), —
Placed on or near the summit of a hill.

" Mountain-base Stone {Reikiaku-seki). —
Situated near the base of a hill.

" Mountain-side Stone (Sanyo-seki) and
Mountain-path Stone (Hioin-seki). — Both ar-
ranged on the slope of a hill.

" Propitious-cloud Stone (Keiun-seki). —
Placed upon a hill-top.

"Mist-enveloped Stone (Muin-seki), Clear-
moon Stone (Seigetsu-seki), Moon -shadow
Stone {Getsu-in-seki), and Cave Stone (Teito-
seki or Taido-seki). — All occupying different
positions on the sides of hills, the ' Cave Stone '
being always near the ' Kwannon Stone.'

*'Kwannon Stone (Kwannon-seki) is the
name given to a stone symbolical of Kwannon,

< 5

o t

GARDEN STONES 51

a deity worshipped on mountain heights, and
often represented as seated in a cave ; this is
also placed on the side of a hill. (See picture on
page opposite.)

" Moss-grown Stone (Seitai-seki). — Near the
base of a hill, but only employed when water is
represented beneath. Of the above names,
the first five refer to position, and are self-
explanatory ; the remainder mostly allude to
certain effects in mountain scenery which the
stones are supposed to typify."

The valley stones have also their list, nearly
as important. As a recital of their names and
qualities explains more than a ream of writing
would, I again quote : —

" Stones of the Two Gods {Nijin-seki or
Ni-0-seki). — A pair of similar ' Standing Stones '
intended to represent the guardian deities of
the site, and arranged in the flat portion of a
garden, near the entrance, just as two statues of
Buddhist Devas are placed in the entrance
gates of temples. Formerly the ceremony of
erecting these stones in position constituted
a sort of dedication of the garden. They were
washed perfectly clean, and rice and wine
were placed before them.

" Stones of the Three Gods (Sanjin-seki). —
Three vertical rocks sometimes used in com-
bination instead of the above.

62 JAPANESE GARDENS

"Stone of Worship {Reihai-seki or Hai-
seki). — Generally placed near a sacred stone,
such as the ' Stone of the Two Deities,' and at
some point in the front of a garden, to form
a station from which the best view may be
obtained. It is a broad, flat stone, upon which
one stands in a posture of veneration.

" Waiting Stone (Hikae-seki). — The name
given to a ' Standing Stone,' more or less conical
in shape, placed in the foreground of a garden.

" View -RECEIVING Stone (Shozo-seki). —
The meaning of which term is not quite clear.
It probably indicates a point from which the
finest prospect of the garden can be had.

" View -COMPLETING Stone (Taito-seki), —
Probably referring to the importance of this
stone in the distant view.

" Distancing Rock (Mikoshi-Iwa). — A rock
partly hidden behind a hill, or placed in some
shady part of the background, and intended
to increase the idea of distance in a garden.

" Peeping Stone (Nozoki-ishi). — A stone
screened partially from view by shrubs and
trees.

" Wine - cup Stone (Sakazuki-ishi). — So
named from its supposed resemblance in shape
to a Japanese wine-cup.

" Wayside Stone (Dokio-seki). — Situated
on the side of a real or imaginary pathway,
and suitable for resting upon.

" Passing-on Stone (Koro-seki). — Placed at

GARDEN STONES 53

the side of a walk, like a milestone ; it should
be a vertical stone, unsuitable as a seat, and con-
trasting in character with the ' Wayside Stone.' "

There are also the religious stones, as well
as those — long lists of each — for water gardens,
stones of lake and river, cascade stones, and
stones also for tea-gardens. In this chapter
there have been enumerated only those stones
that are likely to occur in any garden. Strictly
speaking, the various water stones should be
given here, for that reason; for seldom does a
Japanese garden lack water, or the appearance
of water, in its scenery. I feel, however, that
it will make for clearness if they are spoken of
in later chapters.

This now brings us to the stones that, in
this moist land, seem perhaps the most im-
portant to the foreigner, namely, stepping-
stones. But these stepping-stones, it must be
remembered, are not for crossing a stream,
nor even for getting through wet grass (for
turf is hardly ever used), but they form, in
little islands, as it were, the garden paths.
The ground having been cleared of every blade
of grass, and of weeds, is pounded down firmly
and left in that way, or else covered with fine
sand or gravel, or perhaps little hard round
stones. Nevertheless, with the almost constant
rain one could not wander about the garden
much without these convenient slabs of stone

54 JAPANESE GARDENS

to step upon, for the ground when wet becomes
very greasy and slippery, and the sand and
gravel are never supposed to be trodden on,
as they are also part of the design, and are
strewn down in some sort of a pattern. As
for the hard round pebbles, no one would want
to step on them, except a Japanese or a foreigner
wearing clogs, as they hurt one's feet. But
besides their usefulness in wet weather, their
shape and manner of laying are a great addition
to the garden. They carry the eye, as well as
the feet, to the point of vantage best for viewing
the whole scene, or to the central place of
interest. The reader will notice, from Mr.
Tyndale's pictures, that his foregrounds are
almost invariably made more interesting by
the introduction of this very characteristic
feature. Stepping-stones carry the eye to the
central point of the picture.

That to the Japanese mind these stepping-
stones are not without their poetic suggestion
may be inferred by the ideas and images their
names imply. The favourite way of laying
them, in fours and threes or in twos and threes,
in an irregular zigzag, is called ' Wild-goose
Flight,' or ' Seagull Style.' They are also
called ' Flying Stones,' and ' Wild-duck Winging
Stones.' Again, where the sand has been
combed to represent the waves of the sea,
these stones are called Shiki Shima, or ' Scattered
Islands,' and even the most casual tourist

GARDEN STONES 55

who has been through the Inland Sea will ap-
preciate the association. This allusion occurs
not infrequently in poetry :

" My garden's waves of white sand break

In lines upon its beach ;
But stony isles sure passage make.
Though wind and storm their safety shake.
In wild-gull's flights my way I take,

Secure my haven reach."

But, again, a real science governs the placing
of these slabs. If the distances are planned
for the scale of their own people's size, and
not for our large feet and longer stride, it
only proves their careful accuracy. Steps are
shorter where legs are shorter too, and there
is no doubt that these sturdy little people have
dwarfed theirs by incessant suari-ing — their
hereditary custom of sitting on their feet in-
stead of on chairs. The length of pace is also
restricted by the bind of the kimono ; and
even when this is tied back, as it so often is
in the case of the men, or tucked up, as in the
case of working-women, who have no false
modesty about their legs, the habit of taking
short steps has been formed irrevocably.

Of course if these stones were all of a size
and shape, and were laid down according to
our mathematics, in the shortest line between
two objects, the effect would be hideous, but
the longest way round is usually the fittest
way home for them, as it generally provides

56 JAPANESE GARDENS

a view, or a surprise of some pleasant sort,
somewhere along the route ; therefore they
place this path of stones as Nature herself
would, never straight, but with the winds
and curves and twists a river might take.
Some stones are large and some are small, but
all are of a height, so as to avoid any unevenness
of tread which might cause feet to stumble ;
but perhaps you can take two steps, or even
three or four, on a big flat stone, and then,
for the next two or three smaller stones, only
one step on each. They are not put close
together, however, and never are cemented
to make a regular pavement, but enough space
is left between to enable the favourite Japanese
pastime of cleaning to be fully indulged in.
All this apparent irregularity, although fully
worked out beforehand, gives these stepping-
stones the most delightful air of having been
thrown down a few minutes before you came,
so that you need not wet your feet when you
go out to look at the Irises slowly unfurling
their delicate flags, or to watch the goldfish
in the little pond, as the children throw them
food. It is the perennially interesting thing
about a Japanese garden that it seems as if,
like Topsy, it had ' just growed.'

But, however casual they may appear, these
stones invariably serve a purpose, and that
purpose is usually shown in the nomenclature.
The * Step-dividing Stones ' at the branching

GARDEN STONES 57

point of a path ; the ' Shoe-removing Stone '
and the ' Sword-hanging Stone ' at the house
entrance ; the ' Worshipping Stone,' from
which the best and most worshipful view is
to be obtained ; the ' Lantern-Hghting Stone ' ;
the ' Water-falling Stone ' beside the water-
basin — all explain themselves.

In front of the veranda there is usually
an extra big slab, to allow, as I suppose, of
several opinions regarding the weather before
venturing out to view the latest garden curiosity;
and this stone Mr. Tyndale — and I too, in my
humbler way — found most useful as a base from
which to paint, for it practically always com-
mands a choice view, and yet is sufficiently
close to shelter to save oneself and one's draw-
ing, even at the last moment, from a sudden
downpour.

Sometimes two long strips of stone border
a flower-bed or overlapping well, of course
being so placed for the convenience of flower-
gazers. They are rather like the bits of card-
board on which these poetic people write verses,
to hang like Orlando's in the trees, and so
are called ' Label Stones.' Others, longer and
not so wide in proportion, are designated ' Obi
Stones ' — ' obi ' being, of course, the indis-
pensable sash of the whole nation.

This is but a meagre list of the many stones
used in a Japanese garden, for wherever the
' art of utility,' if I may so call it, demands

58 JAPANESE GARDENS

a stone, there is one placed, never without
due thought and a just weighing of need and
effect, of classic precedent and of present
necessity ; and, these permitting, an honourable
name is given, and it becomes a respected
member of the family stones.

As a final word, I may say that I believe
the Japanese ascribe more humanity to their
stones than they do to their flowers or trees,
or even — with the exception of the fox and
badger — to their animals. Perhaps it is because
of rock their gods are carven, on rock their
eulogies to great men are inscribed, of rock
their gravestones are made, — which every year
are tended and honoured as if, for a day, the
dead lived again, — that the personality of the
stones becomes a more reasonable suggestion.

But even if, in their names, they did not
seem to be endowed with character and per-
sonality, their very position and situation in
the garden takes them out of the class of dead,
inanimate things, gives to them the responsi-
bility of definite duties, and makes them, at the
very least, into living rocks.

CHAPTER V

GARDEN ACCESSORIES (LANTERNS AND PAGODAS)

" The garden ways are dark, the stars are gone
From the dim sky, the lantern gleams alone
Beside the lake, where its dark form reveals
The fire-fly's spirit prison'd in the stone."

PERHAPS the most characteristically
Japanese things in a Japanese garden
are the lanterns. If they, and the
little pagodas which so much resemble them in
effect, were omitted, as well as the small shrines,
the charming miniature bridges, and perhaps
the most ornamental of the water-basins and
well-covers, one who did not know their gardens
intimately might easily be deceived into believing
them pretty bits of natural scenery. Yet these
ornaments, delightful in design, quaint and
attractive as they may be, are but accessories
after the fact of the garden's raison d'etre.
While one hardly ever sees a garden, even of the
poorest, which does not boast a lantern of some
sort, be it only a little wooden one, resembling
a house for birds, every other item which I have
named can be dispensed with, and the place

60 JAPANESE GARDENS

would still remain typical of the national mind
and hands which produced it.

It is a great satisfaction for one who loves the
Japanese to note that stone lanterns were not,
as everything else in the artistic line appears to
have been, introduced into Japan from China.
They seem to have been a veritable product of
the natural genius of the people, and are employed
everywhere. I have never seen them in a
Chinese garden, and, so far as I know, they are
never used in them.

The first lantern of this sort appears to have
been set up in the fourth century a.d. by a
certain Prince Iruhiko, the son of the Emperor
Sinko, beside a lonely lake in a spot infested
with robbers. Whether this little glimmering
light illumining the dark served to frighten the
bad men away or helped the samurai to see to
kill them off is not stated, but, at any rate, after
awhile it was taken to the Tachibana Temple
at Yamato, and set up in the grounds there.

This beginning w^as possibly what caused
lanterns to become such popular adornments
to temples, Shinto as well as Buddhist, where,
lining the avenues of approach, they stand in
their hundreds, and even in their thousands,
like sentinels with their torches held aloft.

Lanterns may be roughly separated into two
types : those with legs and those without,
although it would perhaps be more accurate
to say those which are set up off the earth by

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GARDEN ACCESSORIES 61

means of legs, and those of a single stem rising
from a plinth or flat base resting upon the
ground. The latter sort, much like a ' Standard '
lamp in appearance, may be called the senior
variety. They are used in gardens or temple
grounds where a dignified effect is sought, and
usually carry on the architectural features of
the buildings they are near. They are generally
made of stone, and the pedestal as well as the
outside of the fire-box and the top may be carved
with Buddhist emblems or the crests of daimios.
They are handsome and stately, but lack, maybe,
a little of the quaint charm of the more informal
kind with legs and greater individuality.

However much foundation for it there is in
fact, it would appear that religious sentiment
is greatly concerned in the employment of the
' Standard ' types of lanterns. They were a
favourite form of votive offering, or propitiatory
gift to the temple god, from the great daimios
and noblemen, and their use in private gardens
seems to have a little of the religious element as
well as of the aesthetic still lingering about it ;
nor is it at all an uncommon sight to find their
tiny glimmering lights, shining out like larger
glow-worms or fire-flies, in small home gardens
at the time of one of their temple festivals, while
they remain dark for a private celebration or
gathering.

Temple lanterns are made of bronze as well
as of stone, but the former are put inside the

62 JAPANESE GARDENS

sacred edifice itself, or at least in the courtyard,
while those of stone are kept for the grounds.
These last are used in any places where stones
or rocks might be found, and where they would
fit in with their natural surroundings. They
are nearly always of the * Standard ' type.

There are iron lanterns too, although these
are usually hung up, not standing ; and porcelain
ones, which, from the inliarmony of their colour-
ing and composition to their surroundings, are
seldom used.

A more lovely effect than that produced by
the long lines of stone lanterns at Miyajima
would be hard to imagine, with their myriad
lights reflected and repeated in the waters of
the incoming tide. These lanterns, and those
in or about other temples, vary in size from the
tiny ones inside the small temples to the huge
ones which line the avenues or stand at the doors
of the large temples. Some of those at Miyajima,
which stand in rows, like troops, fronting the
shore, might serve as guardsmen in the lantern
army, although most of them would be a good
deal more than six feet tall. Then there are
giants, in pairs, in various places, that soar as
high as eighteen or twenty feet. But as every-
thing in this, as in other directions, is comparative,
the height of the lantern is governed by that of
the surrounding objects, by the scale of the
whole composition. In temple or palace grounds,
planned on a big scale, are the great stone or

GARDEN ACCESSORIES 63

bronze ones, and there are prescribed shapes,
too, for these large lanterns, based on the
principle of appropriateness.

For smaller gardens there are shapely things,
four or five feet tall, which are much used either
alone or in groups composed of an ' Erect '
lantern, — that is, one of the ' Standard ' type, — a
' Recumbent Stone,' and some shrubs, or an
overhanging pine. For little gardens the sizes
shrink, as if Alice had lent them some of her
mushroom to eat ; and in some of these it is
as though the mushroom itself had come alive,
here before, there after taking, for some are
large and some small, but all gracefully patterned
to resemble that fungus. These mushroom
shapes are generally set up on short legs with
their widespreading umbrella tops; they are
known as ' Snow-scene ' lanterns, because, al-
though most picturesque in summer, and quaintly
suited to the diminutive rustic nook in which
they are placed, they are still more charming
in the winter, with their broad flat tops softly
covered with white snow.

This shape is not of the small tribe, however,
for, though squat, its top must be broad enough
to display its design and form when clothed in
its thick winter garment; so it is not for the
very modest and small garden, of which there
are so many thousands scattered all over the
country, but for rather large places where there
is a landscape effect. In little spaces, lanterns

64 JAPANESE GARDENS

made of wood, like thatched liouses, are seen,
not more than eight or ten inches high, or small
rough ones of stone, from one to two feet up
from the ground.

While there are only two distinct classes of
shape — the 'Standard' and the 'Legged' ones — so
nmch variety is introduced into these that many
appear to belong to totally different orders.
And when I stop and think over some I know,
I wonder where exactly they should be put.
Certainly the ' Valley ' shape, set up on its curved
crane, like a big ' C ' spring with a lamp -bowl
atop, is neither a ' Standard ' nor a ' Legged '
lantern. Then there is the one Mr. Tyndale
shows in the Ashinoyu garden (facing page 156),
set on a granite ring, with a snow- scene top.
Where ought that to go ? If we say that the two
classes are those with legs and those without, we
gain nothing in our argument, for a ring is not
a leg, nor is a crane — unless a crane might be
said to be one crooked leg !

For temple gardens the ' Standard ' ^ is the
favoured kind, more especially that known as
the ' Kasuga ' shape. This was named after a
Shinto god whose main temple is at Nara, but
he has serious rivals. The ' Shiratayu ' design
(named after a class of Shinto officials) is only
slightly different in the decorations : the main
lines are the same. A dozen more might be
named of these architecturally severe and classic

' As in the picture facing page Go.

GARDEN ACCESSORIES 65

shapes which are suitable for placing near
buildings, but many modifications, as well as
the regular temple variety, are to be seen in
private grounds.

The other distinct type differs radically
from the Standard in that it is short and very
broad-topped, and has three — sometimes four —
feet (they can hardly be called legs, since they
are so short). This is the mushroom design
before referred to, and is much admired in the
central parts of Japan, where snow in winter
reveals its beauty. It is employed, therefore,
in the more rural parts of the garden, with rocks
and shrubs about, and nearly always with a
Pine tree drooping over it, so that in winter
the ' flowers of the snow ' adorn them together.
Personally, at all times of the year I find these
lanterns enchanting, and far better suited to
the intimacy of a small garden than the tall
and impressive ones can ever be.

Then there are other sorts, hardly more
than two stones set one on top of a second,
with the inside of the upper one roughly chipped
out for holding its little light. These might
almost as well be placed in the list of stones.
Dozens of them are to be seen in the weird
desolation of Oji Goku, or Owaji Dani, near
Miyanoshita, and it is as if the Brocken Top
scene from Faust had been transferred to the
Bad Lands of Japan, and the elves and gnomes
were there, crouching dwarfed figures in stone.
5

66 JAPANESE GARDENS

It is said of the Japanese that they do not
personify stones, animals, and flowers, but
they would be a far less imaginative people
than undoubtedly they are if they did not
attribute malignant life to this wild place, with
its bubbling water, and seething sulphur, and
vapour coming up wherever one breaks the
crust with foot or stick an inch away from
the none too safe path. Whether these rude
little lanterns were erected from the national
passion for placing them where they may
appropriately add to the picturesqueness of the
scene; or whether they were to propitiate the
wild demon of that valley of desolation and
terror, or to act informally as proper lights
to the many little shrines there ; or whether,
perhaps, they were set up by grateful travellers
in thanks for a safe passage through that gorge
to Hakone or Miyanoshita, and to light others
who might follow them, I do not know. The
same sort of little rough stone lanterns I have
often seen placed in rugged mountain passes,
and also in peasants' gardens, and close to
modest wayside shrines. They are never used
where the surroundings are cultivated, or where
any high degree of finish is to be found in the
gardening.

Hanging lanterns are frequently seen in
corners of verandas of private houses, and also
in tea-houses. They are usually globular, square,
or octagonal in shape, of hand-wrought bronze

GARDEN ACCESSORIES 67

or iron filigree work, in semi-conventional
flower designs. Sometimes glowing silk, of the
brilliant living colours known only in Japan,
is put inside as a lining to the open-work bronze.
They struck me as being very well suited for
hall or vestibule hanging lamps ; but I found,
when trying to adapt them to the high rooms
in the Hong-Kong houses, that they did not
furnish enough light. They would be decora-
tive in low-ceiled rooms more like those of
Japanese houses, however, where their beauty
of detail would be brought nearer to the eye.

But whether lanterns are architecturally
fine, or left in the rough, whether they are of
stone or of wood, of bronze or of iron, they
should bear the marks of age. And it is truly
wonderful how quickly young ones caa be
made to appear venerable in this moist and
artistic country. All sorts of methods, it is
true, are resorted to in order to age them.
The stone ones are smeared with bird-lime,
or the slime of snails, which attracts and
encourages a pretty white lichen, and turns
them from babes into old men with bleached
heads in only a few months' time. If the
owners are in a still greater hurry to get the
effect, they gum on mosses and lichens. If
there is no haste, or if the stone has already
put on its pretty green and gold velvet cap, it
is carefully watered every day. It is droll to
see this watering done, and to note with what

68 JAPANESE GARDENS

care the nurse examines the child's head to
see how the hair is coming on !

All this to make old lamps of new ! and yet
with mine own eyes have I seen ardent men
and boys, — perhaps twenty of them, — under the
direction of their head priest, scrub, with sand
and soap and water, the stone torii^ and its
two great guardian stone lanterns, just before
the August matsuri^ at Hakone. It was a
cruel blow to an artist friend, as well as to me,
for we had begun a sketch of the beautiful
trio, and had never done admiring the lovely
silvery lichens that adorned them. But one
swallow does not make a summer, and I will
not believe that such a crime is often perpetrated
in this age-venerating and art-loving land.^

Although lanterns are primarily set up to
give light, I should be wronging the reader
who does not know Japan if I did not confess
honestly the severe disappointment I suffered
in them when I first went there — in that
they are very seldom seen lighted. I have
lived in close proximity to a lantern for months,
in a pretty garden I know of, and while it
invariably fitted in with its surroundings, in
the spring giving the necessary relief to the
flame-coloured Azaleas abloom at its foot, in
the summer swayed over by splendid heads of

* A kind of archway marking the approach to a shinto temple.
2 A reUgious festival.

' I am told the same thing occurs yearly at Nikko ; but it is so
wet there that the moss renews itself in a few weeks' time.

GARDEN ACCESSORIES 69

the Lilium auratum and Tiger Lilies, and in the
autumn delicately displaying the tiny carmine
stars of the Maple leaves that nestled near it,
yet only once did I see its little candle box alight,
and that was for the Feast of Souls, in August.
But they have a reason for being, and so
the most is made of them. What the sundial
was to old English and Colonial American
gardens, that the stone lantern is to its Japanese
prototype. Can it be transplanted ? Well, I
have one in Hong-Kong which pretends to light
the path leading up to the house. Because of
the intolerable burning of our winter suns,
the drying, searing qualities of our winter
winds, and the monstrous ravages of our summer
typhoons, no watering can restore the moss
with which it was adorned in the little garden
at Shimonoseki, whence it was torn. It has
no delicate Plum or Cherry branches to caress
it ; no protecting Pine tree (as yet) to lean over
and shield it ; no ' Recumbent Stone ' beside
its austere straightness, to bring to it lines of
beauty ; in fact, it is quite out of its picture.
And yet every man and woman, white or brown
or yellow, who goes near it stops to examine
and to admire it. And so, if it is still a pleasant
thing to see here, where climate, tropical sun,
scenery are all against it, what will it not be
when it goes into a quiet nook in an English
garden, where skies are soft and wet, as in
Japan, and where its old friends, the Japanese

70 JAPANESE GARDENS

Lilies and Maples, have also found a new
home ? ^

Pagodas, although a direct importation
from China, — or, rather, one by way of Korea, —
have much the same effect in a garden as have
stone lanterns. It may be owing to my bias
for things Japanese, as contrasted with Chinese,
or it may be (and I think it is) because lanterns
have their sphere of usefulness and pagodas
have not, that I cannot share the Japanese
enthusiasm for them. Every other thing to be
found in a Japanese garden has its use — if pure
ornament can be considered of economic value ;
but pagodas have nothing to recommend them
but their quaintness. Of course, where the
larger originals appear in a scene which is being
reproduced in miniature, they are, perhaps,
necessary according to the Japanese ideas, but
I confess to rather a prejudice against them.
They may be all very well for Dora's dog, Jip,
to lie in, or to exhibit the piety and riches of
some big man in China ; but they look foolish
and futile even in that land, and much more so
in Japan, where they are a deliberate imitation.

However, this is not the view taken by the
Japanese themselves, so I will try to find what
extenuating circumstances I can for them, ac-
cording to my judgment.

* I regret to say that since writing this a typhoon wrenched this stone
lantern from the cement in which it was imbedded and dashed it
into a thousand pieces down the stone steps which it had Hghtcd.

GARDEN ACCESSORIES 71

In their full-sized state, both in China and
Japan, one can at least say that when their
stairways and floors are not rotten, or porous
from the depredations of white ants, you can
climb to the upper storey, whence you are
nearly always sure of a fine view. But in these
miniature pagodas no climbing would be possible ;
you could not even sit on the top to look at the
view because of the ball or the spike.

These little buildings are usually of stone,
with from three to nine tiers of roofs. Some-
times they are only a series of projecting eaves,
but more often there is at least the pretence of a
storey in between. The square, hexagonal, or
octagonal cap which crowns the structure is
much like the top part of the ' Kasuga '-shaped
lantern, and, like the lantern, they are generally
supported by a plinth rising from the solid
ground. Sometimes, however, they are set up
on three or more legs, like mushroom-shaped
lanterns, and then they look perfectly ridiculous.
They are called Koraito, or ' Korean Towers,'
and are supposed to have some religious signi-
ficance, though what it is I don't believe the
people know themselves. Their large prototypes
in the temple grounds at Nikko, at Miyajima, and
at Kyoto seem to have no particular use assigned
to them. In China devout Buddhists build
them to show their faith — or their wealth.

There is an infinite number of variations of
pattern, some purely Chinese, others inclining

72 JAPANESE GARDENS

more to the Korean, and again others very
suggestive of the horrid monuments of Siam,
called ' Wats.' I have seen them with bells at
the corners which made a light tinkling when
the wind shook them, and if one did not see
them the fairy chiming was rather charming.

These little pagodas are not always of stone,
just as the big ones are not invariably of wood.
Sometimes ' Arbor Vitae ' trees are clipped into
shape, and Mr. Tyndale, in his picture of a
Buddhist temple and of a garden at Kofu (facing
page 126), shows how charming these are, set in the
midst of other clipped trees, beside a tiny stream.
But this only goes to prove that what the Japanese
adapt from the Chinese, Koreans — or from any
other nations for that matter — for use in their
gardens, they improve and give some of their
own individuality and charm.

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CHAPTER VI

GARDEN FENCES AND HEDGES

" Over the garden fence my Plum tree blooms.
Inviting in the weary passers-by;
I may not close the gates now, if I would :
The world may love my flowers as well as I."

THIS poem is not only a pleasant fancy,
but a literal fact in Japan, where the
owner of a garden which boasts a flower-
ing tree does not selfishly shut it out with a high
fence and well-locked gates, limiting the joy
of his possession to himself and his intimates.
No, he has the fence, and one high enough for
privacy, although not too high for air and
light, and he has the gates ; but when the
bloom is on the bough the passer-by may enter
and enjoy and worship, just as he might, in a
Roman Catholic country, enter a church, pray,
and pass on again. Nor do these people take
an unfair advantage of the privilege, for I firmly
believe that, if there were tramps and rogues in
Japan (which there are not), they would be
dowered with a moral as well as an aesthetic
sense, and that not even the most hardened of
them would steal so much as a flower.

74 JAPANESE GARDENS

The Japanese, in their fences, garden walls,
and hedges, have arrived at a happy medium
between the methods employed in America
and England. The British idea of a private
possession, into which no man maj'^ even look
without an invitation, is perhaps a little selfish.
The American notion that a man's lawn and
front garden should be as much for the adorn-
ment of the street on which he lives as for his
own use and pleasure is, although so altruistic,
to my way of thinking a mistaken one, for it is
only in its privacy that one ciin enjoy a garden
or grass and trees. But the Japanese combine
the merits of both systems. The fence, or wall,
or hedge, as the case may be, is in itself so
attractive that one need hardly turn to the
blooming trees that overhang it ; to the branch
of Bamboo, or flowering Pomegranate, or Cherry,
half caught through its moon-shaped opening,
or peeping over the corner ; to the Pine tree
that guards its gates, to lend it interest and
grace, and decorate the street on which it faces.
But when, added to this, is the fact that the
flower-loving stranger may enter unasked, — I do
not say he would, but he might, and he would
be treated with courtesy, and as if by his
appreciation he conferred a favour on his
willy-nilly host, — it would appear as though
the real millennium of garden-owning had
arrived.

In towns or crowded districts, very high

GARDEN FENCES AND HEDGES 75

bamboo fences are to be seen, sometimes reach-
ing up fifteen or even twenty feet. This, for
the owner of the little garden, is a veritable house
wall, and is only employed to ensure great
privacy ; so good taste dictates (as well as
kindness towards the people who would have
to pass, or to look at it from the other side) that
this dull, blank surface should be broken and
beautified by working the bamboo in patterns
and by the introduction of round or square
openings, like little latticed windows, part of
the way up. When these are left open, as is
occasionally done, a flowering tree, a Bamboo,
or perhaps a Pine of just the right shape, is
trained to act as the picture behind the frame,
or maybe to thrust a graceful arm through, as if
to wave its hand to those beyond the pale. More
often, however, the opening is filled in, wholly
or in part, with a delicately patterned fretwork
of bamboo. This gives an almost Indian look
to the spot, although no buildings in Japan
have the air of permanent stability that those
in India have. Even when these lunettes are
elaborated with open-work traceries in this
way, behind them still may be seen, through
the little openings, the well-trained trees of the
garden inside. These are more common in
Kyoto and the central part of Japan than they
are farther North, in Tokio and Yokohama, but
it is only in crowded districts that they are to
be seen even there.

76 JAPANESE GARDENS

But the ideal Japanese garden fence is not
nearly so high as this, six feet being considered
a good height. It may be made of wood, of
bamboo (for the two are not classed together by
the Japanese, who fully appreciate that the
latter is a grass), or of plaster set in wood.
Also stone walls are sometimes seen, although
these are fairlj^ modern. I know some nice
ones in the neighbourhood of Nagasaki, with a
hedge above them. Their walls are invariably a
delight, for in this handicraft, as in others,
their discerning eyes and obedient and nimble
hands excel. Unless it be because of their many
earthquakes, I do not know why stone is so
little used for building in their country, for
they are past masters in its employment for
retaining walls of roads, for the dykes of their
mad torrents of rivers and mountain streams,
for foundations, and for the construction of
bridges. Besides this, Japan is almost all rock
and boulder, and no people ever prized the
beauty of stones more. Of course it is equally
true that they are master craftsmen in the arts
of wood working, carving, fine carpentering
work, and cabinet-making, and also in the
manipulation of bamboo. Again, it can be
urged that no country in the world has a greater
variety of forest trees whose wood is suitable
for working, and nowhere are there so many
bamboos available for that work. So if they,
in the embarrassment of their riches, choose to

GARDEN FENCES AND HEDGES 77

work wood instead of stone for their houses,
temples, and fences, they do it so beautifully
that we cannot complain.

Walls made of strong and heavy wood, such
as is used in the construction of temples, are
employed rather more often than stone for
surrounding important parks and gardens whose
owners are people of distinction. The timber is
generall}^ used as a framework, and the walls are
filled in with tiles and clay, and are stoutly
plastered. The top has a graceful roof of
handsome tiles, and, with the great covered
gateways with ornamental roofs, they are verv
suggestive of Chinese pleasure palace walls,
from which they were doubtless copied. Of this
sort many are to be seen in Tokio and Kyoto, in
and around palace and temple grounds.

Others, more modest, but of the same
general construction, are built for places less
grand and also less important, and, descending
in scale, we finally see the same sort of wall,
lower, not roofed even with shingles, but simply
encased in slabs of wood at the top, around
very humble places in central Japan. Miya-
jima has many, the walls washed white or a
warm delicious yellow, which, somehow, always
suggested Italy. One very un-Japanese note
was, perhaps, accountable for this — the wood-
work was painted, and instead of the soft
silvery greys and warm purple-browns of old,
time-beautified wood, a neat coat of reddish

78 JAPANESE GARDENS

brown colour had been applied. I confess I liked
it, for there, with its warm Italian colouring in
sky and sea and merry brown-faced children, it
all seemed to harmonize. In other parts of
Japan solid wooden fences are often used, and
slabbed ones, or heavy rustic ones of unhewn
trees, but seldom have I seen paint on any
others.

Perhaps it is wrong of me to perpetuate its
memory by writing of it, but I know of two
or three fences in Hakone Machi and Moto
Hakone which have been painted by their
owners in what they fondly believe to be
' foreign style.'

One of my friends had taken a house for the
summer at the former place, which had possessed,
during the three previous seasons of her occu-
pancy, a beautiful old fence, stained by the
fingers of time the most lovely silver grey, with
mauve shadows and bronzy markings. What
was her horror, on returning last year, to find
it changed by that awful alchemy of progress,
the paint-pot, into a terror in bright blue ! It
swore audibly and viciously at all around, the
particular victim of its rage being a great clump
of crimson (I dare not describe them in their
true colour, as magenta) phlox, with which it
had been sweetly in love the year before. The
poor garden, once so perfect in its own stately
way, with clipped trees and old dwarfed shrubs,
seemed suddenly to have shrunk together, and

GARDEN FENCES AND HEDGES 79

put its poor hands before its face to exclude
the dreadful sight of the indignity that had been
offered it. My horrified friend, artistic to the
marrow, was speechless with grief and rage ; but
the ' O Kama San,' proud and pleased (although
I know, from the way she arranged flowers,
that she must have secretly hated it), displayed
it to every ' Igen San ' who passed, as a proof
of her breadth of mind and progress.

I remember another painted fence, in the
little fishing village where Commodore Perry
first landed, Kurihama ; but that was not so
bad. Some sailor, perhaps from one of the
foreign ships docked at Uraga, had given the
pot of paint — yellow ochre, it was. Luckily
there had not been enough of it to paint properly
the tall fence of palings, and the artist had
therefore thinned it down with oil or turpen-
tine, or something of the sort, so that, except
in places, due to inexperience in mixing, it was
little more than a stain. Its warm, golden,
wood colour was rather charming, and the village
folk loved it as a natural curiosity which they
hardly pretended to understand.

But let us return to fences in general, and
leave particular ones and their styles of decora-
tion until a little later. Walls of mud and tiles,
of plaster and of wood, are of very ancient
usage, but open work and ornamental fences
appear to date only from about the Kamakura
Period, while Mr. Conder tells us that " When

80 JAPANESE GARDENS

the * Tea Ceremonies ' came into vogue, in the
time of the Ashikaga Shoguns, there are said to
have been twenty-five different kinds invented."
But with the many slight differences there are,
and the many possible combinations, one can
bring the number up to a figure enormously
greater. Of these wooden fences, except in the
rare case of those very highly decorated ones,
ornes de dragons hleus et de bizarres fleurSy for
temple grounds, the wood is always left un-
painted. In a land which can boast a hundred
and eighty-six varieties of forest trees alone,
there is naturally a wonderful choice of material.
While those with the most beautiful grain, and
best marked, are certainly not used for fences,
one who pauses to examine them wonders if
they can be less than the finest, so satin-smooth
the highly finished ones are, so strikingly marked
is the wood of the middle grade of fence and
finish, so rough and picturesque are those
surrounding the more rural style of garden (for
it is hardly necessary to say that these people's
railings are made to conform in style, size,
finish, and character to the gardens they sur-
round). Of course it is unnecessary to add that
they also look old, and rather worn. The slabs
of some of the fences are like grey ' watered '
silk, and others again like bands of striped
ribbon, fair and smooth. The delicate shading,
purple, green, and bronze, that water-stained
wood acquires, is greatly prized, so old boats

GARDEN FENCES AND HEDGES 81

are frequently taken apart to furnish forth an
artistic fence. I have seen the finely coloured
piles of an ancient pier taken up to make sup-
ports for such a fence, and to adorn each side of
the gateway. At Karuizawa (which is a place
so overrun with foreign missionaries that there
is not, one would think, much chance left for
native taste to show itself) an old and lovely
fence (or so it seems) around one of the new
and ugly hotels which shows yet another way of
exhibiting the grain of the wood. It appears in
high relief. At first I thought that, in its
nearness to Asama Yama (which is the most
active volcano I have ever had the luck to see),
the wind, blowing lava-dust and cinders about,
had worn away the soft part of the wood, leaving,
by one of those happy accidents which one is
always imagining with respect to Japanese
gardens, the hard, fibrous grain exposed ; but, on
further looking into the matter, I found that
it was purposely, and even laboriously done by
hand, the newly cut posts having been rubbed
and rubbed and rubbed with the powdered
pumice-stone that takes the place of sand and
gravel in the neighbourhood of the fiery moun-
tain. The process is employed in other places,
using ordinary sand instead of the pumice-
stone. The effect, to us, is not particularly
pretty, more especially after the remark of an
observer when you are admiring it that it
suggests an anatomist's model of a human leg
6

82 JAPANESE GARDENS

or arm, made to indicate the positions of
the sinews and muscles, the veins and the
arteries.

It is hardly necessary to say that the help of
man's hand, as well as of the rain and weather,
is invoked for the decoration of fences, — not in
painting, but in giving the appearance of age.
Silvery lichens, velvety moss, green and orange ;
the warm greys won from the sun, the cold
greys brought by the rain, assist in adorning
the wood ; but while the climate does a great
deal, and does it quickly, intelligent aid helps
on the good work. Earth is rubbed into the
grain of the wood and is carefully damped,
and moss is the recompense of this generous
charity. Sometimes little ferns grow in the
cracks, due, I am sure, to a deliberate invitation
on the part of the fence owners.

A favourite method of decorating some
wooden fences is to hold a liorhted torch under
the wood in places, so that it is charred, — an
original and ugly form of ' poker work ' ; it is,
however, popular in fishing villages more par-
ticularly, as the charring is said to preserve the
wood. The ' Rustic Fence ' is often found, but
it is not the meaningless, mongrel sort of thing
that it is with us. Our rustic palings never
seem to have any connexion with real out-
door life. But those in Japan are of ingeniously
pretty shapes, like country girls, caught, but
not frightened out of their native grace, and

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r>i4M>i»HAH!^

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GARDEN FENCES AND HEDGES 83

performing with simple charm the work required
of them.

When we come to bamboo fences, there is such
a wonderful variety that one hardly knows where
to begin to describe. First of all, it should be
said that here, as always, the style and degree
of finish must depend upon that of the garden
which the fence is to surround. There are
three grades of workmanship — the rough, which
is often the prettiest, the medium, and the
highly wrought.

Of the first degree, bamboos sliced in half,
or in quarters, and tied on to upright supports
of whole tubes of the same material, would give
one a fair idea, while a delicately woven and
plaited paling of basket-work panels might repre-
sent the more elaborate kinds. Between these
run all sorts of grades and shades of difference.

The methods of tying the bamboos, the
material used, and the design, if I may call it so,
of the knots, immensely increase the variety.
Then there are open as well as closed bamboo
fences, high and low ones, simple and severe,
fanciful and elaborate kinds, and combinations
of all these. There are fences with ' Moon-
entering ' openings, others closed below and
latticed above, or with round or square windows
set in the solid part, that discover adorable
twisted Plum branches, with their delicate
snowflake blooms set off against the shadow
of the garden behind. There are fences which

84 JAPANESE GARDENS

are bundles of reeds that suggest torches, and
fences which have made many a public school
boy think of other days ; and again more of
the same material, but evenly fastened, as if
they formed a thin hedge of bare twigs, that
are called ' Nightingale ' fences.

These last were, to me, more poetic in
sentiment than in appearance, for they re-
minded me of the fences of the poor negroes
in the swamps of Arkansas ; and although
I remember how the mocking-birds sang there
when I was a child, I recollect, still more
clearly, the savagely barking, half - starved
dogs that used to dash out from behind them,
and the gibbering old ' witch woman ' who
would scream at us over the fence of switches.
But the Japanese are gentler than those un-
tamed Africans who had been brought to die of
ague in our Southern swamps, and their birds
are more serene and happy beings too. The
nightingale — the bird-lover of the Plum — may
serenade his mistress from these bare twigs,
happily fancying his song will evoke her
flowers. The poet says —

" My fence of twigs is desolate with snow,
And yet the loving nightingale is there.
He takes the snowflakes for his lady's flowers,
And pours his soul out in his love and woe."

These twig fences are built also in two and
three tiers, but even the higher ones are only

GARDEN FENCES AND HEDGES 85

appropriately used around — or as screen fences
in — the rougher sorts of gardens.

More than a word should be said, too, of
the cords with which parts of bamboo and reed
fences are tied, for it is in these little details —
as in a dress from a good Paris house — that
originality and perfection of finish are displayed.
The rope is generally of natural fibre, perhaps
of Wistaria, which is so strong that it may be
used to hold parts of buildings together ; per-
haps of the tough little tendrils of vines and
creepers, or of the strong grass which the
Chinese use so much, but as likely as not it
will be of sago palm, or of hemp, dyed black or
brown or deep sienna. There are used no ugly
glaring and staring yellows and pinks and
purples, to insult the eyes of these artistic
people; even the cords — I had almost written
' chords ' — must harmonize.

But a most important type of fence is not to
be omitted, the ' Screen,' or ' Sleeve Fence.'
In these almost more variety exists than in any
other kind, because their object is to conceal,
by a beautiful thing, something else that is un-
beautiful. They are usually at the edge of the
veranda to protect the washer at the water-
basin, or perhaps to block out some unsightly
but necessary part of the house or grounds, or
to give interest, and a sense of there being
' more beyond,' to a restricted space. The
very name, ' Sleeve Fence,' is suggestive of

86 JAPANESE GARDENS

tlie graceful drooping sleeve held up to screen
off a view, though very often it would be larger
than the whole kimono is.

This fence may be rather stiff and archi-
tectural in form, to add to the dignity of a
stately house, and to carry on its style into
the garden ; but often it is quite irregular
in shape and design, and, I confess it sadly,
sometimes ' rococo ' to the last degree.

I give a few names of the many varieties
of the ' Screen Fence,' and the reader can
doubtless construct for himself a picture of
the quaintness and charm to which these names
are a key. The ' Clothes-horse Fence ' — the shape
of that delightful and useful article which
the traveller will remember to have seen in
the sleeping-rooms of country inns, private
bath-houses, etc., in Japan ; the open spaces
between the bars, in this case, are filled in with
bamboo work in good designs. The ' Armour '
pattern has a diagonal band in the centre, of
crossed and tied Wistaria tendrils, which some-
what resembles ancient Japanese chain-mail.
The ' Moon-entering Screen Fence ' is, in an
irregular way, like the repeating type which
encloses the garden and bears the same name.
It is not, however, so attractive, to my thinking,
for the single opening, slightly broken at one side,
for a Plum tree's twisted trunk and branches to
appear, seems to me too palpable a strain after
effect, and gives the pretty little work an air of

GARDEN FENCES AND HEDGES 87

sophistication instead of the guileless look it
should have. Then there is the ' Bundle of
Reeds Screen Fence,' the ' Double ' and the
' Triple ' stage one, and the ' Nightingale Screen
Fence,' which are all allied in style to their
namesakes which surround the garden ; the
' Leaning Plum Tree,' the ' Round Window,'
the ' Looking Through,' and the ' Peeping '
kinds, are variations of those with openings. Of
the different sorts, with their various modifica-
tions and combinations, it would not be hard to
make up a list of a hundred kinds.

In between fences and hedges might be placed
the open palings of bamboo which serve the
double purpose of fence and trellis, and which,
with their network of creeper covering, often
have the look of hedges. They are delightful,
informal-looking affairs, not appropriate for
the boundaries of big and imposing gardens,
but very charming around the smaller and per-
haps more cheerful sorts. Moto Hakone has
several, overrun with Morning Glories and the
crimson stars of Cyprus Vines. Sometimes
one sees them with Wistaria, but this would be
the higher kind, not the little ones two or three
feet high that are most frequently seen. I have
noted them, too, covered with the glowing
orange of Bignonia, but that also would soon
need a tall trellis to show off the splendours of
the blossoms.

I want to call the attention of Americans to

88 JAPANESE GARDENS

this form of fence. It is not unknown in the
United States, though it is not employed nearly
so much as it might be. People who do not
desire privacy, and who are generous enough to
wish the public to enjoy the sight of their
smooth and sloping lawns and flaming flower-
beds, but who still want a line of demarcation
at the edges of their property, could use these
little low fences to great advantage, covered
with Nasturtiums, with white or yellow Jas-
mine, with climbing Roses, with Passion Vine,
or with any of the hundred and one creepers
which combine profusion of bloom and colour
with density of foliage ; and the effect would
be charming. And in that land where bamboo
is not, but wire is, the result desired could be
obtained at little or big cost, as the owner
pleased. Variety of effect would be endless.

Another style of open fence, although not a
common one, is of living Bamboo, set in at a
sharp angle, and tied in a lattice pattern. It is
exquisitely pretty, with the delicate leaves and
shining green or yellow stems outlined against
the sky. Our Willows, which in appearance so
closely resemble the Bamboo, although they
are far removed in species, could be used with
good effect in the same way. A pergola of
Willows, leading to the ornamental water which
so many gardens boast nowadays, would be a
charming thing, first to leap out in the spring,
and last, when its silvery leaves have turned,

GARDEN FENCES AND HEDGES 89

to drop in the autumn. Or an arbour of
Willows, beside a pond or brook at an old-
fashioned country place, would be a constant
delight ; for the Willow leaves, like the Aspens,
are always fluttering, and give one the sense
of a breeze even when there is none.

My sailor husband tells me that in Bermuda,
Oleanders, crimson, pink, and white, are planted in
interlacing hoops to form a fence of this kind,
and that the effect is beautiful. We tried it in
Hong-Kong, but not with much success, as with-
out coral soil in which to plant their roots,
Oleanders do not seem to do very well.

In Yokohama, Tokio, Nagasaki, and many
other places in Japan, hedges are much used
instead of fences. The only wonder is that, in
a country where so many Laurels are found,
where Camellias and Cryptomereas have their
feet on their native heath, and grow with a
profusion unknown in other climes, one should
ever see anything else. I confess that, in
Yokohama, these — in winter — splendid great
hedges are in summer a pathetic rather than
a beautiful sight. In the August semi-dryness
(for no season is really dry in Japan) their
glossy leaves are dusty and dirty and dejected-
looking, with the melancholy of a satin dress in
the gutter, of a man who wears shiny broad-
cloth and carries a sandwich board. Such sad
spots as the rain leaves on them — the very
stains of tears ! But, if they are not always

90 JAPANESE GARDENS

beautiful in summer, for the rest of the year
they are beautiful enough to more than com-
pensate, for never were glossy leaves glossier
than in this moist climate, and the Japanese
clip them, to represent walls, so well that one
is not infrequently led to think that solid
masonry is underneath, and is covered with
shining Ivy without. Sometimes the gateways
go still further in imitation of fortress walls,
for a bastion or a scarp is thrown out on each
side of the entrance — not for defence, of course,
but for privacy. In other words, the visitors
at the gates do not command a view of the
tea-table on the lawn.

Ilex is not infrequently used, and always
makes a close, well-covered surface. It has a
delicious, pungent smell, and its twigs are fine
and strong like steel, so that it would withstand
any amount of aggression. These twigs, and those
of the Osage Orange of other hedges, are made
into the toothpicks for which, in the East,
Japan is so famous. Japanese Box, which is
not so slow-growing as ours, but has the same
sunny-garden smell, is also a favourite. These
hedges do not attain a height of more than five
or six feet ; but those of the Camellia grow
very much higher, up to fifteen or even eighteen
feet, while the Cryptomerea will soar as high
as you like, and still bristle, impassably, with
fine bronze needles.

In Tokio, one sees a combination of bamboo

GARDEN FENCES AND HEDGES 91

fence below, and wild Orange hedge above, that
is very attractive. Doubtless these fences are
securely built, but I could not help thinking that,
in my childhood's days in the Southern States,
it would have been the fence and not the hedge
that I should have considered it easier to get
through. I remember a thicket of wild Plum, —
for, as it was never trimmed, that is what it
came to, — in Arkansas, which bore the most
delicious, sour red plums that ever a child
longed for, regardless of cholera-morbus ; and,
in Virginia, an Osage Orange hedge that yielded
forth beautiful, big, bitter fruit, and protected
nothing in particular. Those two hedges were
an end, not a means ; and how many torn
frocks, and bruised knees, and scratched little
hands, and how many cruel, horrid tummy-
aches they were responsible for ! But I cannot
remember ever having broken my way through
either of them. The Orange hedge I considered
much more impassable than the granite walls
and wide moats of Fortress Munroe, in which we
lived. It seemed to me, therefore, in Japan,
highly appropriate that this look of a sally-port
should be given to the entrances of these hedge
walls, and that the gates of heavy masonry
should often appear nearly solid enough to
withstand an attack of artillery. I often
wondered if, had the positions been reversed
in Manchuria, and the Japanese been defending
instead of attacking Port Arthur, Osage Orange,

92 JAPANESE GARDENS

the thorny Bamboo, or the Wild Rose of the
Sleeping Princess would not have been planted
and intertwined with the wire entanglements,
and with the samurai spirit of its defenders the
place thus have been made quite impregnable.

^,^y..-,~.^^...pr»n«M-

-J O

O K

CHAPTER VII

GARDEN ARCHITECTURE (GATES, SUMMER-
HOUSES, AND bridges)

" He thought he saw a Garden Door
That opened with a key.
He looked again, and found it was

The Double Rule of Three.

'And all its mystery,' he said,

' Is clear as day to me.' "

Lewis Carroll

A

S the Double Rule of Three will never, I
fear, be anything but a mystery to me,
I can only hope that the bearing of the
verse upon Gates may not be too strictly insisted
upon. Many parts of a Japanese garden are
mysterious and hard to understand ; some
comprehension of the sentiments which underlie
them one can only come at by glimpses of
insight into the national character, by moments
of clairvoyance that illuminate the subject like
flashes of lightning. The key is not in the
lock, but in the mind of the garden viewer, in
the heart of the garden lover.

But it should not be inferred that Japanese
garden gates are dull and uninteresting ; that,

93

94 JAPANESE GARDENS

because fences conceal, the entrance which
reveals takes away the wonder and the charm
with it. If the gates opened on nothing at all,
like triumphal arches, I should still love them
— quaint, intriguing, human notes that they
give to the little Japanese landscape inside.
They seem so insouciant and inviting, and,
though they have their hard and fast regula-
tions governing them, so individual and personal.
It is as if a pretty child stood there, in its
bright kimono, and said to the passing stranger,
in its sweet English, " Will you pliss come
in!"

According to the inflexible rule that governs
all garden accessories, the gate must correspond
in style with the fence, and the fence with the
garden ; and the garden must have unity in
size and character and scope, so that the whole
is in proper relation to each part, and each part
to the whole. By this time the reader will
think that this rule may be taken for granted,
but, although I apologize for reiteration, it
can hardly have too much stress laid upon it.
It is the key-note of the success of the Japanese
gardener.

You never see in Japan, as you so often do
in other countries, great gates, which could
withstand the attack of armies, set in insignificant
walls or in light iron fences. My own country
is a notable offender in this particular, and
beautiful gates of wrought iron or bronze, of the

GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 95

Italian Renaissance period, give a magnificent
entrance to perhaps little and futile grounds, or
are inappropriately set in a Tudor wall (built
half as high as it should be), or in a modern
iron fence. But we are not the only offenders ;
I could name many English modern parks whose
enclosing partitions sin in this way ; and here
in Hong-Kong one of the most important Govern-
ment buildings has a fine and impressive gate
of wrought iron, with stone and cement and
brick pillars, and a lodge, with splendid strutting
Sikhs on guard in front of it, and no fence or
wall at all at a few feet away from the entrance !
This is a Chinese idea, rather, for one often sees
all the pomp and display at the doors, while
dirt and discomfort reign within ; a grand gate
to no garden in particular ; or an imposing
sally-port, with painted cannon, in a city wall
which is down in a dozen other places, for the
enemy to walk in unhindered.

This is one of the ideas that I am glad to say
the Japanese have not imported from the
Chinese, although the architectural features of
their gates certainly received their character from
them. Gate roofs, in particular, are very re-
miniscent of Chinese ones — only another instance
of how this clever race accept what is good and
useful, and reject what is not. The roofs, with
their upturned corners, beautiful tiles, and
lovely curves, are almost the nicest things to
be seen in the Celestial Empire ; so, when a

96 JAPANESE GARDENS

Japanese builds an imposing gateway, as he
does for his temples, palaces, and important
grounds and gardens, he usually puts a roof over
it embodying these features.

Of course there are many gates that are
gates only, not gateways ; modest, absolutely
in harmony with their surroundings, simple, and
beautiful, though with every detail well worked
out. I should like here to put in a little essay
on the designs of hinges and bolts and gate
fastenings alone, for they deserve it ; but I fear
that the gentle reader would find even my
enthusiasm a cold thing compared with what
the mere sight and close examination of these
delicate little marvels can arouse. I will content
myself, then, by saying that the metal fastenings
of Japanese gates are veritable small poems in
bronze and iron.

These adjuncts are naturally for wooden
gates, which may be magnificent or plain as
the case demands ; but there are many other
wooden gates without ornament except that
given by the use of beautifully grained and
weather-stained wood, and the exquisite joinery-
work of their makers. Then there are countless
styles made of bamboo, light and delicate, yet
strong. I cannot remember ever seeing, in
spite of the fact that the Japanese are the best
metal workers in the world, any gates made
wholly of bronze, brass, or iron, such as one
observes wonderful examples of in Italy, France,

GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 97

and Germany. This is doubtless because the
Japanese ideas of buildings are not carried out
in the imperishable materials that have, fortun-
ately for us, been the old-time method of European
builders. Japanese houses and temples^ are of
wood and paper, of bamboo and thatch, and
not of the granite they have in such profusion,
or of the imperishable bricks of the Chinese and
Egyptians. And their fences and gates corre-
spond.

Every garden must have two gates — one for
effect and ' company,' and the other for use and
necessity. The big gate will be as grand as may
be proper to ' go ' with the garden, but the
little one must be humble and insignificant, for
the removal of rubbish. I firmly believe that,
with the passion of the people for cleaning, this
is the entrance nearest to the gardener's, and,
secretly, to the garden's mistress's heart. Oh,
the luxury, to their fastidious minds, in the
necessity of constant sweeping which the autumn
must bring ! I used to long to be at it myself,
except that Japanese methods are back-breaking
to other races, for their sweeping brooms and
the toys that do duty as rakes and hoes require,
even with their short stature, that the body be
bent nearly double. And how imposingly tall
I used to feel, and what shouts of delighted

1 Japanese temples have from time immemorial been rebuilt
every twenty years. They are decorated again in the same manner
and all is rededicated.

7

98 JAPANESE GARDENS

laughter it evoked, when I essayed the task.
But the broom and I never reached the gate
together !

Some big entrances have a little wicket
gate beside them, for convenience, but these
would be only in the great places, where a
porter's lodge and big double doors would
imply the need of a more modest entree for foot-
visitors. In these fine gateways all the elabora-
tion of carved wood, splendid roofs, and, perhaps,
lacquered decorations of eaves, would be found ;
in others the timbers might be left rough, the
roof thatched, or the latter be itself but a cross
piece of wood, planed and capped with metal,
or rough hewn, with upturned curves like a
torii, or with bark and moss upon it as it was
brought from the forest. Sometimes it might be
only a trellis, with a lovely creeper depending
from it as a decoration. Where an open fence
of bamboo, with twining Roses or Wistaria, is
used, this would be the appropriate sort of gate
to combine with it.

Light gates of bamboo, or trellis gates, are
often used to lead from one part of a garden to
another, and so are those picturesque ones,
previously spoken of, with thatched or shingled
roofs, made of mellow, silvery old wood. The
latter suggest — but for the wooden tablet sus-
pended in the middle, which gives the name of
the garden, or recites, in native characters,
some poetic sentiment which describes it — the

GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 99

ancient lich-gates of England. One dear old
weather-beaten gate of the sort at Kyoto
transported me to Essex so instantly that I half
expected the rickshaw coolie to address me in
that flat county's drawl.

A fir tree is the proper adornment of any
style of gate, but is happiest, I think, near this
last-named kind, with its silvery posts and
thatched top. An example of this may be
seen in Mr. Tyndale's picture, facing page 244.

There is much sentiment attached to gate-
ways. At the New Year, if it has no Pine
tree by its side, or even if it has, the door is
adorned with Pine branches, signifying ' long
life.' Then there are gourds for ' plenty,'
and paper gohei for ' luck,' or religion, or
spirituality.!

The Plum tree is also a very popular tree
to plant beside the gate, and that, of course,
also signifies spiritual beauty. But peace and
plenty must ever be at your gates, in sentiment
if not in reality, at the beginning of each new
year.

Arbours, or summer-houses, are almost
as necessary to gardens — at least, to the big
ones — as is the view itself. Even in small
grounds a little shield from the sun and rain —
strictly to scale, of course— will be found. The
rain falls in Japan, as it does in other places,

1 When a girl is married, a fire is lit at the gate of her old home
to announce her ' death ' to that household.

100 JAPANESE GARDENS

on just and unjust, on rich and poor alike ;
so the poor man has his garden umbrella — a
huge one — ready, as in England he has his
cotton ' gamp,' and it is not unlike an umbrella,
or big mushroom,^ often, in shape. It is per-
manently set up in the garden. A single
post supports its flat round top, frequently
left rough, and with the prettily marked bark
still upon it. Some single posts have square
or octagonal tops, but they still suggest umbrellas.
There are larger rest-places with the supports
at both ends, like gate tops, with scornful,
upcurved corners to their roofs, which are
delightfully picturesque. Others, again, have
four skeleton posts, and two matted or bamboo
sides, with latticed openings and seats — not
for sitting on, as we do, but for the suari position,
resting on the feet; so that the seat is rather
wider than ours would be.

From rustic shelters, up through the simple
bamboo arbours, and rough, shed-like structures,
we make our way to elaborate and beautiful
little houses of one or two matted rooms designed
for the ceremonial tea-drinking. In these a
very delicate perfection of detail may be found,
as in the most exquisite of dwelling-houses,
although only intended for occasional use,
as a real summer-house would be. For every-
thing that is useful must have beauty, in Japan,

• An example of this sort of garden shelter can be seen in Picture 241
page 254.

GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 101

and everything that has beauty must be used —
that is, enjoyed, appreciated. The garden must
be fair and pleasant, to give contentment ;
and, as rain and wet would on so many days
prevent this, a shelter must be provided which
will delight the eye and add to the sense of
comfort and peace.

The open sorts, quite unwalled, have taken
their seating ideas from China, and quaint
blue and white porcelain barrels, perforated in
a design that will help to avoid any appearance
of heaviness, are placed for guests to sit on,
foreign fashion, with the legs hanging down.
One seldom sees them used, but they make a
pretty note of colour. Two examples of them
may be seen in the picture of the garden near
the Miyako Hotel in Kyoto, facing page 170,
but in this case without a roof over them.
The Chinese use them very frequently as
pedestals for flower-pots with fine specimen
plants in them for exhibition. Blue and
white is not the only ware, however. The
Japanese make them in a pale water-green,
as well as in a stronger green that I am in-
clined to think must have come from their
Celestial cousins, for it is seen everywhere in
China.

Other seats are plain, low, wooden plat-
forms, shaped like beds without upper posts.
A scarlet blanket is put on top, or a straw
mat, and on this the guests squat and drink

102 JAPANESE GARDENS

tea — for this is the usual garden seat for tea-
houses. Over these the porch roof sometimes
extends, as in the picture of the tea-house in
Mamyama Park, Kyoto, shown facing page 92,
or a creeper-clad trellis may protect it from
the sun.

A Japanese garden bridge is, to my un-
mathematical mind, the most delightful sort
possible (although the delight is full of the
spice of variety), because it is seldom the
shortest route between the two sides of a stream,
and it never even pretends that it has been
erected to save time. A garden, more especially
a garden in Japan, is a place to loiter in; the
bridges, the little islands of the lake, the summer-
houses on the shore, the seats in the shade,
the very stepping-stones, which do not help
one's feet to hasten, are all means to that end.
You do not come into the garden to make
money; you do not come to exercise, and to
hurl balls about ; you do not pass through it to
save time, but to spend it, and to spend it laugh-
ingly, contentedly, tranquilly, taking in through
all your senses its pleasant suggestion of repose
and peace. The goldfish will do the darting
about, and we can get our feeling of life and
movement in watching them. Or we may
follow the flight of the bird we have startled
from the Cherry tree, and study the struttings
and preenings of the two sparrows that so
boldly hop and peck beside the water-basin,

GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 103

or lazily observe the great velvet-blue butterfly,
cho-cho-no-hana, or ' insect like a flower,' that
flits from bloom to bloom among the Irises,
softly, as if they were petals blown by the
breeze.

So, if the bridges went matter- of -fact-ly
over the stream, we should arrive too quickly,
and the end, even of the largest garden, would
come all too soon. But, instead, they start
boldly at one angle, are seized with an inspira-
tion, as a fish is, in midstream, and dart off
on another tack ; then, perhaps, may be
happily reached the best spot from which to
view the Wistaria reflected in the waters below,
and so a little resting-place is fixed, and after
awhile the bridge goes on unconcernedly to a
place on the opposite bank.

One of the most attractive sorts of bridges,
the yatsu hashi style, is really little more than
glorified stepping-stones, long slabs of rock or
of wood that go zigzag fashion through an oozy
bed of Irises.i Like a bird's low flight, skimming
this way and that only a few inches above the
water, one can see into the very violet depths,
into the golden triangles that nestle in the
hearts of the flowers ; the glittering edges of
the sword-like leaves might almost cut one's
feet, so close is the flower- viewer to the object
of his admiration.

^ An example of this sort may be seen in Mr. Tyndale's other book
of Japanese pictures, on p. 72 of Japan and the Japanese.

104 JAPANESE GARDENS

Even when the bridge does go directly from
point to point, without lingering to enjoy itself
on the way, the Japanese usually manage to
avoid the straight line which is not that of
beauty. Whether it is for that reason, or because
the little stream may swell with the spring rains,
so as to make additional height in the middle
a safe precaution, most bridges, whether of
wood or of stone, arch a little in the centre.
Some arch a good deal, so that, when completed,
by their reflection in the water below a perfect
circle is formed. ' Full-moon ' bridges these are
called, and they come from China. And so
steep is the incline, that, unless little steps are
taken, it is hard, if not impossible, to walk over
them. In the background of the picture of
geishas fishing at Kameido, facing this page,
two specimens are to be seen, but without
the arch completed below. The naughty little
nesans who bring one tea there giggle with
joy at the efforts of people to scramble over
them (for these are without steps), and greet
the foreigner who succeeds in doing it with little
tinkling shrieks of delight. The innocent ap-
preciation by the Japanese of the very mildest
jest is enough to set one up as a wit for life.
One feels a real humorist there who has only
made a mistake in pronunciation, and a master-
wit who climbs the round bridge at Kameido.

Of bridges not so much curved a good
example may be seen in the picture of the

GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 105

Choin-in Temple garden (page 176) as well as in
the picture of Nami-Kawa San's garden, facing
page 160. It springs, a solid arch of granite,
from the shore to the island, and two mandarin
ducks, too pretty to seem real, stand on it,
admiring the images of themselves in the smooth
water beneath.

Then there are stone bridges for highly finished
gardens, architectural in character. Almost all
temple grounds have them, with carved hand-
rails. In other places, bridges are of wood of
beautiful grain, or, it may be, lacquered red. The
most famous one of this sort is the red lacquered
bridge at Nikko by which only royalty may
cross. There is great variety in the style of
wooden bridges, for the Japanese are wonderful
workers in that material. One quaint kind of
bridge is of faggots, laid in bundles on horizontal
cross-pieces, and then covered with sod.^ In
the pretty garden of the Mikado Hotel, at Miya-
jima, a dozen of such structures crossed and
recrossed the tumbling mountain torrent which
formed the principal theme of the composition.
This type is only suitable, of course, for the
wilder sort of garden, and, when this place was
aflame with autumn Maples, even the gods of
fire and of water themselves need not have
disdained its use.

But I love them all, the bridges of Japan,
simple or ornate, of logs or of carven stone, of

1 As shown in the Kuradani Temple picture, facing page 136.

106 JAPANESE GARDENS

faggots or of lacquered wood ; for it is not of
what they are made, or whither they lead, that is
their charm, but that they keep one secure above
the water, where is the garden's source of life
which in its cool depths reflects and repeats
the trees, the flowers, and the sky.

CHAPTER VIII

WELLS, WATER-BASINS, ETC.

" The Morning Glory
Her leaves and bells has bound
My bucket handle round.
I could not break the bands
Of those soft hands.
The bucket and the well I left ;
Lend me some water, for I come bereft."

Sir Edwin Arnold's Translation

NOT only from practical utility, but from
the ethical and aesthetic suggestion
which water makes to the Japanese
mind also, are wells a necessity in their gardens.
So much stress is laid on their ornamental
qualities, as an aid to a garden's beauty, that
often there are two wells, one with artistic
surroundings in keeping with the whole scheme,
and another nearer the house, less elaborate
(though never ugly in design), for constant
use. But wherever it is placed, — and of course
there are rules as to where it may be and where
it may not (and how the water diviner gets over
that difficulty I really cannot say), — it must be
ornamental or simple according to the design of

108 JAPANESE GARDENS

the grounds in which it is found. There are
the usual three degrees of finish : highly wrought,
medium, and rough. The first, with wood or
stone copings, carefully cut, fitted, and planed,
is architectural in character, and may be
employed in a carefully finished garden. It
would probably have a roof over it, similar in
character to that of the house itself, or of the
summer- or tea-house near it.

The roughest sort would most likely have
its coping of unplaned old logs — with moss and
worm holes for decoration — perhaps crossed,
like a ' rustic ' picture frame, at the corners,
and tied with dark wood rope or dyed vine
fibres. Or it might be of rough uncut stones,
fitted together like an old well-top at home,
and perhaps cemented crudely round the well
hole, but all kept purposely free and un-
finished in style. This would look casual
enough, but the stones would be secure, and
the whole structure safe as a church. The
middle degree would, of course, be more care-
fully arranged than this, but not so well finished
as the first.

Mr. Conder tells us that " The well frequently
assists to express the mood of the garden, and
some designers have used it to imply a sentiment,
not unlike the familiar Scriptural analogy of
Eternal Life." I am afraid I must disagree
with this opinion a little. A poetic Japanese
friend laid great stress on other open spaces of

WELLS, WATER-BASINS, ETC. 109

water expressing the garden's mood, as they
reflect the colour and changes of the sky ; the
well, dark and shadowed, sombre though pure,
remains the constant and unfailing spring of
life, the soul of the garden. When that fails the
flowers wither and fade, the leaves and mosses
dry and shrivel, the trees, even, droop and die.
The garden's spirit is gone !

I like the idea, more especially in that land
of unfaihng springs, for there it has not the
sadness, the tragedy even, that the sentiment
might suggest in places where the wells are not
of eternal life, but even of a briefer space than
man's. One might remark — but luckily it has
nothing to do with gardens — that some of their
wells, whose water comes from but little below
the surface, where it is contaminated by the
drainings from house and yard, and is trustingly
used for drinking, are veritable wells of death,
not life ! This is one of the reasons why tea,
the national beverage of the country, is so much
safer to drink than the favourite tipple of my
own land — 'ice-water.' (It is not 'iced,' but
ice-water in name as in reality. Lumps of ice
fill the tumbler and a little water is put with
them. ' Iced ' water means water cooled in
bottles on ice.)

The Japanese have many legends and super-
stitions of poisoned and of haunted wells. But
even where no story is told of goblins, they have
always a respect for the spirits which frequent

110 JAPANESE GARDENS

water. Lafcadio Hearn tells the following tale
of one haunted well ; —

" Himeji contains the ruins of a great castle
of thirty turrets ; and a daimio used to dwell
therein, whose revenue was one hundred and
fifty-six thousand koku of rice. Now, in the
house of one of that daimio's chief retainers
was a maid-servant of good family, whose name
was O Kiku; and the Kiku signifies a Chrys-
anthemum flower. Many precious things were
entrusted to her charge, and among other things
ten costly dishes of gold. One of these was
suddenly missed and could not be found ; and
the girl, being responsible therefor, and knowing
not otherwise how to prove her innocence,
drowned herself in a well. But ever thereafter
her ghost, returning nightly, could be heard
counting the dishes slowly, with sobs : Ichi-mai,
Ni-mai, San-mai, Yo-mai, Go-mai, Roku-mai,
Shichi-mai, Hachi-ma% Ku-mai.

" Then there would be heard a despairing
cry and a loud burst of weeping, and again the
girl's voice counting the dishes plaintively :
' One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
nine.'

" Her spirit passed into the body of a strange
little insect, whose head faintly resembled that
of a ghost with long dishevelled hair ; and it is
called the O Kiku-Mushi, or the ' Fly of O Kiku ' ;
and it is found, they say, nowhere save in Himeji.

WELLS, WATER-BASINS, ETC. Ill

A famous play was written about O Kiku, which
is still acted in all the popular theatres, entitled
Banshu-0-Kiku-no-Sara-ya-shiki, or ' The Manor
of the Dish of O Kiku of Banshu.' "

Even with Western nations the old well
seems still to retain a few shreds of the romance
of bygone years, when it was a meeting-place
for village youths and maidens, and love-making
and water-drawing went on simultaneously.
But ' laid on ' water has driven out even the
homely pump that superseded the ' old wooden
buckets.' Wells, to us nowadays, are out of
date ; and although we preserve an affection for
them, as we do for old furniture, they no longer
form a striking feature of our gardens or back
yards. The Japanese, on the contrary, make the
well the pivot of a charming bit of scenery, the
central part of a picture which is composed of
the well cover and coping ; with its proper
complement of ' Standing ' or ' Recumbent '
rocks, a stone lantern, perhaps, and an Azalea
bush, clipped round ; a clump of Irises, not too
close to the stepping-stones ; and over all a
drooping Pine tree, or perhaps a Cherry, to carry
on, in spring (and even in winter, for its bare
bark and branches are lovely then in their own
way), the tender, penetrating sense of beauty
and of continued life. Seen from any point
such a group makes a picture ; and, what is
far more, to a Japanese mind it conveys its

112 JAPANESE GARDENS

delicate but perpetual suggestion of the hidden
depths of serene and beautiful and unhurried
living.

Well borders never sacrifice picturesqueness
to an austere usefulness, nor is the careless look
of natural beauty obtained at the expense of
safety. Even a log-bound mouth, though it be
full of holes and covered with moss, will be quite
safe and secure ; and a cover, either of boards,
of woven bamboo, or a straw mat, will protect
the water from pollution by fallen leaves or
inquisitive insects, and, where there are children,
will be strong enough to keep them on the
right side of it. Sometimes a pretty thatched
roof will go over well, pulley, and cross-beam,
buckets and all, or a smaller roof of boards may
protect only the pulley top. With this style
irregular stepping - stones would be used ; but
where the well border is of squarely hewn stone,
or of cement, the stepping - stones would be
squarely cut to correspond, and this dignified
well would have a cover of severer model
also. These roofs, on two legs, look very
much like the old lich-gates of England, and
are spoken of in the chapter on fences and
gates.

Arrangements for drawing up the water vary
a good deal. Sometimes there is a regular
old-fashioned well-sweep (the Egyptian shadoof),
such as may still be seen in some retired country
places in our own lands ; and sometimes it is

WELLS, WATER-BASINS, ETC. 113

a long bamboo, with a wooden bucket tied on
the end, with which one jabs at the water, as
if one were scooping up crabs ; but usually it
is a delightful affair of a rope over a pulley,
with a bucket tied at each end. The pulley
must, of course, have a cross-beam support to
hold it in position over the well, and sometimes
a leaning tree is utilized for this. The tree then
becomes trebly useful, as it acts as support, as
cover, and as decoration.

The buckets are simply and chastely shaped,
usually round, and taller than ours are, with
the handle a continuation of the middle staves
carried up, and a wooden cross-piece on top.
The design is so pretty and so popular that it is
used for many other articles, such as jardinieres
and flower-holders. These buckets, strange to
relate, should not be moss-bound or old-looking.
New and beautifully white wood, unpainted, is
used, and must be often renewed, or at least
constantly cleaned and scrubbed, to keep them
so bright and fresh-looking. This is, of course,
owing to the national passion for cleanliness,
and perhaps a little because the artistic eye of
the Japanese dwells lovingly on the beautiful
graining of their woods. In the many parts of
Japan where sulphur is found in the water,
that substance has dyed the wood the most
lovely and varying shades of silvery amethyst,
and the buckets look as if made of the rarest of
grained and coloured stone.

114 JAPANESE GARDENS

But although the perfection of each detail
of the accessories of a well is so carefully looked
after, each is only a part of the whole, and must
be in keeping with it. And that whole, the well,
is but a part of a greater whole, the garden, and
the garden part of the country itself. There
must be no jarring note.

I like to think that the wells, in their grounds,
are more than places from which to draw water,
more than picturesque adjuncts to their gardens,
more than pretty foregrounds to a picture ; that
they are an expression of the whole national
character. We are too apt to judge of these
people hastily, and, because they are so charm-
ing on the surface, to think that they have no
depths. I believe that, as deep in the heart
of their gardens an eternal water springs, so
in the hidden depths of their natures, charming,
gay, polite, responsive, there lies the eternal
fount of deep spiritual feeling ; that the flowers
of their gracefulness and tact and courtesy would
wither, as those in their gardens would, if they
were not watered and refreshed from the recesses
of that deep and ever-bubbling well.

Water-Basins. — Those beautiful and artistic
objects for holding water, in the shape of bowls,
basins, and vases, have so often excited envy
in my heart that I approach the subject with
some timidity. In these indispensable adjuncts
to a Japanese garden, these people (than whom

WELLS, WATER-BASINS, ETC. 115

the Greeks and Etruscans never turned out more
classically lovely although simple designs) have
reached a very high level of art. I wonder why
they never seem to be mentioned in the artistic
rhapsodies of writers on things Japanese. It is
a well-known fact that however common the
object, however modest and lowly the use to
which it is allotted, taste and care and love —
for it comes to that — is put into the shape and
the decoration of it. The latches of their doors,
the screws of their cabinets, the shapes of their
wooden water buckets, the patterns on their
towels, indeed everything they have, either for
use or for beauty, is adorned, and well adorned
too. And so these stone basins close to the
veranda, used for washing hands in a simple
peasant's modest domain, may be of so truly
good and artistic a shape as to be worthy of
a place near the work of the early Greeks. This
is not in the least an exaggeration ; indeed,
it is the latter who are honoured in the com-
parison : for in dignity, simplicity, chastity,
and restraint in decoration the Japanese are
second to none, and yet this is not at the ex-
pense of beauty and of the greatest conceivable
variety.

I would not say, nevertheless, that all water-
basins are of a sort to withstand the test of
comparison with those of the acknowledged
masters of form, the Greeks, for many can
only be compared with Nature's own hewing,

116 JAPANESE GARDENS

being simple stones of a good shape, roughly
hollowed out to hold water. These usually
have a wooden lid, to keep the water inside cool
and clean, and to guard it from the chance
pollution of a falling leaf or a flying insect.
Those made in the shape of bowls, jars, vases,
or pillars (square or round), generally have a
top too, but of a sort more suitable to their
shape.

Some shapes of the fantastic sort are frankly
ugly. I can concede no claim except that of
quaintness to those basins which are shaped
like Fujiyama, the adored, whose crater forms
the well, and whose cone is sawed off ridicu-
lously, in order to make the water easily
reached. As for the ' half- moon bridges,' and
some other designs, I cannot understand how
such artistic people as the Japanese can endure
them. They are as hideous and absurd as
are the china slippers and ladies' boots of
porcelain that one sometimes sees used for
flowers in old-fashioned houses at home, or as
the little alabaster models of the ' Taj ' which
I saw offered for sale, as pendants, in India.
It is the more generally approved plain and
classic shapes towards which my enthusiasm is
directed.

Frequently these basins have water running
in, over, and out again, where there is a stream
of any sort on the premises ; in which case, of
course, no top is necessary. This type is very

WELLS, WATER-BASINS, ETC. 117

attractive too, for often, with the ingenuity in
simple mechanical contrivances which the
Japanese are apt to show, the water is piped
in picturesque bamboo instead of the ugly iron
or lead pipes that we should use if we were
doing it.

But contrast the whole washing arrangement
— the beautifully formed basin; the daintily
contrived pipes and drain; the well- shaped
stepping-stone in front of it, on which to stand
during the operation of ladling out water and
throwing it over the head and hands; the delight-
ful screen-fence of bamboo, with its graceful
plant or young tree beside it — contrast these
with what a workman or artisan in those we call
civilized countries would have. He might perhaps
indulge in a tin, or at the best an enamelled
basin (the chances are in favour of a line
or two of grime for interior decoration), with
an ugly iron sink to receive the dirty water,
and a fragment of yellow soap on a greasy
half-saucer, as the last touch of beauty, beside
him !

Water, and its aesthetic idea of moral as well
as physical cleanliness, is most important to the
Japanese, more particularly near temples. In
these grounds the water-basin, according to the
scale of the design, is of a size to correspond ;
so that it is sometimes really too large for its
purpose. In such a case a ' working model '
is put behind a screen for use, while the big and

118 JAPANESE GARDENS

impressive basin acts only as an ornament.
It is treated, however, not as a drone, but
exactly as if it commanded the respect of
utility by occupying its proper place, and is
given the same relative position it would hold
if it were really a worker.

I do not know that the water-basins which
are placed at the beginning of the avenues
leading to Shinto temples, at which worshippers
cleanse themselves before going up the steps to
clap their hands and pray, can be classed exactly
with these. They are frequently large square
blocks of stone, partially hollowed out at the
top, and suggest ancient sarcophagi. They
have religious designs, such as the Svastika,
Senfuku-rin-so, and Ho-Kwan (all essentially
Buddhist symbols), carved upon their sides,
and, above the water, are often hung beautifully
coloured and decorated towels, — the votive
offerings of pilgrims, — which wave and flutter
like tiny flags in the breeze, and are reflected in
the water beneath.

These tanks resemble the basins of holy
water in a Roman Catholic church, as we
discovered once at Gongen Temple beside
Hakone Lake. While I was sketching near by,
my three children, in playing about, discovered
that the big stone basin was dry, and further,
much to their satisfaction, that it made a most
desirable ' steamer-boat.' Their nurse, who
was in attendance, saw no reason against their

WELLS, WATER-BASINS, ETC. 119

climbing into it, since their little Japanese
amah did not suggest that there was any ir-
reverence in this course ; so, with many tootings
and shoutings and high glee, they were just
setting sail with the half of the fluttering towels
above them (the juvenile imagination can over-
come everything), when the chief priest happened
to pass by. I heard his sharp and angry voice,
and rushed to the scene of disorder just in time
to see him roughly, and almost savagely, order-
ing the children out, throwing as far away as
he could the little twigs of bamboo with which
they had been pretending to row — for they had
turned the great stone tomb into a steamer, a
sailing ship, and a rowboat at one and the same
time. I began with the most abject apologies,
which, however, were so rudely and ungraciously
received that I ended by telling him that my
children were doing no more than I had seen
many Japanese children do in the same place,
without his having offered any objection ; and
that if he had stopped the latter, the nurse and
amah would never have allowed these foreign
children to touch what was regarded as sacred.
But a rude Japanese is such a wonderful ex-
ception to the national rule of politeness, that
I can only believe that my unwitting little
people had committed some heinous crime of
disrespect to a sacred object. However, even
in that event, his breach was worse than theirs,
for, according to the Japanese code, few things

120 JAPANESE GARDENS

can warrant rudeness to foreigners, and nothing
can excuse unkindness to children. If water and
the ideas appertaining to it are holy, not less so
are the little hands which touch it and the vessels
which contain it.

CHAPTER IX

LANDSCAPE GARDENS

" One says your little gaxden stands
Encompassed by trees.
I speak not loud but my heart replies :
My garden's bounded by the skies.
All's mine that my mind's heart sees."

PRACTICALLY speaking, all gardens in
Japan are landscape gardens, and one
can almost turn the phrase inside out
and declare that all landscapes in Japan are
gardens. The gardens are reproductions, on a
small scale, of the scenery of Japan, and the
scenery of Japan is a large edition of its gardens.
It is not a case, however, of the chicken and
the egg, for the gardens do not claim to have
appeared first, and to have set the fashion for
the landscape. The art, as has been said
before, originally came from China, but it was
so breathed upon by the national genius, so
enriched by the inborn poetic nature of its
Japanese interpreters, that it became, in the
truest sense, a Japanese institution.

122 JAPANESE GARDENS

1 once got hold of a literal translation of old
Omar's Rubaiijdt, with the Persian text in
parallel columns. An Indian scholar, a high-
caste Brahmin, was good enough to give me his
views on delicate and elusive bits in the original
which had escaped the translator, and he read
aloud the sonorous, smooth-flowing rhymes in
a voice which was itself poetry. FitzGerald's
so-called translations appeared only as foot-notes
here and there, at which in the beginning I
wondered — but not later. The literal renderings,
in prose, seemed bare and mean (although in
themselves remarkable enough, all things con-
sidered) compared with the rich and varied
imagery, the depth of thought and of feeling
which the Irish poet had read into them. The
Persian sounded beautiful, it is quite true, but
what is sound, in such a case, compared with
the meaning of the words ! As regards the great
masters of music, the sound is more than words
can express, and their continued and inex-
haustible charm lies in the fact that they lead
on the imagination to fields where words are
useless. In poetry, the thought is the key that
unlocks the door of the imagination, and the
music of it is only an adornment.

So, in the Japanese translations of the Chinese
art of garden making, as in FitzGerald's Omar,
there is more of thought, of beauty, of richness,
and fulness of aim and scope, than ever was
dreamed of by the originators.

LANDSCAPE GARDENS 128

Chinese gardens, of many sorts, are not
unknown to me. Such survivals as exist of
palace grounds I have written of elsewhere.
Outdoor enclosures in their formal grandeur
are so architectural in conception, and so com-
bined with the involved details of buildings, of
walls and of gates, that one thinks of the trees
and the flowers as adjuncts of the builder's
art, and not as inmates of gardens. They are
as Palms in handsome jars in a drawing-room,
which we do not therefore call a conservatory.
Of Chinese temple enclosures — those green -
bowered places which almost alone have trees,
on hill-sides or on plains (these because of their
bareness being yearly scourged by droughts and
devastating floods) — ^I have also spoken ; as well
as of the private gardens of rich men — high-
walled, elaborate, magnificent, from which
Nature, in her shyness and inconsequence, and
sweet, coy innocence, her calm and restful peace,
has been shut out.

Yes, it is true that China suggested the idea
of gardens to Japan, and for this all honour to
her ; but let it also be conceded at the same
time that wherever Japan adhered closely to
the modes and expressions of that original idea,
the main charm of her own compositions was
gone.

The Chinese said : " Let us plant trees and
flowering shrubs and sweet-smelling herbs near
our houses, to add to them beauty, and for a

124 JAPANESE GARDENS

pleasant place wherein to walk when the sun is
hot and the heart is weary." And the thought
was a good one, and Japan adopted it, as she
adopts to this day anything that strikes her as
true, or useful, or excellent ; and so long as she
kept only to this, and let Nature inspire her, —
or her own artists, whose guide was Nature, laid
out and arranged these open spaces about her
homes and high places, — all was well. But when
she slavishly imitated the Chinese interpreters
of her own idea, she lapsed. I firmly believe
that if Japan had continued to copy even and
only the gardens of China, and had gone her
course in other ways, she would not be to-day
one of the great nations of this earth. For I
assert unfalteringly that, her gardens being an
expression of the national spirit, the beautiful
outward and visible sign of the country's inward
and spiritual grace, if they had not existed in
their present state of evolution Japan would
have become, like China, corrupt, artificial,
mercenary, of few extraordinary private virtues,
and of no civic and public ones. This is no
exaggeration. I have tried through my entire
book to show how Japanese gardens are the
outcome of Japanese spirit, are typical of her
advance, spiritual and moral as well as artistic.
Their gardening is not so much an art as an
evolution — the growth of character ; and if they
had not evolved in this direction in exactly the
way they have, they would not now be the people

LANDSCAPE GARDENS 125

they have become, and their gardens would
speak a different language, their message would
not be the same.

A quotation from Mr. W. G. Aston's Japanese
Literature will, perhaps, illustrate my meaning.
He is speaking of the days of the Shogunate,
when everything Chinese was admired and
copied at the expense of all that was fresh and
unspotted in literature, art, manners, and morals
in Japan : —

" As time went on, the code of morals derived
from the teachings of the philosophers of China,
and expounded and applied by their Japanese
followers, gained in precision and detail. But
what had originally been a wholesome and
vivifying influence became a burden to the
nation. It fell most heavily on the samurai, all
whose actions were governed by strict rules and
punctilious etiquette, in a way that was fatal
to any reasonable share of personal freedom.
In short, the great fault of the later Shogunate
was over-regulation in almost every department
of life. I was one day walking with the late
Count Terashima, then Minister for Foreign
Affairs, in one of those beautiful creations of
the landscape gardener's art which abound in
Tokio. He pointed to a grove of Fir trees,
standing by an artificial lake, which had been
trimmed and trained by generations of gardeners
into quaint and not unpleasing, but stunted.

126 JAPANESE GARDENS

shapes. ' There,' he said, ' is an emblem of the
Japanese nation under the Bakufu (Shogunate).
That is what Chinese learning did for us.' "

But, luckily for the lover of Nature, as well
as for the lover of this nation, these artificialities,
these conventions, could not permanently hold
the affection and respect of the people. As they
threw off the yoke of the Regents, so they cast
from them the slavish imitations of Chinese
literary forms, arts, and crafts, and allowed the
native genius to assert itself. From the beginning,
we are told, in order to keep up the standard of
landscape gardening, a bad design was considered
unlucky, and the minds of sages, artists, and
philosophers combined not only to prevent any
decline in the science, but even to improve it
and enlarge its scope.

I add another quotation, from a quaint and
delightful book which has just come to me from
the Kyoto Commercial Museum — the Official
Guide : —

" ' The growth of the gardens shows the
prosperity of Rakuyo, while their lack speaks of
her decline,' observed a Chinese writer in speak-
ing of the relation that the art of gardening
])ore to Rakuyo, an ancient Chinese metropolis.
' And Rakuyo is the best barometer registering
the state of affairs in the country. Her rise
means peace and happiness in the nation, while

^\

•%

ib

LANDSCAPE GARDENS 127

her fall indicates the decline of the country.'
The statement brings out the truth that garden-
ing is the product of peaceful and luxurious
life."

Where an effect of Nature was the first
consideration always, even the degeneration
into what the Chinese considered an effect of
Nature could not permanently injure the art.
It was, in this, as when in our day modern
artists imitate the ' Colourists,' the ' Impres-
sionists,' men who, whatever their faults, are
thinking and working from their own ideas.
So long as Monet and Manet, and half a dozen
others, paint Nature as they see her, all is well.
Even when the ' little men ' paint Nature as
they think Monet would see her, not much harm
is done, for he who imitates can hardly himself
become a prophet. Thus, all who are worthy go
back to the original source. The decline would
come if the imitation of imitation set in, when a
vicious arithmetical progression to the debase-
ment of art would ensue — an inconceivable
state of affairs with the great Teacher, Nature,
always before us ! So also the landscape artist
in Japan, whatever restrictions and classic
formulae he has had laid upon him, has first, and
last, and all the time, the direct command to
consult Nature. So obligatory is this rule, that,
as I have frequently had occasion to say in
these pages, very often, even to the initiated,

128 JAPANESE GARDENS

man-made gardens seem merely the happy
chance effect of wild Nature alone.

On my eventful first visit to Japan I had the
lucky opportunity of witnessing the construc-
tion of a landscape garden. Everything except
the ground itself was put there according to a
well-thought-out plan — the rocks, the trees, the
shrubs, and even the waterfall ; and yet, when
I left the place five months later, it was as if
it had always been. A sloping hill -side had
been chosen (the house, I regret to say, was
one of the ugliest specimens of ' foreign ' —
that is to say, our mid- Victorian — architecture
ever built), and another part of the same
grounds had already been completed before I
arrived.

First of all, some of the hill was hollowed
out to make an irregular valley, or rather gorge,
and near the top of this a group of rough blocks
of granite was firmly embedded. There is a
builder's rule which was observed by the Greeks,
laying down the proportion of an upright column
which should be underground ; this was, to the
best of my recollection, one-sixth of the total
length. Those Japanese gardeners did better
than that : two-thirds of these great stones
were underground, and such close-growing ever-
green shrubs and dwarf Azaleas were planted
near that it would have taken more severe
earthquakes than we had that summer to dis-
lodge them. Then moss and lichens were fastened

LANDSCAPE GARDENS 129

with damp earth into crevices, and carefully
watered several times a day, so that the stones
looked — as, of course, they were — ages old. As
this was the part of the composition nearest the
house, it was rather more ornate in character
than that of the lower slopes, which fell away
to a mass of Laurel and Maple trees at the edge
of the grounds.

Now, of course, this garden, with the house
on the top of the hill, broke from the outset
the rules and customs with regard to garden
making ; therefore, if the people who constructed
it had been unintelligent ants, only faithfully
copying what the other ants who preceded them
had done, there would have been no garden
on that steep hillside at all, or rather, perhaps,
no house at the top of it. They were original
workers, and, while they adhered to the founda-
tion principle of presenting a view of natural
scenery, they could hardly stick to any of the
classic injunctions as to how to attain this end.
Everything had to be modified to fit the case,
and a most charming hill garden, with the main
interest at the top, was the result. Paths and
stepping-stones led downward and upward,
with clumps of flowering trees (at least, they
would flower the following spring) placed irre-
gularly in happily chosen spots. There was a
little shrine (a shade too new and red, just then,
at which the Azaleas spoke rudely, under their
breath), and there were quaint, storm-driven
9

130 JAPANESE GARDENS

Pines, set in calmly without any fuss, as if a
Pine, after attaining a certain size, were not
one of the hardest things in the world to trans-
plant ! Sir Francis Piggott tells me that in
Tokio the shrubs and trees in the garden of a
rented house, if set in by the tenant, belong to
him, and he may and does remove them when
he changes to another abode. One can easily
believe this statement when one has seen these
small, busy people take up a good-sized tree and
replant it. It never seems to occur to them that
it may not grow. The transplanted one accepts
the changed conditions without shedding a leaf.
So these Pines and Maples, Plum trees and Cherry
trees, Camellias and Azaleas, like happy brides
in new homes, settled down cheerfully in this
garden of love.

The water (which was humbly piped in
bamboo) trickled down over the mossy stones as
if it had been born to that rocky bed ; and under
the thatched roof of the ' Scene-viewing Place '
on the crest of the hill (with one's back to the
house), the satisfied visitor could gaze away,
over Maples and Birches and the clustering
roofs of the fishing village, to the ever-changing,
changeless sea, content — content.

On the other side of the house was a more
conventional garden, — or at least it was laid out
according to the classic rules of Japanese art, and
was more like the usual places one sees in that
country, — if to Western eyes it seemed a spot

LANDSCAPE GARDENS 131

by itself. There was a tiny pond with goldfish
and flashing carp ; a neatly cobbled beach, like
the shores of a mountain lake, made firm ground
on which the visitor could walk to the very
brink, and there, from a convenient (and dry)
rock, watch the play of those winged things of
the water. On another bank, some Irises and
Reeds ' broke ' the clear edges of the lake, and
lengthened themselves in cool green reflections.
There was a well, with a quaint old well-sweep
and bucket, and a moss-'broidered stone lantern
crouching beneath a little Peach tree. A kind
of pergola, already brave with Wistaria tendrils,
— but until that should attain a fuller growth,
delicately draped with Virginia Creeper, — led
one with loitering feet to the Japanese quarters
again. South and West this garden lay, and
all day long the sun hung over it, and the
flowers (for there were pots and pots of them
of all sorts there) made liquid purple pools of
shadows on the warm earth. At night the
moon came there and picked out all the white
blossoms for its own, and laid a long silver torch
upon the pool, and called out new scents and
fragrances from leaf and flower that even the
sun had not evoked. My windows looked on
this, and the Lady from California was led to
demand more than once what I was owling out
of the window again for, — if I had ever seen the
flowers of her native state I should not be
able to look at these poor makeshift blooms

132 JAPANESE GARDENS

again. It is the only thing that has ever
reconciled me to my sad lack in not having seen
the splendid flora of California !

As I said at the beginning of this chapter,
practically every garden in Japan is a landscape
garden, but I have concluded that the description
of one is as good as the mere naming of a hundred.
Frankly, too, I do not care for those most strict
and exalted classic models. I admire Lord
Fuji, the ethereal vision (the Japanese make
this sacred mountain masculine), too much to
care to see him made petty and pretty out of
a miniature mound of earth, decked out with
dwarf trees. I have too great a respect for the
Che Kiang (China Sea), on which I have tossed
and suffered, to care to view it in miniature in a
temple garden. I love Japan's own beautiful
scenery too dearly to want it served up to me
like a decorated wedding-cake. Where its
gardening rules are properly applied, China
forgotten, the source of their inspiration (Nature)
unpolluted, she has given us gardens incom-
parable, landscapes in little, but in truth.

CHAPTER X

GREEN GARDENS

" Tranquillity and peace in this still place,
No more of movement than white birds that stand
Leg deep in water, silent as the land.
Oh ! cool green garden, give me of thy grace."

ONE of the first things that strike the
' Foreigner ' (a title the Anglo-Saxon
will never willingly assume anywhere;
and he has to use the word ' Native,' in
Japan, for the first time without thereby imply-
ing a compliment to his own country) is the
absence of vivid colour in Japanese gardens. He
has come all a-tiptoe with expectation, perhaps,
thinking that the land of the flower-loving
Japanese will far surpass in brilliancy and
splendour of colour the Gorgeous East, as he
has seen it in Egypt and India, even in China.
He is chilled and saddened by the slanting rain,
which he may have hoped would greet him only
in Hiroshige's and Hokusai's prints; he cannot
yet see the beauty in the delicate, pale ribbons
of mist that are laid across the landscape ; he
is outraged, perhaps, that, having travelled so

184 JAPANESE GARDENS

far to escape his own English climate, he has
happened on a wetter example ; he will not see
the poetry of its dim distances, the pale beauty
of its wan skies ; he is annoyed and disgusted
that the peasants wear dull blue, and the high-
class people soft greys and mauves and browns,
instead of the rainbow-hued kimonos he had
looked for; and he is aggrieved when he visits
his first gardens — expecting that there, at
least, he will find the colour he has come so far
to see — to discover that there are only little
bits of country landscape that lie behind the
picturesque gates, and that, as likely as not,
it is all green — as Nature generally is.

The gnarled old trees are a deep and sombre
green, the slender saplings are a delicate golden
green (these two types so loved by this gentle
nation, who venerate age and adore youth) ;
the Pines are a rusty green, the new Reeds by
the water are emerald green, the Bamboos and
the Willows are silvery green ; the stone lan-
terns, even, have their embroidery of mossy
green, while the very lake itself, overhung by
trees and shrubs, is of that cool green that only
shadowed nooks know. But who, at first,
thinks of even all this range and variety of
green as colour ? Where we had looked for a
passion of scarlet Azaleas, a riot of purple
W^istaria, a mingling of many-hued Lihes, and
of Chrysanthemums that should not be like any
that we had ever seen at flower shows at home —

GREEN GARDENS 135

who but is a little disappointed to find only the
rest and serenity of green ? Do all the books
form a conspiracy to lie ? These artists, too —
has even Mr. Tyndale joined the league to
deceive ? Or where do they find the flowers
and the colours that they paint ? Shall we,
too, join them, and waste away our letters of
credit by buying highly-coloured picture post
cards, and try to delude ourselves, or, better
still, our friends at home, into the belief that we
have seen these colours, these gardens ?

Now, the truth is, as usual, that we can see
only one side of the crystal of verity at a time,
and it has many facets. While it is a fact that
the basis of Japanese gardening is greenness, its
fundamental purpose being a place for peace
and repose and for quiet contemplation of
Nature, which that harmonious, living colour
assists more than any other in securing, yet
it does not follow that it is nothing else but
this. While vegetation is the last thing to be
considered in making a garden, — it being the
flesh that covers the bones, or the stones, of its
skeleton, — the green might be regarded as the
natural complexion, and the basis on which the
flowers of dress appear to adorn. It is all
another exemplification of how close to Nature
these gardens are, that as with her green may
be found the year round, so may colour, too,
if one knows where to look for it. And although
it is easily possible for a man to enter twenty

186 JAPANESE GARDENS

gardens in, say, the Japanese July, and to find
no flowers, it would be very hard for him to
go into three in April, and see no Cherry blos-
soms. Irises, Wistaria, or Azaleas. All gardens
may, therefore, be said to be green gardens at
some time of the year, though few can be called
so always.

I venture to assert that, in spite of all that
one reads in gardening books on Japan, as to
their coldness and sombreness of colouring, no
gardeners in the world make a more intelligent
effort to have a floral succession the year round
than they do ; for, with this poetic people, it
must be understood that the autumn Maples and
winter berries would be included with the
flowers. And why the babies in their bright
kimonos are not placed in the same category it is
hard to say.

It is the greatest mistake to think, as is so often
maintained, that in a Japanese garden, because
its background and leading features are, as they
ought to be, green, its planners have arrived at
this end through a defective colour sense. It is
probably from a different, a less arrogant, and a
subtler colour sense than most nations have.
My own theory is that different individuals,
and even different races, have eyes sensitive to
different parts of the spectrum. For instance,
I see reds in a landscape where my sailor
husband sees greens and blues. On botanizing
expeditions here, in Hong-Kong, some of the

GREEN GARDENS 137

party would pass a glowing yellow flower by,
but would rescue a tiny purple bloom beside
it from what seemed to others of us obscurity.
And of those who are most alive to the purple
end of the spectrum are the Japanese. It is
not, as one hears so often stated, that they do
not see colour or care for it, but that, instead,
being sensitively organized in that respect, they
prefer the delicate to the more striking effect ;
also, in a way, they are so entirely en rapport
with Nature that what she gives them at different
times of the year is what they like best. For
instance, in winter, the pallid snowflake flowers
of the Plum are the loved herald of the on-
coming spring-time, when the petals and the
snowflakes too will have fallen and finished.
Spring, in other lands than Japan, gives us
misty purples and pale mauves in her flowers,
and if to this poetic people the fragile beauty
of the Iris, the delicate, drooping grace of the
Wistaria, appeal more than the flaming glory of
their Azaleas, it is only, perhaps, because the
wistfulness of the charm of these flowers suits
their character and climate, and is more in
sympathy with their ideas. Certainly, in the
autumn, their worship of colour equals that of
any nation, if it does not surpass it ; but the
season is then with them in this. The sparkle of
frost is in the wind, the blood runs faster, the
sun shines ; and Nature, in air, landscape, and
man, bounds and glows in harmony. India with

138 JAPANESE GARDENS

her splendid sunshine never gave more lavish
colour than this sweet, misty land of grey skies,
suddenly glowing with radiant sunlight, fur-
nishes in her many - hued Chrysanthemums ;
nor can any dyes compare with the red blood
that courses then through the Maples, and
turns their tiny starry leaves to crimson and
flame-colour and scarlet.

Perhaps it should be added that the Japanese
sense of the appropriateness of colour is keener
than ours. Their babies are ambient bunches
of flowxrs, toddling butterflies ; but the reds
and rose - colours are for the girls, the blues
and golden browns for the boys (bright enough
they are, however, for the most gay-minded
male !). Such horror as was always aroused
in the hearts of the shopkeepers when I wanted a
maple-hued kimono for my brown-eyed little
son, and a pink peony-ed one for my rose-cheeked
smaller boy ! They could only recommend such
shades for girls. At seven the masculine dress
becomes duller, and at twelve the feminine one,
and by the time a girl is married she wears the
most discreet greys, and demure, dull blues and
mauves imaginable. A dear little Japanese
friend, who made me a present of a lovely piece
of crepe of mauve and scarlet when I was in
my twenties, tactfully excused herself for this
insult to my honourable years by explaining
that European ladies can wear colours which
only young geisha girls wear in Japan. To

GREEN GARDENS 139

each his season and colour : so to childhood and
autumn the gay hues, to spring and adolescence
the pale ones, to winter and old age the dark
and sombre ones.

While it is an axiom that four-fifths of the
trees in the garden must be evergreen, it would
be wrong to suppose that all this vegetation is
kept to that sombre note. That the relief of
flowers and of colour is sought and intended is
seen by the fact that hardly a garden in the
country has not its Plum or Cherry tree, its
Irises, thin-petalled as if made of tissue paper
or of fine soft silk, its pots of Peonies, or Asters,
or Morning Glories, or sweet-scented splendid
Lilies, or its little Maples to warm it in the fall.
Also, among the evergreen trees are included
many flowering trees and Camellias, whose
waxy blooms come to cheer December and
January, and various golden-stemmed Bamboos,
that give a warm note of colour even in the
snow. Evergreens, in groups, are set near the
living-room windows, so that a continued sense
of life and greenness may be seen from them
throughout the changes of the four seasons.
Deciduous trees, always excepting Plum and
Cherry, and perhaps, occasionally. Maple, are
not usually put very close to the house, because
of the litter their falling leaves make in the
autumn (for the Japanese are tidy garden
keepers), and because dead leaves there bring a
sense of desolation. But, with the nice weigh-

140 JAPANESE GARDENS

ing of advantages against disadvantages, those
mentioned, because of their beauty in the
cheerless early spring season, because of their
fragrance, because of the sentiment and poetry
they inspire, may be put close to the house, and
it is even a particularly delicate attention to
plant a Plum tree near the guest-room of houses
big and rich enough to afford such a chamber.

Plum trees, however, are for rich and poor
alike, and do not cost as much to keep as a
dog or a cat, with us. Lafcadio Hearn has a
pretty translation of a Japanese seventeen-
syllable verse, called ' Happy Poverty,' which
runs —

" Wafted into my room the scent of the flowers of the
Plum tree
Changes my broken window into a source of deUght."

Trees which lose their leaves in the autumn
are usually planted in a group with evergreens,
because they not only display better the flowers
in the blooming-time, but also conceal the bare
branches and continue the effect of green in the
winter. Indeed, that is the secret of green
gardens, — the colour which, according to Chinese
ideas, signifies life is always in itself beautiful
and worthy of admiration, and at the same
time it venerates age, and brings out the tender
freshness of youth. It may typify the con-
tinuance of life, even though death and change
may appear with it.

GREEN GARDENS 141

Flower-beds in hideous geometrical designs
— anchors, hearts, and crescents — or patterned
' carpet ' effects, such as we see in the West,
even ' herbaceous borders ' of a hundred swear-
ing shades, are quite unknown in Japan. What
nearest approaches garden-beds are the masses
of Chrysanthemums in the grounds of some
palaces, in the open space facing the ladies'
chamber, as in the Koma-Chi-Ma, Tsubone-Veya,
and in the grounds of the Imperial Palace at
Akasake.

Maples are usually placed at some distance
from the house, or, as in the case of Plum, inter-
spersed with evergreens and Laurels, as their
bold beauty needs distance and atmosphere
to enhance it. But those little star-shaped
leaves, ' the shape of a baby's hand,' are so
admired for themselves that they are often seen
set beside stone lanterns (as in the Ashinoyu
garden, facing page 156), with a slender branch
obscuring the light, and to make a pattern
upon it in silhouette, when the lamp is lit at
night.

I think it is because the Japanese shrink
from the idea of death in their gardens, quite
as much as it is that they dislike the litter of
fallen leaves, the untidiness of fading stalk and
petal, that they do not often introduce floral
annuals into their gardens, except in pots.
Indeed, one reason why it can be said that more
than half the gardens in Japan are green gardens

142 JAPANESE GARDENS

is because, except for the flowering trees and
shrubs already mentioned, the Lotus in the
pond, the Irises beside it, and the Wistaria on
the trelHs which overhangs it, most of the
flowers seen in them are in pots. Azaleas, of
course, there are in plenty, but they are trimmed
and cut, perhaps at the very moment of flower-
ing, and they are grown for their greenness as
much as for their blooms. These clipped shrubs
are used in little gardens, to suggest hills, but,
to my mind, look more like green puff-balls,
generally. Examples of clipped Azaleas can be
seen in the accompanying pictures. Chrysan-
themums, Asters, Peonies, Lilies, Morning
Glories, as well as other flowers which have
been introduced from foreign countries, are all
brought out in the prettiest of pots, — in blue
and white, clean and fresh, or in cool pale green
ones, delicious in colour.

It will be seen from the pictures — of Peonies
(facing page 234), of Chrysanthemums (facing
page 266), and even of specimen Irises (facing this
page) — that the plants appear to have been set out
as if at a flower show. The Chrysanthemums
were in a tea-house garden, and had light bamboo
sheds or screens over them, to protect them from
the rain that might come and spoil their fluffy,
curled locks. The Peonies — that is, the small
variety — are never grown in the ground, although
the tree sorts seen in the same picture always
are. Irises are usually found in any gardens.

GREEN GARDENS 143

big or small, growing in a group beside the well
or water-basin, or on the banks of a lake or
stream, with their feet dabbling in the water ;
but the very finest are grown in pots and tended
like babies. These ^ (in the picture) were
cultivated by an old priest, who took no end
of trouble in helping the artist in grouping and
arranging them. His old wife posed as the
* life ' of the picture, and how delighted was
the husband when Mr. Tyndale, dissatisfied
with the withered face among the fresh flowers,
while still preserving the likeness, changed her
into the pretty, wide-eyed mousme who now
peeps out from the flowers.

" Aha ! " the ancient Darby said, chuckling,
" you have given me a pretty young wife !
Very good ! Very good ! " He felt that he
was a fine figure of a man, after all !

Of green pictures, painted at the moment
when they are not green, there are many in
this book, but of those whose intention it was
to suggest repose and peace, undisturbed by the
mental uplift of brighter colour, there are only
two — that of a Buddhist temple garden at Kofu
(page 126), and that of the Kuridani Temple at
Kyoto (facing page 136). Nami-Kawa San's green
garden at Kyoto (facing page 160), and the rock
garden at Nikko (facing page 284), although

^ Iris Kaempferi. Some of the blooms were nearly a foot across.
The colour, too, was a triumph of the grower, as a true pink is most
difficult of attainment, the flowers inclining always to mauves.

144 JAPANESE GARDENS

green, are more properly classed with water and
rock gardens.

But all the gardens are green sometimes,
just as Nature is, and they linger in the memory
constantly verdant and fresh, joyous with the
spring and soothing with the summer, never sad
with autumn, and steadfast with the winter.

CHAPTER XI

WATER GARDENS AND DRIED-UP WATER
SCENERY

" In the chill stillness of the first spring days,
A double beauty does my garden take.
What mystic paths, what purple wealth of bloom,
That fairy garden shows there in the lake.

Above the water long Wistaria sprays
Lean down and look upon their pictured grace.
Or is it that, below there, dim and cool,
Another Fuji flower lifts up her face ? "

IF the description ' Water Gardens ' included
all those in which water — in appearance
or reality — was a conspicuous feature,
quite half the gardens in Japan would have to
be classified in this way. To again employ my
old but useful simile, the rocks and stones are
the bones of the skeleton, the contour of the
land represents its features, the flowers and trees
are the flesh and the adornments of dress, but
the water is the garden's life and soul.

No one knows better than the Japanese
landscape artist what compound interest in
beauty he reaps by the repetition and reflection
of his earthy garden in his watery one. Just

10

146 JAPANESE GARDENS

as mirrors enlarge little rooms, as the sea
beneath a sunset intensifies the glory of the
western sky, so water in a garden doubles the
interest, the beauty, and the apparent size of
the place in which it is put. But, more than all,
it makes a point on which the idea of the com-
position rests, forms a road for the mind and
the imagination to travel by, beyond the little
enclosure into mystic realms.

Japan is not a hot country, except on the
coast during the months of July and August,
but, nevertheless, the idea everywhere prevails
that a garden must look, even if it is not, cool.
Running water, then, or rather moving water,
suggests coolness, but not coldness. In the
depths of winter, when the rest of the world is
hushed in white, deathlike sleep, the water
pulses still with life. If a little lake is the
garden's heart it must be one whose source can
be seen, whether a stream, a cascade, or a spring ;
for ' dead water,' as they call any without a
visible supply or motion, is both practically and
aesthetically taboo.

It is remarkable, indeed, how much common
sense enters into all Japanese artistic and ethical
ideas. The notions at whirh foreigners are at
first inclined to laugh, as * superstitions,' if
analysed are almost always found to have had
their origin in cold, hard reason. So the objec-
tion to deep pools, to gloomy, mud-bottomed
ponds, to stagnant waters which may harbour

WATER GARDENS 147

weeds and mosquitoes, is too sensible to require
either comment or commendation. Even the
moats and temple lakes, where the beautiful
Lotus flowers grow, have their constant, if slow,
intake and outlet of water. I do not claim that
there are no stagnant pools in Japan, where gnats
and mosquitoes can pester the passer-by (or the
artist who wishes to paint them), but these places
are not arranged according to accepted gardening
rules, and cannot even be cited as exceptions.
Clear, shallow, moving water, which can sparkle
while it reflects, is the essential idea; for it
suggests happiness and serenity, the gaiety of
Nature as well as its tranquillity.

Another dictum regarding water, which it is
hard to consider anything but a superstition
however, is the idea that it must enter the garden
from the East and leave it by the West, no matter
how difficult of arrangement this may be. Of
course this is but the world-wide belief in the
doctrine of not going against the sun. I
suppose the conservative Briton, who would be
horrified if the port were sent round 'the wrong
way,' would refuse to recognize this custom as
a survival of that idea, but it can be nothing
else. The North, justly enough, is considered a
malign influence, as the cold winds and storms
come from that quarter, so that if water must,
perforce, enter from that side of the grounds,
its course is first carefully trained towards the
East (round a sheltering hill, or group of trees,

148 JAPANESE GARDENS

if possible), and then it may go South, and out
by the West. I cannot remember ever to have
seen a current which ran through a garden
entirely from North to South, with no East to
West in it, and I feel sure that it is for a deeper
reason than because, as the Chinaman would
say, it ' B'long bad joss ' ! Nature herself
must have indicated to the more deeply sensi-
tive artist minds of the first garden makers
that such was her way of doing things ; but,
until we can get at that mysterious meaning,
we must continue to think this a survival
of the ancient belief of primitive peoples in
the occult influence of the unseen spirits of
direction.

As the bite of Alice's wonderful mushroom
can make her fit into big places or little ones,
as she likes, so the Japanese can make the
waters of his garden represent anything from a
tiny pond for goldfish up to a view (in reduced
scale) of the China Sea. There is a naivete in
the latter presentment that reminds one of the
houses and castles and forts which as a child one
used to make of sand, with lines of sea-shells
on the beach — although I am bound to say
that the Japanese play-places are more con-
vincing than ours ever were to the grown-up
imagination.

This China Sea presentation is not the choppy,
sea-sick thing which the poor mortals who have
had to cross the real sea remember with horror ;

WATER GARDENS 149

but a charming image taken from Chinese
mythological lore, with three Elysian Isles, and
ever tranquil waters on which the passenger is
not troubled, and the little basin is at rest.
Although the gardener does not go so far in
verisimilitude as to flavour the water with salt,
or strew seaweed on the beach, there are certain
fixed rules for sea-water scenery that must not
be broken. No river or lake plants must grow
on its edges, or fresh-water Reeds or Lotus flowers
spring from its waves, no bridges (which are for
smaller, fresh -water scenes) must reach from
the mainland to its islands, and the sand and
shells of its beach, and its regulation stones,
must have the look and savour of the ocean
about them.

Another favourite classical model, according
to Mr. Conder, " is the extensive lagoon of
the Che Kiang, in China — called Seiko by the
Japanese — and remarkable for its wealth of
Lotus flowers." He says that it is invariably
represented in temple grounds ; by which, I
think, he means that it is not seen in private
gardens, being considered inappropriate to any
but a large representation.

In sea views it is not necessary to show the
source and outlet of the water, as is insisted on
in fresh-water scenery, for the obvious reason
that it is not seen in the original model. In
fresh-water scenery, if the source of the water
is artificial it is brought into the picture with

150 JAPANESE GARDENS

every aid to make it natural-looking, and the
outflow, or the pretence of it, is also made an
attractive feature. The drains proper are, of
course, never unduly visible, but are skilfully
arranged to carry off the surface and rain water,
without allowing it to mix with the ornamental
sort, and so contaminate it.

Fountains and artificial ponds of architectural
and geometrical designs, such as the European
loves so dearly, are never seen in strictly Japanese
gardens. Such set designs are for the highly
artificial grounds of a landscape architect, not
for those whose only true guide is Nature.
There are, it is true, certain patterns set, such
as circles, crescents, and squares (seen only in
the tiniest of models), but their names indicate
but roughly their shapes, for the edges are not
outlined with stone copings, as ours are, and
are broken and ' lost ' at irregular intervals
by plantings of Reeds, Irises, or shrubbery.
Two pretty models are those of the ideographs
of * water ' and * heart ' ; and, although these
graceful and free designs of Chinese characters
would seem to require no groups of trees
and flowering bushes to make them appear
the spontaneous work of Nature's hand, they
nevertheless have them.

This ' breaking the line ' of a design is found
in every phase of the landscape artist's method,
and does more than anything else to give the
fresh look of unspoiled and untouched Nature

WATER GARDENS 151

to his work. The hard stone of the lantern is
softened by the spray of Maple or Plum tree
that brushes across it ; the fences' openings, by
the fine continuous needles of the Pine trees
behind ; while the rigid lines of the solid wooden
bridges are lost, on one side, in a group of
Azalea bushes, and the cascade, falling partly
behind a swaying creeper or an overhanging
tree, is given an added grace.

Another advantage this method has is that,
by making appeal to the imagination, instead
of leaving everything to the matter-of-fact and
calculating eye, it adds to the apparent size of
the object that is partly concealed. How can
even the most conscientious sight-seer jot down
in his notebook the information that such and
such a waterfall is so many feet in height, if its
top is lost in leafy mystery, and if it is broken
near the bottom by scarlet branches of Maple ?
And no one can insist on the exact (and dwarfed)
dimensions of an irregular lake, whose silvery
waters are concealed, here by a group of trees
and shrubs, there by a hillock, and on whose
placid bosom there is yet a place for Lotus
flowers to bloom.

There are many varieties of water gardens,
and, after those of lake scenery the cascade kind
appears to be the most popular, — indeed, in the
central part of Japan, where there are so many
natural springs and falls, they seem more fre-
quent than any other. Of course they are by

152 JAPANESE GARDENS

no means all found ready-made to the gardener's
hand, although so spontaneous do the artificial
ones seem that it is difficult to think them the
products of art. I remember a dear little garden
of this kind on the road to Lake Biwa. The
stones had all been carefully arranged, with a
big ' Immovable ' or ' Guardian ' stone at the
base, and its companion stone, lower, smaller,
and rounder (supposedly of the feminine per-
suasion), lying gracefully on the ground at its
feet. It all made, with some clipped Azalea
bushes that bloomed in the very mouth of the
shears, a charming group. Higher up the tender
young green of a Maple stretched its pretty hands
out, as if to wash them in the falling water, and
' broke ' (in appearance, not in reality) the fine
thread of the fall. A little shrine, set in a bower
of small Cryptomeria trees at the top, not only
offered an object for the climb, but made our
scramble up the precipitous paths a dutiful
pilgrimage.

Another cascade garden (there are a dozen or
more in the same village) — which was so quaint
and pretty that sketching it almost made us
lose our tram at Yumoto, and hence our train
to Yokohama — is on the Hata Pass, the road to
Hakone Lake. It is in the back yard of a tea-
house which our coolies insisted on our patroniz-
ing, instead of the one next door, which outwardly,
and with its smiling and bowing nesans and
okkasan, looked just like it. The flat part of the

WATER GARDENS 153

garden was large enough to dry my husband's
handkerchief in, for he tried it (he uses it as coohes
do their towels on a tramp), but the hillside, which
was the main part of the garden, could hardly
have been covered by a tablecloth of moderate
dimensions. Not that it looked tiny. No, I
forbade the children to explore up the cascade
path for fear they would get lost, or out of
earshot ! Great pains had been taken here to
have for each season some change in the little
garden's greenness, by the introduction of
flowers. The first time I saw it, crimson
Azaleas clambered and smouldered in the
crevices of the rocks, and some delicate Irises,
demure but conscious of their beauty, looked
shyly at themselves in the pool's mirror at the
foot of the waterfall. In summer some splendid
Lilium fitter a/wm, gold-banded and bronze-freckled,
reigned supreme. Another time the royal-blue
of Monkshood, and silver grasses, were there.
Last of all, after the red fire of Nerine, the wild
' Death Lily ' of the rice-fields, had burned
down, the embers had seemed to set the autumn
Maples alight ; and already there could be seen
the reddening berries of the Nandana, the
swelling buds of the early Plum tree, getting
ready to cheer these simple peasant owners in
the winter.

Although there are such fine natural falls all
over Japan, the best classical models come from
elaborate gardens in the south of China, called

154 JAPANESE GARDENS

by the Japanese Rozan^ which must have a high
hillock near, called Rinmon. Mr. Conder also
tells us that, in temple grounds, a famous place
in the Himalayas furnishes a design for a com-
bination of water and hill scenery. It is known
in Buddhist history for its cataract lake, and
' four rivers issuing therefrom.' In all these
there is much poetical allusion which makes it
very enthralling to the well-read Japanese, but
in which the garden- and poetry-lover from the
West cannot find even an academic interest.
The foreigner usually likes far better the repre-
sentations of the ' Six Gem Rivers of Japan,'
with their stone-filled baskets strengthening the
banks, and their waters hurling themselves
headlong among the rocks of their bed — true
miniature models of the dashing rivers of the
country.

If, as is sometimes the case, no spring, no
stream is available for the grounds, then the
ghost of one is brought in to haunt the place,
and the dry bones of the watercourse suggest
the presence of the loved spirit. This 'Dried-
up Water Scenery,' as it is called, deceives
even the unimaginative Briton, the down-right
American, who do not intend to be trifled with.
They are beguiled by this mysterious art of
water suggestion. They say, sympathetically :
*' Pity you haven't more rain, this time of year,
to fill your brook." Or, '* Jolly fine cascade
that must be in the rainy season ; I suppose

WATER GARDENS 155

you have lots of water here some time of the
year ! "

The idea is simple in the carrying out, though
subtle in theory. The bed of a lake is hollowed
out, — not too deep, for that would upset the
vraisemblance of the scheme, as, if it were not
shallow, how did the water dry up so early in
the season ? Sand and pebbles form the edges,
and big boulders jut up as rocky islands might,
while overhanging shrubs try in vain to look
at themselves in what should be the mirror
below. Irises and water grasses make a pretty
group, with some low, dark rocks, and a stone
lantern in another nook, as if the water had
just receded from their feet, and the illusion is
complete.

Or, perhaps, it is a cascade's spirit which is
to be lured to the place. Just as on All Souls'
Day, the Japanese Bon, or ' Festival of the
Dead,' spirits are evoked by gifts, and their
blessing and presence asked for by getting a
habitation, food and clothing ready for them,
so, by making a bed for a brook, a series of leaping-
stones for a waterfall, the spirit sought for comes.
I do not say that the reality comes in the case
of either the water or the Souls of the Dead,
but the comforting assurance of them to the
imaginative person — even to those not Japanese
— most certainly does. I have more than once
felt sure that I heard the tiny trickling noise
of water dripping down between the rocks,

156 JAPANESE GARDENS

when it was nothing but a little wind toy
fluttering tags of metal and hung somewhere
in the trees, which, added to the belief that
there ought to be water somewhere about,
deceived me.

These imitations of dry-water scenery are
not, as one might think, meretricious stage
effects that need something more than even an
Elizabethan imagination to make them real.
Japan, although, I am sure, blessed with more
streams and springs, rivers and pools than any
other country of her size in the world, yet
abounds in natural dried-up scenery also. The
artist goes to Nature to study his subject, and
carries out his picture as thoroughly as though
danger might ensue from the fluid of his mind
if all care were not taken properly to embed the
rocks, and to disperse the stones about, in the
design that is to suggest his water. Even
bridges, of wood or of stone, cross this dry bed
of the lake to the islands, or are thrown over
— as the children call it — the 'pretending'
stream. Sometimes blackened stones are laid
in the centre. When these are smooth, and
reflect the light, the resemblance to water is
very striking. But this is an unworthy trick,
and is not considered good art ; for it succeeds
by deception, not by a justifiable appeal to the
imagination.

If in flat enclosures, such as tea-gardens, no
water or indication of water is seen, then more

iiliilliiiliiM^^^^^

rmmammamm

111

GARDEN AT ASHINOYU

WATER GARDENS 15T

emphasis is laid on the well and the water-basin,
and they, as the newspapers and the theatrical
slang of America would put it, are ' featured.'
But in practically every garden this idea of the
life-giving element must be found.

Among the pictures in this book several water
gardens are shown. The little gem of a mini-
ature lake view facing this page we discovered
in a garden at Ashinoyu, up in the sulphurous
hills above Miyanoshita. I had dragged our
artist and another painter friend up there, to
do a garden with which I had fallen in love
shortly before, when taking sulphur baths at
the daintiest of private houses in the village.
On finding the house let to a Japanese admiral,
and therefore inaccessible, we had to justify our
tramp in some way. The whole population
of the village interested themselves in our
quest, as is the friendly Japanese habit, and
they let us investigate every garden whose gates
we liked the look of, until, in a hopeless em-
barrassment of riches, we settled on this one.
The water which fed the pond came bubbling
from a spring in the centre, but a tiny trickle
of a waterfall helped too — dripping from the
rocks below the lantern. There was a great
group of Lilies, which were no longer in flower,
and it was certainly not their fragrance that
lingered there still, for this little lake of Paradise
smelled like the infernal regions. However,
the goldfish did not seem to mind it, but flashed

158 JAPANESE GARDENS

a deeper bronze and red-gold in the yellow,
sulphur-tinged fluid. We spent many happy
days sketching there, and grew so used to the
Ashinoyu smell, and the soft feel of the water
in the constant washings of hands and face
which we pretended we had to undergo (it
leaves the skin beautifully soft, as if made of
velvet), that we quite missed the fumes of
sulphur when we went back to Hakone.

The picture of the water garden at Nikko
(facing page 50), with the little Kwannon figure
carved in the stone, although in a private garden,
is a typical bit of the scenery of temple grounds.
And the Hydrangeas in the tea-garden at Kyoto
(page 182), the Lotuses in the public gardens
(page 222) and in the moat at Kofu (page 116),
all give different phases of the use of water in
landscape gardening in Japan. But the view
which best represents the most complete type
of water gardening is that of Nami-Kawa San's
garden, facing this page. The sense of space
given by islands, rocks, and arching bridges, and
of distance, secured by careful tree-planting,
is well shown. Although I know the place
intimately, and am aware that contented artist-
craftsmen are at work on their cloisonne, in the
rooms whose shoji are hidden by the trees in the
background, I can hardly convince myself that
the clear moving water and the overhanging
trees do not go back a mile or so. A lovely
place this was, exemplifying some of the best

WATER GARDENS 159

features of the landscape artist's work, and yet it
was the outlook of a ' factory ' !

The proprietor, a dignified yet simple elderly
man, greeted us with deep bows of welcome
at the door on a pouring wet day, and thanked
us for taking off our shoes before venturing
on his spotless amber-coloured mats, — so many
foreigners did not, he said, and the Japanese
are too polite to insist upon a courtesy that
with themselves goes without saying. He led
us through many rooms, and along covered
passage-ways, all of which looked upon the
cool waters of the court, until we came to the
workrooms. We saw the cloisonne, from its
designing in Chinese ink on rice paper, to the
final stone-polishing stage which may take a
year to do, and everywhere was that tranquil
spirit of the garden, no haste and no slackness,
steady and ever moving. Happy in their daily
toil, these artists create their beautiful works
with love, and the result is something of deeper
value and more permanence of beauty than a
thousand machine-made things of the same sort
could have. One man had a little vase with
two Irises in it on the floor in front of him, and
sometimes, as he fitted the tiny copper wires of
the buckle he was making (some day to adorn
the trim waist of a tourist, I suppose), he would
lift his eyes to the flowers, or turn them for a
moment to look at the cool moving waters
outside.

160 JAPANESE GARDENS

These things are of the spirit ; and what
brings peace to the soul, serenity to the daily
task, joy to labour, however justified it may be
by improved results in the fruits of that work,
needs no justification, for itself is of more
value.

i.*^' ■hti^-d'i\'t<-Jt'itkJ\ ritH-

CHAPTER XII

MINIATURE GARDENS

" Oh ! Master Workman, labouring cunningly.

Which proves thy genius more.

Thy big works or thy small ?
The temple Pine, that towers straight and tall,
Or fragile-fashioned seaweed strewn upon the shore ?
I am content with Fuji, formed of rose and snow.
But are the curves less perfect that this shell doth show ? "

IF the laws of landscape gardening, in big
and extensive grounds, are as rigorous
and inflexible as those of Nature, they
are no less so in the miniature gardens
which are small enough to set on a tea-tray.
The makers call them Hachi Niwa, or 'Dish
Gardens.'

The Japanese artist never scamps his work.
His detail is the most perfect in the world.
Plodding, infinitely patient China cannot surpass
him, or even equal him. The Nippon carvings
have a finesse added to the original upburst of
inspiration, that comes only from loving labour.
The Chinaman works because he has always
worked, not from second nature, but from
centuries of nature. His subconscious mind
II

162 JAPANESE GARDENS

alone is employed, and the upper fields of
consciousness (if he has any, and I doubt it, in
the case of these workpeople — artisans, not
artists) are off somewhere else. For him is
not the vision ; the patient, painstaking toil is
for pay ; small as the object in ivory which he
is carving. The Japanese, on the other hand,
works joyously ; the tiny figure throbs with
arrested movement. No Noah's Ark models
for him, but sinuous, sleek bodies, rough, hairy
monsters, microscopically perfect ; not for him
China's fat, licentious gods, mandarins of nod-
ding heads with human hair inserted for beards ;
but his Buddhas are mysterious in repose, his
animals seem to snarl with life, his old men to
stagger under their loads, his Avrestlers to
tussle with bone and sinew beneath the flesh,
his rats to crawl, and his snakes to coil shudder-
ingly. Now I must not be understood as admir-
ing all this, because the most perfect ivory and
porcelain figures seldom appeal to me ; a carved
netsuke used by a Japanese as a knob, as he
intends it, not as a senseless ornament on a shelf
in a cabinet, does.

In painting, this exquisiteness of detail is,
as one might say, only in spots, to give the
necessary relief to the freedom and boldness of
the body of the design. But this restraint
from the ' touch too much ' is, to my mind, the
greatest art of all. Then comes the appeal to
the imagination, which carries the thoughtful

MINIATURE GARDENS 163

observer far beyond the point to which the most
adept fingers can reach.

This again is the secret of the charm of
Japanese poetry. In three lines, or in five, a
beautiful image can be evoked, a haunting,
elusive idea can be expressed which leaves one
with thoughts for a whole day, and which, in
double the space, cannot be adequately trans-
lated. Finesse is saved always from preciousness
by suggestion.

In other arts it is the same. China fails in
inspiration, although she inspired Japan. Her
own artists, in the days of the Ming Dynasty,
exhausted it. Where the designs and the shapes,
the colours and the decorations of porcelains,
bronzes, and sounding brass (for how truly
rings the metal of those days !) are not imitated,
the work is feeble, stiff, and uninspired. And
naturally in imitation the original impulse is
lacking, and the craft itself is of an inferior
kind. Japan, on the contrary, — where she is
not warped and spoilt in her artistic feelings by
the influence of Western nations, — turns out,
every day, and in every part of her land, works
not to be despised by the prophets of art, not
unworthy to be placed beside the classic models.
Her modern ceramics compare, in all that is
good, with those of the early makers. Her
brocades and embroideries (when manufactured
for her own people, not for the cheap and
barbarian tastes of foreign tourists) vie, in

164 JAPANESE GARDENS

richness and splendour, with those made in
the sumptuous days of the Ashikawa Regents.
Anihne dyes and ' Maypole Soaps ' are not for
the Japanese, and even in these days the depth
and delicacy of vegetable pigments for colouring
silks and crepes have not yet depreciated to
that level.

But most of all in colour printing, in pictorial
art, Japan has maintained the high excellence
of her past standards. I am aware that most
people will dispute this statement, and I am a
little frightened when I make it, remembering
the tons of meretricious pictures sold to my
country people and others in the Treaty Ports,
and abound to testify to the contrary. Oh,
the glaring Fujis, the awful moonlight scenes,
the crude and — happily — impossible sunsets
behind inky-edged sail-boats, the dreadful,
grinning geishas, which are sold by the thousand,
to prove Japan's poverty of purse and the
wandering foreigners' of taste ! I quail when
I look back on my former statement. But again,
when I recollect the shops, obscure and small,
in Tokio and Kyoto, where one can buy nothing
else but beautiful colour prints — so happy, so
inspired in design, that a handful picked up at
random would mean half a dozen real treasures,
to be examined at leisure later, I am reassured.
For a few sen each one can buy little prints that
no artist would scorn to own to-day, and that
no layman would dare to scorn to-morrow.

MINIATURE GARDENS 165

All this is a preamble to the statement that,
except where the debasing art standards of the
West has affected them (for it is the poor and
pernicious, not the best foreign works that they
see), the landscape artists have continued in the
fair, firm paths of the past, and Hachi Niwa are
good reproductions on a small scale of the best
gardens.

The idea of these miniature models of scenery
came, of course, from China. I could not but
be struck, only the other day, when I saw into
what degenerate lines the art had fallen, in
Chinese hands, compared with the examples I
had known in Japan. The makers, in this case,
were native watch-keepers at the lighthouses
which Himself had asked me to go with him to
inspect. The Trinity House man in charge,
an unusually clever and intelligent Englishman,
encouraged his native staff to fads of the sort,
to keep them out of mischief when they were off
duty. There were, perhaps, half a dozen of
these toy models of mountainous scenery shown
me, and some were still in course of construction,
while yet others had been shipped home. Big
lumps of coral rock, worn by the action of the
sea into natural hills, valleys, and caves formed
the basis of them, and, after a promising piece
had been chosen, a jack-knife helped on the
good work, until a mountain, cleft by a ravine
arched with bridges, appeared. Then the little
heights were crowned with porcelain models of

166 JAPANESE GARDENS

pagodas, shrines, and tiny houses, securely
cemented in, while porcelain people wandered
everywhere, in defiance of all Chinese laws, in
the neighbourhood of toy tigers. It seemed as
if the gallant artists would prove that there, at
any rate, their people were brave and valorous.
Sometimes, my informant said, they planted
grass and little ferns and sprigs of trees about,
and brought up a microscopic rill of water to
form a cascade or a lake, but the models I saw
had no such fancy touches, and, except for the
gay colours of the porcelain accessories, all was
of the hue of putty — the natural shade of the
coral rock.

From this primitive type which has not
advanced in China the Japanese have evolved
their exquisite art.

The Japanese Hachi Niwa, even of the
commonest sort, which may be sold for a sum
smaller than itself at a fair, is, however, a far
better specimen of landscape gardening in a
tea-plate than this. Others are veritable gems
of art of their kind, and are expensive out of all
proportion to their size. Some of these are most
artistic, though I confess I have never had the
passion for them which many foreigners evince,
and I cannot understand how dignified statesmen
and men of letters in Japan can take such an
interest in them. It is said that the great
artist Hiroshige so loved this diminutive art
that he went to the trouble of designing a book

MINIATURE GARDENS 167

of his famous fifty-three views of the Tokkaido
(the road from Kyoto to Yedo), in which the
stages of the journey are arranged to serve as
models of HacU Niwa. I have never seen this
book, but am the happy possessor of one of the
rare old copies of the original colour prints, and
can easily understand that these could act as
ground-plans for the miniature scenes, as they
have for the decoration of dessert plates and
after-dinner coffee cups and saucers.

Little as one might think it, the laws are
adamant that go to the making of these pretty
ornaments. Indeed, to understand thoroughly
all the principles of Hachi Niwa would imply a
fair education as a landscape artist. The in-
evitable and never-to-be-transgressed rule of
just proportion is the foundation, and the very
dish itself must correspond to the dimensions of
the scene it contains ; or perhaps one should say,
the design must conform to the size of the
shallow mottled-blue high-edged plate in which
it is to be set. There are many shapes and sizes
of these, some oval, some round, some square
or square-cornered, and some oblong, but gener-
ally they are of the last shape, and usually from
twelve to eighteen inches long by eight to
twelve inches wide. But the designs are by no
means bound to these dimensions ; some are
literally only big enough to go into a tea-plate,
and are none the less beautifully made, in spite
of it.

168 JAPANESE GARDENS

There are even more scenes suitable to depict
in miniature, in these dishes, than there is
variety in the dishes themselves, for the artist
can choose from the whole field of Nature.
Land and sea, hill and woodland, rocky isles
and grassy slopes he can reconstruct in little,
or he can represent historic temples, spots famous
in history or mythology, or scenes celebrated in
poetry and literature.

They are not merely toys for children, but
their construction is considered a real art,
and rightly ; for is not the baldest labour, if
sincerely and lovingly performed, raised to the
status of an art ?

Competitions of Hachi Niwa are yearly held
in Kyoto and occasionally in Tokio, and are
attended by the highest nobles and statesmen
and connoisseurs of art in the land. Foreigners
laugh at this, as another example of the puerility
of the Japanese mind. It strikes me as suggest-
ing exactly the opposite. Did hot baths in the
winter camps in Manchuria imply effeminacy,
or lack of courage and strategic ability, in the
Japanese soldier ? Did the sailors who sent
home Tanka (' short poems '), written in leisure
moments during the blockade of Port Arthur,
go down in their ships any the less cour-
ageously, gloriously, because they were poets
at heart ?

Years ago, on my first visit to Japan, in a
little fishing village where in great contentment

MINIATURE GARDENS 169

we were spending the summer, Young America,
aged two and a half, whom nothing escaped,
called my attention to a shop where an old
man sold tiny porcelain images. I say sold,
but, in the small boy's case, it must have been
rather given away, for the short supply of
coppers he was possessed of could not possibly
have been enough to buy all the temples, torii,
junks, coolies, priests, Fuji-sans, and bridges the
little rascal had in his possession. However,
a Japanese gift is a gift, and may not be paid
for, except by the presentation of another gift ;
so, in getting the matter properly arranged, we
became great friends with the wrinkled old
pair who kept the shop, and later, through them,
with a young man, a son I think, who made
Hachi Niwa. I do not remember that these
were for sale ; I imagine they cannot have been,
for I never owned one, and the child's was a
present ; but many a pleasant hour did we spend
watching their manufacture, and marvelling at
the silent youth's delicacy and dexterity of
hand.

A whole little set of tools he had, and models of
many of them he gave the small boy with which
to learn to make miniature gardens on his own
account. The baby brooms (a few inches long
they were), and a little trowel, also a toy, were
the only things that lasted long, but the gardener
himself had others — a squirting watering-pot
for keeping damp the moss (which simulated

170 JAPANESE GARDENS

grass) ; a funny little flat-iron for smoothing
sand, and a sieve for sifting it. There were
also the inevitable chop-sticks, to be used as
tweezers or for picking up things, a dear little
rake, like bird's claws of bamboo, for marking
the sand in patterns, as well as many scraps of
the same material to be used as props and
architectural aids.

It was like seeing the real making of a
garden, to watch the evolution of this miniature
thing from a pile of earth and little stones and
various coloured sands ; from moss, and the
tiniest of d^varf trees (so small that it seemed
like kittens having kittens to see them covered
with flow^ers and fruit), into veritable little land-
scape gardens.

First the mountains would be built up ;
and they, as well as their little houses, w^ere
founded on a rock — indeed, on many rocks.
Then, half-w^ay through this task, the stones
for the cascade would be inset, carefully, firmly,
so that no shaking, no torrents of sand could
dislodge them ; and then more earth, hard-
packed, unyielding as in Nature, before the
trees, the houses, temples, bridges, or the
mossy grass were put in place. It was all so
deftly, yet so securely, welded together, that one
felt a Lilliputian, and not afraid to climb the hills
and to venture on the sandy lake, or to explore
the beach, the caves, and the rocky. Pine-clad
islands.

MINIATURE GARDENS 171

Then, last of all, with great shouts of glee
from Young America, the little porcelain models
from his warm, chubby hands would be put
into the picture. His own coolie, with a carry-
ing pole and basket, would be crossing a larger
image of his own bridge, and his own little red
torii would be set up, to indicate the path to
the Shinto temple on the hill. At that point
the swarms of Japanese children who were
helping us look on, and blocking out the light
from the narrow street, would caper and shout
too. It was serious business with the serious
young man, but we were all thrilled children
together.

A grown-up friend, a highly educated Japanese,
told me afterwards that there were all kinds of
delicacies of the art which this primitive work-
man knew not of; that to know the different
sorts of sand to use, alone, was a science in itself,
and required a thorough knowledge of the
geography of Japan, and probably of China as
well. For the different shades of colour are
all indicated : a slaty grey for deep water, chips
of granite for rapids, ' sallow sands ' for beaches,
lightish grey sands for shallow water, deep
bluish sands for seas, and pure white sands for
coaming breakers. Then there are the proper
kinds of gravel and cobbles for river-beds and
river beaches, and the right sort of rocks for
islands and for seaside stones, as well as for
'Guardian Stones,' 'Cascade Stones,' and 'Step-

172 JAPANESE GARDENS

ping Stones.' From all over Japan the ac-
credited varieties are gathered, and shipped to
the makers of these little landscapes, and he
commits an artistic crime who does not use
the proper kinds in his composition. Then only
careful and laborious cultivation and repression
can grow the dwarf trees to plant in these
gardens. It may take sixty years to attain the
small Cherry trees that grace the temple scene,
or thirty for the stunted Pines which adorn the
rocky islet. No trouble is too great for the
modeller in making these microscopic gardens
as perfect as a full-sized one should be. Good
artists plan them, and good artists make them,
and good artists — the nation at large — criticize,
admire, and love them when they are finished,
and, what is more, take care of them, tend them,
and value them as treasures for years afterwards.
So, even if I did not feel the same pleasure
in these toy models of gardens that I did in the
originals, I could not but admire and respect
the careful and faithful work put into them, the
labour that made the little as perfect in one way
as the greater was in another, the fidelity to
detail, the inspiration and breadth, the sincere
and sound intention which turned a toy into
a text-book, a pastime into a scientific pursuit.

CHAPTER XIII

SOME PARTICULAR GARDENS

" 'Tis not my garden by real ownership.
Nor yet because my genius made its Art,
But, cherished by my love and tenderness,
That place is mine which lives within my heart."

BY the ownership of affection I am mistress
of many gardens in Japan, and that kind
of possession is ten points of the law.
They are of varied sorts, these gardens of mine,
and scattered over several provinces, and in the
years I do not go to Japan in the flesh I visit
them in the spirit, and enter my annual declara-
tion of rights in them. They are not all mag-
nificent show-places and great parks, such as,
with the illimitable wealth of fancy, others might
exclusively choose. Some are humble little
plots of ground, the tiny back yards of flimsy
wooden houses, whose torn paper windows
(" the work of little fingers on the shoji ") open
upon them. The}'- are abloom only with
gaily-clad children, — whose little noses invari-
ably need wiping, — unless a wild flower or two
adorns the miniature shrine, or a few Irises

174 JAPANESE GARDENS

(which are not alone for the rich) grow beside
the well. Poor and mean, perhaps, you would
think these gardens, but I love them for the
joy of growing things which they bring into
the drab lives of their real owners, for their
aspirations more than for their achievements.
They are as pathetic, as wistfully beautiful, as
is a crushed flower in the street to the lame
child who has picked it up and tenderly cherishes
it.

The finest of my fancy-owned domains are
the grounds of temples, for there stately dignity
and grandeur are to be found if ever in Japan,
as surroundings and architecture must agree in
style. Kaibara Yekken, in his advice to women,
says : " Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples,
being resorts for pleasure, should be sparingly
visited before the age of forty." This adage
might have kept me out, but I took to heart
rather what he says in another book on the
Philosophy of Pleasure {Raku Kun), which Mr.
W. G. Aston translates thus : " If we open our
hearts to the beauty of Heaven, Earth, and the
Ten Thousand Created Things, they will yield
us pleasure without limit."

One loves the quaint old churchyards of
England, with their tangled grasses, their occa-
sional flowers, their silence, and their peace,
but the temple gardens of Japan are as far
removed from such places as graves are. How
carefully tended they are — it is their only fault !

SOME PARTICULAR GARDENS 175

No leaves are allowed to lie, no sticks or stones
to encumber any spot the landscape artist has
not marked for them. All is as of Nature, but
of an enriched and elegant sort, exquisitely
spontaneous. Kyoto has numbers of such
places — to Japanese eyes no longer as well
groomed as their makers planned ; the clipping
is not so frequent ; the bloom of Azalea may be
seen Avhere the rounded close green alone should
show ; but, to Western ideas, they are not less
lovely for the sweet abandon of their dress.

Kodaiji, designed by the great landscape
artist, Kobori Enshu, to suggest, in little, the
Garden of Paradise, is such a place, and all
the year there is something to admire and
love there. Two great Pines are appropriately
guarding the gateway, wishing long life to the
garden and all that enter there.

In China, the temple grounds on the arid
hills are the only cool and green oases where
trees are to be found. In Japan, where beautiful
trees are seen everywhere, they seem even
bigger and fairer in these religious retreats, and
the Fir trees, in particular, the Pines, the Crypto-
merias, and the Hemlocks, are very imposing.

A Cherry tree, just inside this garden, droops
in spring with its delicate rosy blooms, and
displays its beauty of flower and twigs and
trunk against the conifer's deep green. Through
another gate one may examine studiously the
two charming lakes, the pretty islands (one the

176 JAPANESE GARDENS

* Crane,' one the ' Tortoise '), the wooden bridge,
whieh is ingenuously named ' The Bridge of
Heaven ' ; and, what I most delighted in, the
' Moon-gazing Platform,' which the great Hide-
yoshi had sat upon at Fushimi, whence it was
brought to adorn this garden. Here are Irises,
as Mr. Tyndale shows in the Buddhist temple
gardens facing this and page 40 ; and Azaleas,
whose blood-red bloom, just going off, was pale
rose colour when I was there last, in June. There
the Plum shows only one tree, but the Cherry
takes its place. The October Maples are magni-
ficent. The autumn, too, brings a wealth of
Kiku flowers, for the old priest showed me many
pots of Chrysanthemums, which he was tending
and bringing on, with a spiny framework of
bamboo training each spray, in just the same
way as my gardener did at Hong-Kong.

The Choin-in Temple grounds, in Kyoto, are
on a grander scale, and so the intimate loveliness
of the smaller garden would not have been
appropriate to it, although there are bits to
cuddle to one's heart, as the accompanying
picture shows. Murray says that it spreads
over sixty acres. I must take his word for it,
as figures mean nothing to my non-mathematical
brain. I only know that, when we had climbed
to the top of that interminable flight of stone
steps, we were so breathless that we would have
believed anything concerning its size and the
height of the great hill which was levelled for

iiiil

;,MMh

SOME PARTICULAR GARDENS 177

the building of its temple. But, breathless or
not, the place is awe-inspiring with the true
sense of religion — though of an alien faith — in
its great hall and its huge, heaven-reaching
Pines.

The same thing one felt at Nikko, in the
splendid temple grounds there, amid the finest
Cryptomerias in the world, but we who were
conscientious had little time to enjoy them, so
hard at work were we kept examining the
splendid details of the buildings they surround.

Gongen Temple, beside Lake Hakone, how-
ever, was a different matter. Every day, and
sometimes twice a day, did we wander about
its Cryptomeria-shaded paths, out to the end
where the great trees grew smaller, and the
golden light of the West empurpled the slim
trunks silhouetted against it ; and then on,
through the Hydrangea-bordered track, to the
' corner ' above the lake, where peerless Fuji,
a dream mountain, an opalescent cone of colour
and mist, seemed to float among the clouds.

Then also, in spite of an untoward adventure
there, I must name the park-like grounds about
the great Daibutsu at Kamakura. The monstrous
bronze Buddha had not touched any of us, so
' tourist-y ' it had seemed, until we had climbed
up the dusty staircase and looked out of the
little window at the back on to the green tops of
the group of Cherry trees below. And then,
suddenly, I had been transported back to my

12

178 JAPANESE GARDENS

old home in the South when, a hght, sHm child,
I had climbed up through the close, scratchy
branches of an old Hawthorn tree, until I lay as
in a prickly cradle on the flowering top itself.
Then I loved the big Buddha who had revived
that feeling of Nirvana-like rest after the thorns
and struggles of my climb, and I love him still,
though a snake entered my Eden, the serpent
into Paradise. Now, I am really afraid of only
one thing on earth, and that is a snake, my
loathing for which approaches idiocy. When a
child, if I but touched the picture of a snake,
in turning a page, I would run and wash my
hands. So when, after my descent from the
Buddha, still dreaming, I flung myself down in
the flickering shadows on a grassy bank, a big
fat snake glided away beside my hands, I shot
up in the air with a shriek that must have
resounded from the metal god, with horror.
One of our party was an ex-naval officer who
served in South America, where a reptile is first
killed and then examined afterwards to see if it
is of a safe or dangerous sort. So, while I still
yelled, he dispatched the worm of Buddha with
his stick. As every one knows, Buddhists are
forbidden to take life of any sort, and, as my
noise had attracted every priest and acolyte
in the country to the spot, it looked as if we
should have some complicated explanations to
make. But human nature was stronger than
faith, in these people, and the natural aversion

SOME PARTICULAR GARDENS 179

which the average man has from wiggly things
made them palHate our crime. Indeed, they
were so cordial and sympathetic that one might
have thought they were secretly glad to be rid
of the serpent, with the onus on another's con-
science ! They gave me tea and picture-books
and post cards, as they might have done for a
frightened child, and measured the cause of all
the tumult — out of sight of the windows. It was
just under four Japanese feet in length, which
would be just over four of ours; and to this
day my naval friend declares, in self-extenua-
tion, that it was ot a highly poisonous variety.

How many other temple gardens might I
name, enshrined in my remembrance ! Ishi-
yama, on Lake Biwa, where the great authoress
of that quaint and charming romance, Gengi
Monogatari, who is known to history as Murasaki
no Shikibu, tired of Court life, is said to have
retired for seclusion and peace ; another little
place of worship, in the village of Uraga, below
Yokosuka, in the Bay of Tokio, which, like
Gongen, had red Shinto torii for the gateway,
but Buddhist ceremonial and priests ; the temple
garden on the hill above Nagasaki ; the water
that forms the garden of the great temple at
Myagima, with its darkly lapping tide delicately
starred with the reflections of a hundred lanterns,
and North and South, East and West, others
which I know and love.

Of tea-gardens there are as many more in

180 JAPANESE GARDENS

which I take a proprietary interest. They are
inconsequent things, and cathoHc enough in
style to meet the tastes of very varied patrons.
Besides this, tea-gardens, more than any other
sort, have affected and influenced the arrange-
ments of other grounds. It will be remembered
that Sen-no-Rikiu, Kabori Enshiu, and other
great landscape artists were primarily masters of
the tea ceremonies (Cha-no-yu). As they evolved
and laid down laws for the one, they developed
the other to correspond. The foundation of the
art of tea-garden making is that of all the others
— Nature ! But where temple grounds can be
serene, grand, imposing, or elegant, tea-gardens
must be modelled on Nature's homelier moods —
where with wildness there is also found comfort,
with rusticity quiet and tender charm. Flowers
there should be, and running w^ater, and the
life and gaiety of darting carp or goldfish, or of
domesticated birds, and these one always finds.
My first experience of Japanese tea-gardens
was at Nagasaki, and I have never forgotten
that panting climb, on a perfect May morning,
with the big paper fish swinging in the sky at
the tops of the masts, the flutter of petals and
the scent of the Azaleas and of dried fish in the
air. And how distinct is the memory of the
faint amber-hued tea, so delicate and refreshing,
brought to us in the tiny, dainty bowls the
Japanese use as teacups, by the brightest-
faced and most bubbling of ne'sans ; and I can

SOME PARTICULAR GARDENS 181

still taste the golden, rosy-touched loquats they
peeled for us. And what a fuss they made over
my fair-haired Young America, aged two and a
half ; how they felt his curls to see if they were
real, got flowers and fruit and small cakes, and,
finally, little toys, and a globe of goldfish for
him to take away with him ; and how the whole
troupe of light-clad girls, giggling, full of glee,
left all their other customers and escorted us
down the whole length of those stone steps,
and stood bowing and crying " Sayonara "and
" Phss come again," until we were out of sight.
I confess that, on my next visit without the
blond boy, they did not remember me, but I hold
them in my heart in spite of their sweet perfidy ;
for the garden, with its trees, its roses, and its
view of one of the loveliest harbours in the
world, remains the same.

On the road to Mogi, too, there are a number
of tea-house gardens which are landmarks in
one of the happiest days I ever spent. June
was in perfection, — and what is so rare as a day
in June, if it is sunny and bright, in Japan !
The red covers on the big settees under the
trelUs were laid to help one enjoy the Azaleas
in full bloom, and the little table to which our
tea was brought had an arrangement of white
Irises in a flat, pale green dish, and the smallest
of goldfish, hke little orange butterflies, swam
about, as if flying, in the clear water at their
feet. If I had not the heart to ask them to take

182 JAPANESE GARDENS

away the hideous coarse white cloth with which
the pretty silvery wood table was disfigured, it
was because our hosts took such simple pleasure
and pride in it, as the outward and visible sign
of how au fait they were with foreign notions.
But I would have Honourable Tea, instead of the
dishonourable stuff from Ceylon — logwood-dyed,
with tinned milk from Switzerland to put into
it — which they evidently thought the foreigner
ought to prefer.

A hundred other tea-house gardens one might
name, each of some individual charm. Kyoto is
perhaps richest in them. The illustration facing
this page is fairly typical. The Hakone Pass
has many attractive places ; in Tokio — even
in Yokohama and Kobe — there are so many
pretty ones ; and every mountain or hill that
boasts a view has its little shelter, and tiny
half-wild garden, where one can get tea, and
cool and a fine prospect all at the same
time. The only rule of the landscape artist's
lore that these spots observe is that they
must exhibit no artificiality, but resemble
Nature as closely as possible. Some have just
been made, but are already part of the road.
On the way up the mountain at Mij^agima (by
the fine path whose nineteen hundred odd
granite steps were the gift of Prince Ito a
month or two before his sudden tragic end),
we found such a place. Himself, who, as a
sailor, prefers climbing rigging to a mountain,

HYDRANGEAS IN TEA GARDEN
TANI, KYOTO

SOME PARTICULAR GARDENS 188

and a good rest to either, declared when we were
half-way up his intention of stopping at the next
tea-house we came to. Made of warm, orange-
toned new wood, we saw the gleam of it through
the trees, but long before we reached it the old
woman who owned the place, hearing a child's
voice with ours, had run down to meet and
greet us on our way. It was hard, with her
excited Japanese and our very limited command
of the language, to understand her, and my five-
year-old boy was rather frightened when she
wanted to carry him on her back up the rest of
the way. But after a time we made out that
she had a little shrine dedicated to Gisu, the
god who is kind to children, and she wanted
our boy to place some stones at his feet.
She had lost her own son, and was a widow
and childless, and this was all she could do to
help his little soul in the land to which he had
gone. The good Gisu — it is strange, the re-
semblance in sound and in character to our
Name, (for there is no other) — would guard her
child, if other living children showed him their
love and devotion. Such a pathetic little
garden it was, made under the shelter of a great
overhanging rock, with rough stone lanterns
beside the tiny shrine, and wild flowers and
ferns, carefully tended, put where they might
catch a hold in the sparse soil. Our little chap
brought a cartload of small stones to build up
before the altar, and put all the loose change

184 JAPANESE GARDENS

we had in the little wooden money-box as
offerings, when we told him what the old woman
hoped his act might do for her son. It was
all we could do to keep her from carrying the
child on her back up the remaining three miles
to the top, so grateful was she. Indeed, I
doubt if we could have dissuaded her if the laws
of hospitality had not prevailed. Himself declaring
his intention of awaiting our return at her
little rest-house, and being in instant need of
tea.

I wish I had the space — speaking of rest-
houses — to describe the little garden on the
bleak mountain-side of Fuji which I saw there
when I made a memorable ascent years ago.
The people who open these places are only
allowed there for a few weeks in the summer,
but, in spite of that, in the very cinders half-
way up the old couple who gave out tea to
pilgrims had managed to place some evergreen
shrubs, had cultivated the white Fuji flower
{not Wistaria) that grows in the ashes, and had
some Reeds and grasses in a jar. In that
desolation, as of death, there was life and
greenness, and the joy in beauty.

Of private gardens it seems invidious to
speak in particular, where, from rich and poor,
I have been given of their best. One of the most
splendid I have seen was at Uraga, a great park-
like place, a hill garden, well watered, with
cascade and brook and a little lake, trained

SOME PARTICULAR GARDENS 185

trees and dwarfed ones, stretches of grassy
' duck-land,' quaint bridges, pagodas and
lanterns of mossy stone. Another hill garden
in the same locality was a honey-land for bees,
so rich and sweet was it with fragrant, many-
hued Azaleas. Still another was in the outskirts
of Tokio, the classical garden of a famous
Japanese nobleman and statesman, who ended
by building an ugly, modern, ' foreign ' house
in the grounds, and letting the place to an
Englishman.

One humble garden that I loved was behind
an old thatched house on the shores of Lake
Hakone. When in summer all the shoji were
set open, one saw, in the dark frame of the
walls, the crimson masses of velvety Phlox
against the silver-blue of the lake and the
bluer hills beyond ; and no doubt for the
happy owners there was a sight of incompar-
able Fuji around the shoulder of the hill, which
the house-walls hid from us others, outside the
pale.

Of wild gardens, where all Japan's a garden,
and all the men and women merely flowers, it is
even a more hopeless task to begin to chronicle.
But, thinking back over the years, the place of the
kind which stands out most clearly in my memory
is the hara between Chuzenji and Yumoto. The
Great Gardener had planted as He willed, and
the wide plain was one vast field of flowers.
It was in late July, and yet so far up in the

186 JAPANESE GARDENS

mountains were we, that pale Irises, quaker-
robed, still lingered, and held silent meetings
in damp hollows, while Azaleas, bold in their
colour and rich in their perfume, ran like fire
over field, beside rocks, through the underbrush,
and into edges of the woods — the most heart-
arresting sight I ever saw. A paraphrase of
the Japanese poet might put it —

"Above Chuzenji, like a field on fire,
The wild Azalea's scarlet paints the plains.
Or is it that the great gods fought and fell,
And blood-red flowers sprang up from the stains ? "

I take the same delight that a savage does
in fiery, passionate colour, and would have
dismounted, and simply wallowed in Azalea
blooms, if Himself, who has an occult gift for
scenting the neighbourhood of snakes, had not
warned me to stick to my horse. As it was, it
seemed as if every turn of the rocky, uncertain
path we had taken up to the hara revealed a
sinuous zigzag darkly gliding into the cliff-
side, or over the edge opposite, which leapt
down almost sheer into the raging cataract
below. I hate a height, and as my poor old
doddering horse backed towards the precipice
every time that he was bitten by a fly, or that
I screamed at the sight of a snake, I was rather
too literally between the devil — the serpent —
and the deep sea — the abyss.

Another hara, or ' upland meadow land,' in

SOME PARTICULAR GARDENS 187

which the flat plain is a great wild flower-bed,
is at that lovely but missionary-ridden spot,
Karuizawa. It has about the coolest climate
in Japan, and reminded me, with its Maples,
Ash trees, young Birches, and luzuriant grassy
fields, of New England and Canada, while
English friends kept exclaiming at its resemblance
to the Highlands of Scotland. But my simile
was the more accurate, as the botanists. Rein,
Asa Gray, Sir Joseph Hooker, etc., have all been
struck with the similarity of the vegetation of
Japan in general to that of the Atlantic slope of
North America, and of the flora of these hara
regions in particular to that of the United States.
I was indeed delighted, when I had painted
dozens of flowers brought me by an enthusiastic
friend, and had exclaimed on their likeness to
those of my old home, and had remarked how
odd it was that others, which I had never seen
elsewhere, except in the ' Sink Holes ' near St.
Louis, had been verified by eminent authorities
as being the very same things. Such a wealth
of rich-hued Compositae (fifty varieties, at least),
of golden and purple Vetches, of Convolvuli,
wild Larkspurs, Primulas, Spireas, ground
Orchids, and deep-stained Brambles, as flourished
there ! It was a dazzling herbaceous border a
mile wide at least ; a gigantic ' mixed bed '
whose seed had been sown broadcast. But the
best of all was the real grass. No person who
has not been exiled to the tropics for many years,

188 JAPANESE GARDENS

where the grass is of wire, or of sharp swords,
can know the pathetic joy we feel who come
into our own again of velvet lawns and smooth
pastm-es and tasselled meadows. Not even the
fear of snakes can keep me from rolling in and
on it there, like a young horse let loose in the
fields ! Eleven hundred missionaries, and the
flat and nasal intonation of the Middle West,
which is my country's least pleasant character-
istic, could not lessen my rapture in it. A fat
old lady with a waist as wide as her shoulders
(most of these godly people consider it a crime
to compress the figure unduly, and the idea
seems to be that the bigger the waist the more
souls they can gather in), said to me, " Seems
jest like Home, don't it ! " I agreed so heartily
that I was soon hearing all her family history ;
and her son, and his wife and family of five
children joined us (their ' field ' was inland some-
where, in North China), and before we were done
talking he was quoting Robert Louis and Walt
Whitman, and we were old friends.

One other wild Nature garden which I must
just mention was at Uraga — a shelf of blue
Hydrangeas below a half-ruined, tree-embowered
temple, on a cliff above the sea. The blue
water, the pale strip of beach, the flowers droop-
ing down to them — no artist but the Greatest
had arranged it. I have not time or space to
tell of a bamboo-shaded little dc]l above ITakonc
Lake, where the deep royal-blue of Monkshood,

SOME PARTICULAR GARDENS 189

with some late lingering white Lilies, made such
a picture ; nor of the fiery borders of Nerine
(Lycoris radiata) which September shows at
the edges of the golden fields of rice paddy ;
nor of a hundred other places where God has
been the Gardener, and the heart leaps at the
results. Like Wordsworth's daffodils, " they are
the joy of solitude," and mine own in love.

CHAPTER XIV

FLOWER ARRANGEMENT

" Seven plants I send you, on a bamboo stand,
Each symbolizing Life, happy and long."

Princess Shirakawa, with a gift of grasses,
at the New Year
{Translated by Arthur Lloyd)

IT can hardly be pretended that this is a
true garden topic, but so much garden
lore and cult is included in its study that
it would seem a pity to exclude it. The main
scientific principle which is its basis is the same
as that of the landscape artist — that is, a
representation of Nature on a small scale. It
is, like the tea-tray gardens, a display of
a portion of scenery for the house and for in-
timate contemplation, and is always more than
a simple bunch of flowers in a vase, or a bit of
interior decoration. It is a method of artistic
composition, too, like Japanese gardens, depend-
ing less on masses of colour and brilliancy of
bloom than on the disposition of line, on effects
of light and shade obtained by the relief of
blocks of foliage, by the slender lines of stems.

FLOWER ARRANGEMENT 191

In a word, both depend more on the drawing
than on the colouring of the picture, although
this does not imply that, to a cultivated eye, the
colour is ever absent.

To the art of flower arrangement I came
with a more spontaneous liking than I ever felt
for Hachi Niwa, and I seriously think the
Japanese are the only people in the world who
really understand it. O Tourists of the great
hotels of the Treaty Ports, dispute me not,
from your memory of the atrocities of hideous
crammed bunches of violently conflicting hues,
in ugly vases, that took away your appetites
when you sat down to breakfast ! O Tourists
who frequent foreign hotels anywhere in
Japan, but still have no acquaintance with
the out-of-the-way inns and private houses
of the country, deny it not, for you do not
know !

Wherever the Westerner has set his foot,
and demands foreign food, a tablecloth and
forks, he must, in acquiring these, give up the
more spiritual luxury of daintily and pleasingly
arranged flowers. He can get them both, but
he must prove himself worthy. We spent a
summer at a dear little primitive inn at Hakone,
where the floral display on the tables in
the dining-room profaned all sanctities of art ;
such monstrous mixtures as scarlet Geraniums,
crimson Phlox, magenta Dahlias, and purple
Zinneas were exhibited, thrust as thick as they

192 JAPANESE GARDENS

could be crowded into tumblers or horrible
coloured glass vases.

The change back to Japanese methods was
all done by kindness. I began by thanking
the ni'san for the fresh flowers, and went on by
asking her to take away all but those of one
colour, to delight some one else who had not had
so much magnificence thrust upon her. Then
I took a hand myself, and my table-mates with
me, and we brought in wild flowers — a few, with
some graceful grasses ; and I unearthed a Japanese
basket with a bamboo water-holder inside, as a
vase. Then the 0 Kami San began to take an
interest, and brought us flowers in a tall well-
shaped Japanese jar ; and finally the lordly
proprietor himself took to seeing that our
table boasted a charming arrangement, simple
and beautiful, which was changed nearly every
day. And so it was at every hotel we went to.
If the Japanese servants see that the foreigner
takes an interest — more, that he appreciates
their methods, and prefers them to what they
fondly fancy are his own, they will spare no
trouble to place real masterpieces of composi-
tion before him. On the other hand, in out-of-
the-way places, where the chance foreigner may
happen to be an overbearing, half-educated,
and wliolly crass clerklet from a Treaty Port,
who despises, in Japan, a daintiness, a fastidious-
ness of detail that he would not be likely ever
to have seen in the haunts of his own class in

FLOWER ARRANGEMENT 193

his own country, woe betide the tourist of finer
feeling who follows him ! If such a one jeers
at the beautiful, nearly bare branches of Plum
blossom that a Japanese is on his knees before
(almost literally), those of better taste who come
after him will probably have no opportunity
to flout such a composition, for it will be kept
strictly to the Japanese quarters, where it will
be justly appreciated. In his book on Japan
Mr. Tyndale told a sad tale of this sort, of some
young blades from Yokohama, at Atami, who
drove out ' those twigs ' and adorned their
Christmas table with champagne and ' Black
and White ' whisky bottles instead. The little
hurt and disgusted landlady did not say one
word in deprecation, nor mentioned the Biblical
porker as she took out her pearl-strung boughs
of bloom. And this was not because the sub-
stituted bottles were ' for the good of the 'ouse,'
and represented a greater pecuniary advantage
to herself, either.

Shortly before Young America and I had
been permitted to assist in the manufacture of
Hachi Niwa, I had begun, with a Japanese
teacher, to study the art of flower arrange-
ment. The friend with whom I was travelling,
a Lady from California (it all requires capitals),
said, " What do you want to study that for ?
I guess you can beat a Jap any day at that
job. They take three hours to put an ugly
old bare stalk and two Irises in a bowl, and
13

194 JAPANESE GARDENS

then they all make as much fuss and cackle
over it as a hen does over an egg. Waste of
time, I call it ! "

But I liked to waste my time in that way,
and while she helped our little m.aid to make
beautiful ' shirt waists ' for herself on the
sewing-machine, I worked among the fragrant
twigs of Pine, with Cherry branches, delicate,
drooping grasses, and Chrysanthemums. A
dear little Japanese lady, a friend of mine, got
me the teacher — for they are always to be found.
Every well-bred woman has studied this graceful
art, without which she is not considered properly
educated, in Japan. Such an ugly old woman
this teacher was, with a name which meant
' Wave of the Sea.' She was an old-timer, with
no modern notions, and it was a horror to me to
look up from my work to find her grinning
at me with glistening blackened teeth. (I like
all the old survivals except the blackened teeth
and shaven eyebrows of the married women.)
She had not one word of English, and I very
few of Japanese, and the books my little friend
brought me were in characters I could not
decipher ; but gestures were eloquent, pictures
told much, deeds spoke louder than words;
there were tongues in the tree branches and
intelligence in the Irises, so we progressed.
And then some Japanese friends, who had of
course studied the art, helped, too, by trans-
lating the directions into such dear, quaint

IRISES AT KITANO, KYOTO

FLOWER ARRANGEMENT 195

English. I spent several months very happily
at the work, putting love and patience into it;
but so great are its difficulties that I am still
but a crude beginner.

The art — it is almost unnecessary to say —
came from China, along with all the other garden
and floral lore. The great Sen-no-Rikiu, land-
scape artist, high priest of the tea ceremonial,
aesthete, and scholar, introduced it into Japan
in the sixteenth century, when he elaborated the
allied arts of garden planning and the ceremony
of the tea-drinking to take place there. Con-
fucianism was also concerned in the cult, and
the rules laid down were according to the
active and passive principles of Nature,^ which
the Japanese convert into the vigorous male,
displayed and relieved by the quieter and
humbler female qualities ; just as, in their
gardens, stones and plants are bound by those
traditions and ideas. It would take more time
and space than I can spare to this subject to
explain the subtle and sometimes far-fetched
notions that this involves.

The basis of the rules is triangulation. Old
art lectures came back to me as I began to
understand that this subtlest of Eastern aesthetics

1 " The smug schoolmen . . . attributed all phenomena to the
action of principles without life, which they called Yin and Yang
(positive and negative principles of Nature). But how can there be
action without life ? Certainly the existence of activity presupposes
a living God from whom it proceeds." — From Hirata Atsutane (1776-
1845). Translated by W. G. Aston.

196 JAPANESE GARDENS

had, for groundwork principles, exactly what
the most recent of Western arts owned. The
eye is thus focused on the whole design, or
rather on the point of the whole design ; for
two sides of the triangle are longer than the
third, — I need not say that a mathematical
measurement is not taken of the material before
it is used, — and the eye does not wander vaguely
all over the group, seeking the motif.

Roughly speaking, and simply put, one takes
three sprays of the chosen branch or flower, or
three, in all, of the combination of plants to be
used, and places the longest one in the middle,
its end curved over like a bow. Then on one
side is put another piece, about half its size,
while on the other side is placed the third spray,
half as long again as the second, and therefore
half-way between the two others in length.
Now, as I say, this is roughly speaking, for,
although here is the fundamental principle, no
stiff or angular design will pass, and the com-
position must be, above all things, free and
natural-looking. No one would believe, who
had not tried it, how difficult this is of attain-
ment. One does not merely ' stick in a few
twigs ' by any means. To get just the curve
one wants (or ought to have !), the branch may
have to be heated gently over a brazier so as to
make it more pliable, and to allow it to be bent,
without breaking, into the desired attitude.
Then stiff er sorts of plants have little notches

FLOWER ARRANGEMENT 197

cut in the lower and upper sides of the stem,
and one will be squeezed together while the
other will have a wedge of bamboo stuck into
it to curve it out properly. In sprays of Pine
I have had to put in half a dozen of these blocks
to get the thing into shape, and even then my
critical teacher was not satisfied. Sometimes,
when our material was very disobliging, we had
to tie the recalcitrant limbs into the proper pose,
using perhaps fine, invisible wire, or, in incon-
spicuous places, wood fibre, for the purpose.
In learning to do this I got some insight also
into the way in which trees are helped to grow
in nursery gardens — the method by which the
young plant is taught how to shoot in Japan.
In flower arrangement we never went so far as
to fasten the branches to a bamboo where a
straight line was wanted (it never was wanted,
however !), but I often longed to tie my poor cut
bough to something, as an invisible curve was
such an intangible thing to work by ! One
scheme my ugly, nice little teacher taught me
was to make a series of indentations — they were
hardly real cuts— all along the inner surface of a
stem that was to be bent. I never got at all
adept with Irises, and my arrangement of them
was always stiff and conventional compared
with hers, but I managed very fairly well with
Cherry and Maple boughs. Chrysanthemums
simply managed themselves, but Pine was ever
unruly, and, like a curly-headed child who

198 JAPANESE GARDENS

resents the brush, always managed to look (to
my eye, at least) beautiful in its own inde-
pendent way, as if unaffected by my failure or
success.

But the bending of the twig was only part of
the training. A great field of study lay before
me — of the flowers and leaves appropriate to
different occasions, the sentiments which
attached to the various plants, and all the
poetical and literary allusions which the worker,
thoroughly versed in the art, implied by his
selection and arrangement. Our old editions
of The Language of Flowers, which I used to
pore over as a child, were nothing to that.
One ought to know the whole literature of Japan
by heart and have an almost equally good know-
ledge of the Chinese classic authors, be deeply
imbued with Buddhist and Shinto lore, know
something of India, and have, into the bargain,
a poetic mind, in order to understand all the
subtleties of the subject.

Mr. Basil Hall Chamberlain, in writing on
the art of flower arrangement, as usual when
touching on their aesthetics does not do the
Japanese justice. He is really never in sym-
pathy with the artistic side of the Japanese
character, and is always inclined to gentle
raillery on those subjects, chaffing mildly when-
ever he has occasion to mention any of the
delicacies and refinements of art which the
Western world is only now beginning to ap-

FLOWER ARRANGEMENT 199

predate. He avers that colour is not the key-
note of the composition, but line, and the balance
of proportion ; which is true enough, except
that he implies a lack of colour sense on the
part of the Japanese, which is far from being a
fact. As I have more than once stated in this
book, the Japanese colour sense is so delicate,
the perception of harmonies so fine, that people
of bolder and coarser feeling are not competent
to judge them. In grey, the ' Artist's Colour,'
they find their chiefest delight ; in soft mauves,
faint blues, mellow fawns and browns, they are
content. They do not care for blazing branches
of Maple in the house — the takenomo seldom
displays flamboyant bouquets of highly tinted
flowers. The chastity, almost austere har-
mony, of a Japanese room, with its honey-
coloured mats, its pale diffused lighting from
paper-covered windows (like bright moonlight,
or as if snow lay outside), is seldom broken by
any flowers more gaily hued than silk-petalled
Irises, Plum or rosy Cherry blossoms, or the
sombre branches of Pine. Sometimes the only
decoration in the whole room — for there never is
any furniture, as all the world knows, and every-
thing decorative is placed in the sacred niche —
is an old block of half-decayed wood, covered
with delicately beautiful, silvery fungi. A lichen-
covered stone of good shape is often seen also,
or some curious piece of wreckage from the
beach, which has been painted warm iodine-

200 JAPANESE GARDENS

greys and blues and purples by the action of
the sea ; or perhaps it may be a thick, gnarled
stem of an ancient Pine bough, sawn through
horizontally, with one picturesque needled spray
thrusting itself out sideways from it, which
has the place of honour. Again, a naked tree-
branch, in Western eyes only prospectively good
to look upon because of its swelling buds, will
delight a Japanese family for a week or two.
The exquisite lines of branch and twig are not
lost on them, and they will see the coming of
spring evolve out of the promise of winter,
watching its development as they would the
growth of a loved and lovely child.

Here again we find that poetic suggestion
which is the great uplifting factor in all their arts.
While their delight in the quaint, the fanciful
is as unforced as a child's, as keenly appre-
ciative as a latter-day Parisian artist's, their
real eminence is due to the spiritual idea
which they make the basis of their feeling for
beauty.

The wide-topped jar or vase of bronze or
porcelain, or perhaps only of bamboo, in which
the flower composition is placed, is in itself
almost sufhcient decoration for a room, so
pure and satisfying are its hues, so deep and
cool is its tone, so fine its texture. Then it is
set upon a black-wood or lacquered stand or
pedestal of classic shape, which gives added
dignity to the whole. Owing to the wideness

FLOWER ARRANGEMENT 201

of the flat, open mouths of the receptacle usually
employed, and the few sprays used, it is no mean
task to make the separate branches ' stay put '
in the water, and they have to be carefully
blocked into place with neat little wedges of
bamboo.

There are other receptacles, besides these
open vases and flat -topped jars, in infinite
variety — wicker baskets twisted and stained so
that they resemble bronze ; bamboo in a dozen
different forms and shapes, as rafts, as buckets,
as plain flower-holders ; and almost as great
stress is laid on the proper selection of these
as on the arrangement to be put into them.
For example, a bamboo stand for a wedding
celebration must show no cut. That would be
bad luck and bad taste, symbolic of a broken
faith, a severed and maimed affection.

After these rudimentary principles have been
learned, there are still many other phases of the
cult to be studied— how many leaves should be
left on a twig, for instance (in Bamboo, this
number should be three or five) ; what plants
may be combined to express a sentiment, etc.
Of the more involved methods of setting out
flowers, so that a particular place or poetical
idea is suggested, I can say nothing. It is far
beyond the elementary stage of my training;
indeed, I doubt if any foreigner— bar Mr. Conder
— could speak on this point with authority, so
erudite is the cult. I quote the latter on the

202 JAPANESE GARDENS

subject of the Pine used at the ' Moon- viewing
Festival ' : —

" Moon-viewing is at all times a favourite
pastime of the Japanese, but the great Moon
Festival of the year is on the fifteenth day of
the eighth month. The more important dwellings
have a special chamber from which the sight of
the moonlit landscape can be enjoyed. The
floral arrangement occupies the recess of the
chamber, and has of course no real connexion
with the outside prospect ; but in the flower
composition itself the moonlit landscape is
expressed. A branch of Pine tree is used, and
between the principal and secondary lines of
the composition a special branch is introduced,
fancifully called the ' moon-shadow branch ' ; a
hollow gap is also formed between the foliage,
bounded by a special branch called the ' dividing
branch.' In the composition the idea is to suggest
both the opening through which the moon can
be partially observed and the dark branch which
appears to cross its surface. To fully appreciate
the analogy, one must be familiar with the
scenery of Japan, and have seen, on a clear
night, the irregular Pine trees standing out
against the moonlit heavens."

Aquatic plants have particular methods used
for their display, and some of the loveliest
compositions I have seen were of this sort.

FLOWER ARRANGEMENT 203

Irises had little weighted clamps, like this, J!!L>
put on their feet, which enabled them to stand
up like lead soldiers, in a shallow, pale green
dish ; and then these shoes of theirs were hidden
with clean white pebbles, and the tiniest of
gold-fish were set to swim about in the clear
water with which they were covered.

Narcissus Tazetti, in the winter, is used in
the same way (without shoes, however), and in
this decoration the Chinese are nearly as clever
as their one-time pupils, the Japanese. As in
China, too, this is a favourite decoration at the
New Year, and is one always obtainable, as the
bulbs are so easily forced. One cannot wonder
that Narcissus died of love for himself, these
flowers of his are so beautiful, reflected in the
mirror of clear water.

Another time, from out of a crystal bowl
sprang a few stalks of arrow-shaped leaves,
and in and out among the pale amber roots, as
richly decorative as any part of the scheme,
darted those glittering butterflies of the water,
the gold-fish.

This recalls an incident which happened about
that time, when Young America took to garden-
ing. Some pretty little geishas, who had met
the child on the street, brought him a globe of
gold-fish as a present. We had been planting
Morning Glory seed in blue and white pots in
the veranda that day, and had dilated at length
on the beauties that were in store for us when

204 JAPANESE GARDENS

they should grow up and bloom. As we were
finishing some visitors arrived, and if wicked
pride had not impelled us to exhibit our neatly-
planted pots before we gave them tea, it would
have been all over with the gold-fish. The
sweet, blue-eyed, fluffy-haired little angel was
planting them ! " An' when dey drow up, I
will have lots and lots of 'ittle fishes, mudder,"
he shouted joyously. We were just in time to
stop this scientific effort to grow a goldfish
Vine.

It requires a liberal education to know what
flowers, or combination of plants, to send as a
gift in Japan. I found I had committed an
enormity in selecting pink and white Lotuses
for a christening, as they are associated with
funerals and Buddhist shrines only. At New
Year a gift of flowers should be a delightful
arrangement of Pine (suggesting long life) and
Plum blossoms (spiritual beauty) ; Bamboo may
be added, as that also means long life and
strength, as the Pine does, and uprightness
as well. A tiny Orange tree laden with fruit,
which indicates prosperity, is also a proper gift
at that season. Various grasses are appropriate
then too, as the poem at the beginning of this
chapter indicates. On the Little Girls' birthday
— always on the fifth day of the fifth month —
Peach blossom must adorn the niche, and with
dolls may be sent as presents to the tiny lady.
For weddings there are many beautiful and

FLOWER ARRANGEMENT 205

symbolic compositions. Of one of these Mr.
Conder speaks thus : —

" At wedding feasts a double arrangement in
a pair of similar standing vases is employed.
For this purpose a branch of the male Pine is
placed in one vessel, and a branch of the female
Pine in the other. The general form of each
design would be similar, but the branch of the
female Pine facing the opposite vase should
stretch a little beneath the corresponding branch
of the male Pine. These together are called
the ' Destiny-uniting ' branches, and the com-
plete design is said to typify eternal union."

These same male and female Pines stand guard
at all the gates at the New Year; the sharp
and stubbly Thunbergii on the left, which is the
side of honour in Japan, representing the man,
and the graceful P. densiflora taking the woman's
lesser place.

And so it goes on ; and when all is arranged,
and the chosen bloom or branch is set out in the
sacred niche, a charming ceremonial of admira-
tion is gone through. It is almost a kind of
worship of beauty. The adorer falls on his
knees in front of the raised alcove, and bows his
head to the ground, his palms pressed flat on the
straw matting in front of him. Three times he
does this ; each time he lifts his head, drawing
a deep sighing breath of contentment as his

206 JAPANESE GARDENS

eyes fall on the flowers. Then for long he sits
in silent contemplation, taking into his soul
something that is fine and pure and good, that
emanates like perfume from them. Oh, the
jewel of serenity and peace in the Lotus, or
the poorest twig, so viewed !

It is a matter of moment, the choice of a
gift as well as the arrangement. Once, in
buying an offering for a Japanese friend at a
nursery garden in Yokohama, I had to give the
courteous elderly man who was serving me the
most intimate details of her character, station
in life, age, and appearance (to which, no doubt,
he added his own views as to mine), before he
would suggest what would be appropriate from
the national point of view. Finally (and partly
in consideration of my American birth) the
choice fell upon a delightful dwarf Maple, very
old, very quaint — and the Lady from California
said, " Very ugly and very expensive." In
another book I relate the adventures that befell
me and the Maple tree, but suffice it here to say
that my friend was delighted, and delicately
hinted that my taste in gifts was as that of her
own nation. And so the grave little old man
got none of the credit for the subtle international
compliment.

If I had only thought to send her a poem I
should have cleared my conscience and probably
have got a charming Japanese verse in return ;
for every one in Japan writes poems, from the

FLOWER ARRANGEMENT 207

Emperor downward — I even suspected my kuru-
maya in Kyoto of the practice.

Here is a translation of some fairly typical
lines to accompany an arrangement of Pine and
Plum blossoms from a woman to her husband ;
but it must not be forgotten that, circumscribed
by convention as their verses are, an original
composition must be sent if any is : —

" Oh ! sturdy Pine tree spray,

Take to my lord

This loving word,
And let the pearly flowers of the Plum

In fragrance say
From whom, love-weighted, they have come.

This New Year's Day."

Poetry is deeply inwoven with this graceful
art. Indeed, that is always the most alluring
part of the study of anything in Japan — every
subject opens up others, even though, as in
this case, the one art is long enough for a life's
work. And as sincerity is the touchstone of any
real art, so it is of this — sincerity of feeling, of
faithful labour, of loving study. " We cannot
touch another's heart with anything less than
our own," and, however humble the means of
presentation of an art may be, informed and
performed with truth and love it is art. I do
not care if it is only an iron fire shovel, or a
child's wooden pail ; if it is made with thought
and joy in the work, it is a beautiful thing.

208 JAPANESE GARDENS

What, then, of God-wrought flowers and leaves,
arranged with the same worship of beauty —
shall the art of their use not become a thing of
dignity and honour, an uplifting force to him
who sees as well as to him who makes ? They
bring to us the message we have already in our
hearts, take from us that which comes from our
own souls.

CHAPTER XV

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS — (l)

" Chide me not, laborious band.
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every Aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery

But 'tis figured in the flowers ;

Was never secret history

But birds tell it in the bowers."

Emergon.

THE garden and flower lore of Japan is
strangely impersonal. As in her poetry,
there is little of simile, or of the turning
of plant life into human beings, or the endow-
ment of personality on inanimate things. It
seems as if the Japanese love flowers more for
themselves than for the images they evoke, and
yet what is love but a divine imagination ! A
man who loves his mistress for her beauty or
for her character alone, who endows her not with
transcendental qualities, has a narrow margin
of affection on which to draw ; that which is
all explained is at the end of its interest. How,
then, is it that the Japanese — of all the people
on this earth the fondest, as a nation, of flowers
— without the fairy wand of impersonation to
14

210 JAPANESE GARDENS

assist are such true and faithful lovers of them !
But, in spite of the absence of the fiction of
personality — which forms the bulk of our own
flower folk-lore — and partly, also, because the
Japanese regard each other and their own egos
in the same way (for instance, there are almost
no personal pronouns in use in the language), so
that the human entity is only a drop in the vast
sea of divine entity — there are some lovely
elusive thoughts, of spiritual ideas, colouring
every object in Nature, giving rainbow tints
even to the muddy waters of the ditch. Things
are endowed with qualities, excellences, shades
and glamours, instead of being simply trans-
formed into men and women, gods and goddesses.
For instance, the Wistaria is likened not so
much to a particular woman as to the lovely
abstract ideal of one. Clinging, drooping,
graceful, robed in the delicate pale hues a highly
bred lady chooses, fragrant and bounteously
sweet, she yet — although she is as her lord would
have her, helpless and dependent on his (the
sturdy Pine's) support — can still with tenacious
tendrils hold the house of his love together,
bind fast the framework of home. It rather
spoils the pretty notion to remember that the
lovely Fuji^ is supposed to be over-fond of
sake, and that she will be grateful if you will
throw the dregs from your wine-cup on her roots !

* Fuji no hana is the Japanese name for Wistaria and does not
here refer to the mountain.

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 211

One of the No plays is founded on a personi-
fication of the Wistaria vine, but it is somewhat
more spiritual and remote than the same kind
of legend would be with Western nations. A
priest, on his way to view the famous Fuji of
Tako no Ura, meets a sweet and beautiful young
girl, who is soon to turn into the spirit of the
Wistaria. She asks for his prayers to assist
her soul to enter Paradise. Poor pretty flower !
She loves the world, and the beauty and fragrance
that are hers ; but later, swaying and lithe in
clinging purple silks, the long sleeves swinging
like the great racemes of honey-scented blooms,
she appears to dance her last dance before she
vanishes to the happy Nirvana in which the
priest's prayers have won her a place.

So also the Convolvulus, in one word,
typifies all that is most brief and beautiful in
life. The very essence of poetry is in it, to the
Japanese mind, and they never weary of making
delicate little verses on the subject, suggesting at
least — for that, to them, is more desirable than
expressing — the evanescent loveliness of life, and
its eternity. One poet, Matsunaga, says —

" Although thy bloom may not outlast the day,
O Morning Glory, would thy heart were mine !
Eternity dwells in thy cup as in
The thousand years that ring the stately Pine."

A dozen more might be quoted.

The Pine tree (Matsu) symbolizes long life,

212 JAPANESE GARDENS

and it is believed that after a thousand years
its sap turns to amber ; but it also implies other
things, sturdiness and strength and steadfast-
ness. Again, two Fir trees standing side by side
(more especially the famous two at Takasago
and Suminoye, of the popular old No drama)
typify a husband and wife growing aged together.
In the quaint old play the spirits of these trees
are changed into an elderly peasant and his
wife — a reversal of the plan of our folk-lore,
which converts people into trees — and they
converse together thus :

Tomonari, the guardian of a Shinto shrine,
says, " Strange ! I see you old couple here
together. What mean you, then, by saying
that you dwell apart, one in distant Suminoye,
the other in Takasago, divided from one another
by seashore, hill, and province ? " To which
the old woman replies, " What an odd speech !
Though many a mile of mountain and river
separate them, the way of a husband and wife,
whose hearts respond to one another with
mutual care, is not far apart."

"The hoar frost falls
On the Fir tree twigs ;
But its leaves' dark green
Suffer no change.
Morning and evening
Beneath its shade
The leaves are swept away,
Yet they never fail.

»». <^jn-ir^i..gt,.v.<«mi:>-.«^«T.,^»ya>,,,M..vi^j^:fri,w,-.-^i.-. -. .■,--.■ -..■■. ..:-,A,,.f,»^.v..^>^-,-.- -. ^

l!:'^i^!i':!!:!l!i!i!iiil!illiliiliil!;ii'i!^i^-^^

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 213

True it is

That these Fir trees
Shed not all their leaves ;
Their verdure remains fresh
For ages long,

As the Misaka trailing vine ;
Even amongst evergreen trees —
The emblem of unchangeableness —
Exalted is their fame
As a symbol to the end of time —
The fame of the Fir trees that have grown
old together." ^

Pines, Fir trees, and Cryptomerias have also
the halo of sanctity about them. Whenever
we find a stately avenue of the dark bronze and
blue-green Firs, we may know that sooner or
later they will lead us to a temple, or some
sacred shrine. Buddhist and Shinto alike plant
these great conifers on the hill sites where their
holy places are, and they are almost as infallible
a sign of the proximity of a temple as are rows
of stone lanterns, or the red wooden gateways
called Torii. At Nikko there is a tree, a conifer
of some sort, set around with a stone railing,
visited, loved and venerated still, which, when
it was a baby plant a few inches high in a flower-
pot cradle, is said to have been brought there
by the great lyeyasu. To this famous men
come and leave a visiting card, as is the Japanese
custom nowadays in going to heroes' graves.

Another tree, like the latter too tourist-

^ W. G. Aston's translation.

214 JAPANESE GARDENS

ridden to appeal to me as it should have done,
is the great Pine tree at Karasaki, on the shores
of Lake Biwa. It is hardly strange, however,
that it should be considered sacred ; for, reversing
the old Greek adage, if the gods did not love
this tree why has it lived so long ? Again,
such size, is it not miraculous ? Murray says that
the trunk is thirty-five feet in circumference, that
it is ninety feet high, and that the length of its
branches, from north to south, is two hundred
and eighty-eight feet. To me it was a monstrous
shambling Caliban, a caricature of the grandeur
I expected. Crutches of bamboo and stone
pillars supported its tottering old limbs, a silly
little roof covered its bald spot up above, and
the holes and cavities in its trunk had been
stopped with plaster to prevent the spread of
decay. We bought post-cards, and hated the
place. The lofty spirit of Old Japan dwells not
in that decrepit old hulk, which survives without
dignity, lives without that beauty or joy or
usefulness, which, if man or creature have not
prolonged, life is but a mockery and a disgrace.
The Bamboo (Take), in addition to its almost
limitless practical uses, has many pretty legends
connected with it, and its place in decoration,
in sentiment, and in poetic significance is an
honourable one. Although it is a grass, and
" in the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up ;
in the evening it is cut down, and withereth,"
yet long life, in Chinese (and, hence, in Japanese)

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 215

eyes, is suggested by it. All over the Far East
it is considered very lucky, and many are the
qualities with which it is supposed to endow
the wearer ; strength, vigour, uprightness, these
are the main ones ; while its constant colour
suggests virtue and purity in a woman, and
constancy — a rare gift, I fear, in that fair
land — in a man. With the Chrysanthemum,
the Plum, and the Orchid, the Bamboo forms
the company of the ' Four Floral Gentlemen ' —
a grouping that bears thinking on, aside from
the quaint charm of the idea. In picture lore,
sparrows are always put with the Bamboo, as
are nightingales with the Plum, and quails with
Reeds and other grasses.

My first introduction to the old stories con-
nected with the Bamboo was in a curio-shop in
Yokohama, where I was buying some beautiful
old faded embroideries. The Lady from Cali-
fornia, who had paid for her gay new work four
times what I had given for my ' washed-out old
rags,' as she called them, was very indignant
that, on every subsequent visit we paid to the
shop, even the proprietor, as well as every
available assistant, hurried to show me old
treasures the moment they spied me, while the
young man who exhibited magenta Paeonies
and vivid roosters to her cast constant rueful
glances towards the other group. It was not
that I bought much, but that a Japanese, even
a shopkeeper in mercantile Yokohama, will

216 JAPANESE GARDENS

never tire of showing the beautiful things he
loves himself, and recounting the stories con-
nected with them, if he finds a sympathetic
audience. And so the following year to these
kind, friendly people I went again, with Him-
self, and we looked, and they talked, and we
bought a little, and wasted a lot of their time.
One of the things we carried away with us,
besides their good wishes, was a Jaroushiki, and
this legend. Now, a faroushiki is a hand-
kerchief-shaped piece of silk, in which a gift is
wrapped up for presentation. It, and the
lacquer box which actually contains the present,
have to be returned. As it is a permanent
institution, and may convey many beautiful
things, it is correspondingly rich and fine, and
there are inexorable laws as to the colours and
subjects appropriate to every possible occasion.
This one had been purposely made to enwrap
what we might call a christening present to a
child. It is of the palest moonlight-blue satin,
lined with scarlet crepe (Oh ! that scarlet, like
velvet Nasturtiums), and on it is embroidered
an old man, in a driving snowstorm, bending
over a clump of Bamboo shoots with a triumph-
ant expression on his face. And the story,
from China, I believe, is that a dutiful son, being
asked by his aged mother to get her some Bam-
boo shoots in the depth of winter, was so full
of filial piety as to go out to perform the impos-
sible, and so great was his faith that a miracle

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 217

happened, and these, sprouting through the
snow, were the first green-gold shoots of the
Bamboo. The son was represented as old be-
cause he afterwards became one of the Twenty-
four Wise Men, who all lived to a great old age.
I only hope that the child who first received a
gift so wrapped was old enough to appreciate
it all, but the story is sure to have been told
him later, if not then, as it is a great favourite
in Japan.

Another well-loved tale is that of the Moon
Princess, who appeared from out the shining
stem of a Bamboo to an old man, a wood-cutter,
who took her home and adopted her, naming
her Kaguyahime ('The Shining Damsel'). She
quickly grew up to be a most beautiful woman,
and had innumerable suitors, to each of whom
she allotted a task, on the performance of which
(generally an impossibility) she promised to
marry him. Naturally, they all failed. The
Mikado himself then became a candidate, but
she refused him without any test, though they
remained good friends nevertheless, and subse-
quently kept up a correspondence, consisting
chiefly of sentimental verses (Tanka). She was
finally taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot,
which came for her from her real home in
the Moon.i

^ This is taken from the classic Taketori Monogaiari (meaning
' The Romance of the Bamboo Gatherer '), which has been delightfully-
rendered into English by Miss Yei Theodora Ozaki, in her Japanese

218 JAPANESE GARDENS

Another story connected with Bamboos, as
famihar as our ' Cinderella,' is ' The Tongue-
cut Sparrow.' An aged childless couple dwelt
far out in the country. The old man was kind,
gentle, and cheerful, but his wife was a cruel,
scolding shrew. The husband had a pet Sparrow
of which he was very fond, as was the bird of
him; but the old woman was jealous of the
little creature, and hated it. One day, in the
absence of the man at his work in the fields, the
old woman missed some starch which she had
mixed over-night, and became very angry at
being unable to find it, upon which the
Sparrow came and confessed to having eaten
it, and prayed for forgiveness. But she,
furious with the little bird, cut out its tongue
with a pair of scissors, and drove it from the
house. When the old man returned he was
greatly exercised in his mind at the disappear-
ance of his little pet, and wanted to know where
it was ; but his wife at first prevaricated, and
said she did not know what had become of it.
On being pressed, however, she acknowledged
what she had done, and why, and attempted
to justify herself. Her husband was heart-

Fairy Book. The Japanese, however, do not consider it a fairy
tale by any means. In the same book is the story of ',The Tongue-cut
Sparrow,' of which I here give a very brief resum6. Both these,
by other translators, and many others, may be bought for a small
sum at any Japanese bookstall, beautifully printed and illustrated
in colours on crepe paper, from the pens of various translators, and
published by Hasegawa of Tokio. Some are Lafcadio Ream's
translations, if I remember rightly.

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 219

broken, and in the morning, instead of going
to his work, he set forth to try to find the bird.
After walking many, many miles, stopping at
every clump of Bamboos and calling to it,
he came at last to a big Bamboo wood, at the
edge of which, to his great delight, he found
his little favourite, which greeted him effusively.
It showed him that a new tongue had grown to
replace that which the cruel old woman had so
barbarously cut out, telling him that he was
not to trouble himself more about it, as it was
now quite right again. Thereupon the old
man knew at once that the Sparrow was a
fairy. Then the fairy asked him to follow her,
and took him to a most beautiful house in
the middle of the wood, and entertained him
there to dinner. After dinner the old man
got up to go, saying that he had far to travel,
and that his wife would be very angry if he
were late. The little Sparrow tried hard to
persuade him to remain for the night, but when
he insisted on going she brought in two boxes,
one large and the other small, and asked him
to choose one of them as a present. He chose
the smaller, as being the lighter, and, after
much bowing and many compliments and
thanks, took his departure on his long walk
home.

On arrival at his hovel, late at night, he
was met with a scolding from his wife, who
wanted to know where he had been and why

220 JAPANESE GARDENS

he was so late. The old man tried to pacify
her by showing her the box, and related all
his adventures, but she continued to nag, and
to find fault with everything. They then
opened the box, which they found to be full of
gold and silver coins and many other valuable
things. At this the woman was furious with
the old man, because he had chosen the smaller
box, and showered abuse on him.

In the morning the greedy old woman, who
had been making her plans for getting the big
box, made her husband tell her the way to the
Sparrow's house, and, without thinking that
the Sparrow, which was now undoubtedly a
fairy, might wish to retaliate upon her for the
loss of its tongue, started off at once on the
long tramp.

Arrived at the house she knocked loudly at
the door, and was greeted politely by the
Sparrow, who, though very much surprised
at the visit and the frame of mind which
prompted it, was much too well-mannered to
give any expression to its feelings. The old
woman wasted no time in formalities, however,
but bluntly stated the object of her visit, which
was to get the large box that her husband, she
said, had stupidly left behind. The Sparrow
at once acquiesced, and had the box brought
out, upon which the old woman, without a
word of thanks, promptly shouldered it and
walked off.

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 221

The box was very heavy, so she could not
go fast, as she wanted to do in order to find
out its contents (for even she could not so
violate every rule of Japanese etiquette as to
look at the gift in sight of the donor) ; instead,
she had to sit down and rest frequently, and it
was during one of these rests that her desire to
see what was inside the box overcame her.
After looking stealthily round to see if anyone
was in sight, she carefully opened it, expecting
to find further stores of wealth. What she
found, however, was a selection of the most
hideous and malevolent demons and goblins,
which bounced out on her like a Jack-in-the-box,
and gave her such a thorough fright that she
repented of her evil ways and became the kindest,
best-natured, and hardest-v/orking old woman
that ever was, and the old couple ended their
days in happiness and prosperity.

Not all the Bamboo stories are pleasant.
One tells of a Chinese victim of torture, who
was bound down upon a bed of the plants over-
night, and by the morning the shoots, so fierce
and rapid was their growth, had pierced right
through his body. But this is too gruesome a
tale with which to leave the subject of the
beautiful Bamboo, so I will tell you that, in
Japan, if lovers will give their names each to
a branch of Bamboo, and tie the two twigs
together with a long pin of thorn, forming a
wish, after a time the wish will come true — for

222 JAPANESE GARDENS

what does Bamboo mean but constancy ! And
what will lovers wish for but the continuance
of their love !

But the Bamboo is also associated with the
' religious plants,' and Mr. Percival Lowell in
his absorbingly interesting book, Occult Japan,
never omits to mention that the ' eight points '
in the sacred space made for the Shinto rites
of spirit possession are marked by Bamboo
wands, with the leaves left at the top in tufts.

About the Lotus flower a wealth of mystic
lore has accumulated, for it is the emblem of
Buddha, and its very prayer is " Oh, the jewel in
the Lotus ! " {Om Mani Padmi Hum). The
blooms outspread, like the sun's rays, are
emblems of Buddha's enlightenment, and the
spokes marked on the top of the seed-pod denote
the wheel of Eternity. In the ponds of every
temple the plants may be found springing — a
lovely token of purity, spotless and unsoiled —
from the mud of their miry bed. Once this
symbolized the spiritual triumph of the body
over the debasing and polluting acts of birth
and of death ; but now it is no more associated
with the new life, I suppose because it is too
favourite an emblem of death. At funerals
Lotus flowers of gold and silver paper are
carried, and real flowers, if obtainable, are set
in the bamboo flower-holders on the graves.
At the Bon, the ' Festival of the Dead,' the food

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 223

for the returning spirits is set out on Lotus
leaves. Even the sacred mountain, Fuji, is
hkened to the Lotus, and is called Fugo Ho,
meaning ' Lotus Peak,' and truly may it be said
to resemble the flower, deep rose at the base,
pale rose where the morning sun paints its top
with a concealed and secret heart of fire. In an
old Buddhist Sutra we hear of a pond in Paradise
" where the Lotus flowers large as a carriage
wheel grow ; the green flowers shine in green
light, the yellow flowers in yellow light, red
flowers in red light, and the white flowers are
supreme in beauty and odour." In a Buddhist
temple in Kyoto may still be seen an old piece
of tapestry, with the figure of Buddha exquisitely
embroidered in silk which has been drawn from
the stem of his flower, the Lotus. It was done,
they say, by the beautiful and devout poetess,
Princess Hase. Again, it is the dream of lovers
to sit some day together on the ' Lotus Throne ' —
so says Miss Du Cane ; in other words, to die
together, that is, to commit suicide ! She also
tells a story from Chinese literature of the
extravagant Lord Tokonko, of the Sei province,
which I have not met with elsewhere. This
nobleman had a mistress named Han Hi, a
singularly lovely girl. One day he made Lotus
petals of pure gold and scattered them in his
garden for her to walk upon, in order that he
might compare their beauty with hers. He
found them well matched. For even to this

224 JAPANESE GARDENS

day the swaying, gliding walk of a graceful
woman is likened to the balanced, rhythmic
poise of the Lotus on its stalk.

Another plant which, like the Lotus, is
associated with religious ideas is the Hemp.
As the ' most precious of the productions of the
soil ' it was, in old days, presented as an offering
to the gods in the Shinto temples, and it was
also used in the ceremony of purification. In
modern times paper has taken the place of the
precious material, and so the idea of the ceremony
is lost. Again, the priests, in offering gifts to
the gods at the altar, tied up their long cere-
monial sleeves with hempen cords, or the fibre
of a creeping plant. Nowadays the serving-
maids fasten back their sleeves with ribbons in
the same way, and the act, now one for con-
venience only, has lost its former standing as a
token of service and devotion.

The Plum blossom {Ume no hana) is mascu-
line, but it typifies spiritual strength and beauty.
If w^e translate this into courage, it sounds like
a m.ore manly characteristic. Of all the flowers
of this flowery land it is the one most often
referred to in poetry, one might well say the
best loved. With its delicate petals, white as
snowflakes, rosy as a child's cheeks, deep red as a
woman's mouth, it seemed the last flower to place
as the foremost of the ' Four Floral Gentlemen,'
to liken to the sturdy qualities of a man, but
as I looked longer I saw the subtle comparison.

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 225

First flower of the year, braving the bleak winds,
and even the snow, as early as January, what
more courageous ? And with trunk and branches
hoary and grey (pure silver in the sunlight), and
every year the returning bloom — a true type of
Japan, with the new hopes and promise on the
old rugged stock. The people who venerate
age love the Plum for its beauty of crooked
bough and ancient trunk, as much as for the
frail promise of spring in its bloom ; and I, who
am half a Japanese in this, can sympathize with
those who nip off the buds, so that the exquisite
lines of stem and branch may not be lost with
overweight of fragrant flowers.

It is a tragedy when the petals begin to fall.
*' Alas, that spring should vanish with the Rose."
There is a story told of a famous poet and courtier
of the Fujiwara family, named Saigyo, who, in
driving away a bird that with its fluttering wings
was scattering the Plum blossoms, killed it.
When he reached home his wife told him that
she had dreamed that she was changed into a
bird, and that he had struck her. It made such
an impression on his mind that he retired from
Court, and from attendance on the Emperor, and
became a monk.

I love the soldier who, the good Rein tells
us, — Kajiwara Genda Kagesugi was his fine,
big-mouthed name, — went into battle in the
fierce days of the twelfth century with fresh
branches of Ume in his quiver, and I do not
15

226 JAPANESE GARDENS

believe for an instant, as the Japanese do, that
it was from them alone that he gained his splendid
courage. The soldier who carries a flower into
a fight carries already in his heart that which
cannot be defeated — faith in his cause, and high
resolve ; better than a thousand scapularies
and charms — the noble faith that, centuries later,
defeated Holy Russia.

Another man, a sage, Sugawara-no-Michizana,
whose memory is haloed in Plum blossoms, does
not thrill me as Kajiwara does, but his name
inspires the Japanese schoolboy even more, I
fancy ; for the twenty-fifth of every month is a
holiday in his honour, and on that date in June
a great festival is celebrated each year. I
cannot quite see his greatness, except through
martyrdom, which is an unhappy fruit of virtue
that does not appeal to me. This man had been
a Minister to the Emperor, and, losing the
fickle favour of princes, he was banished, and
died. Every one felt sorry, and he was canonized
as a saint, and given the name of Tenjin, or
' Heavenly God.' A play has been written
about him,^ and every year verses composed
in his honour and praise hang, like Orlando's
to Rosalind, from the twigs of Plum trees all
over the country.

Another story of the Plum is of the daughter
of the poet Kino Tsurayuki, whose best-loved
tree was the one chosen to replace that of the

* Sugawara Tenjin Ki.

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 227

Emperor Mura Kami at the palace at Nara,
which had died. The fair lady was loath to part
with her treasure, so, with a fine eye for effect,
wrote a tanka and attached it to the tree when
it was taken away. The Emperor was, of course,
so struck with the verses that he sent the tree
back to her. Here are the verses, as translated
by Captain Brinckley : —

"Claimed for our Sovereign's use.
Blossoms I've loved so long,
Can I in duty fail ?
But for the nightingale,
Seeking her home of song,
How shall I find excuse ? "

The petals from a branch of Plum sometimes
fill the role of the Marguerite with Japanese
girls. Three is the magic number which will
bring good luck, if the petals are properly
arranged, and if the number is repeated often
enough.

The Cherry blossom signifies bodily or sensu-
ous beauty, or, if the man who tells you is very
patriotic, — for this may well be called the national
flower of Japan, — beauty in the abstract. It
does for them all. About it, also, there are
pretty legends — the wonder is that there are
not more, for, like a lovely, alluring woman,
the Cherry blossom would seem born for ad-
venture and story. It is, with the Plum, the

228 JAPANESE GARDENS

most lavishly sung of by the poets. There is
a certain fitness, too (for Wine, Women, and
Song have from time immemorial been cata-
logued together), that when viewing Cherry
blossoms sake is the prescribed drink. This
custom has been in vogue since the fifth century
of our era ; up to that time the Cherry blossom
does not seem to have made any special appeal.
The Emperor Rikiu, banqueting in a pleasure
boat with courtiers and song on a lake in one
of the Royal pleasure grounds, like King
Cophetua saw the beautiful beggar maid, the
Cherry Blossom, and declared her fair. She had
attracted his attention by falling into his cup
of sake. " Without wine, who can properly
enjoy the sight of the Cherry blossoms ? " he
cried. I could improve on this story by putting
a more gallant speech into the mouth of the
monarch, but history would not bear me out,
so I refrain. I should like to be able to say
that from that incident dated the rosy blossom's
royalty, but, as a matter of fact, it was not
proclaimed the national flower until three
slow centuries had passed. However, it has
been since then a bloom favoured by
Royalty as well as by poets (often they are
one and the same, in Japan) ; and to an
Imperial lover, the Emperor Shomu, is due the
credit of planting the first trees near the palace
at Nara. He had seen the rustic beauty while
hunting on Mount Mikasa, in Yamato, and

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 229

sent some of the flushed and lovely boughs,
with verses in their praise, to his consort.
Jealousy is hardly an attribute of Japanese
wives, so a harem of the young trees was set
out close to the palace, and the practice is
now general throughout the country : priest
and peasant, as well as prince, have groves of
them, or at the least single trees, near their
dwellings.

Another exalted admirer of the Cherry was
the Shogun Yoshimune, who is said to have
planted ten thousand of the trees along the
banks of the Tamagawa (which is the main
water-supply of the great city of Tokio), in
order, so the charming story has it, that the
purity of the flowers should also keep the water
pure !

Of one of the famous Fujiwara family in
the twelfth century, who so dearly loved the
flowers that he was nicknamed 'Sakura Machi,'
and who had planted over a hundred trees
near his house, the story is told that, miserable
at their short-lived beauty, he prayed to the
god Taisan-fu-kuu to let them last longer. His
prayer was answered, and for three even weeks
the ruddy glory lingered.

But loved as the Cherry blossoms are by
Emperor and artist, by poet and plain man
alike, this is not for their sensuous beauty
alone, not for their suggestion of an almost
human claim to flesh and blood, their yet

230 JAPANESE GARDENS

nearer touch to divinity in the perfection of
delicate and ethereal grace ; they stand for an
idea, they represent a symbol. As the Plum
speaks of the still beating heart of old Japan,
so the Cherry typifies the old and ever-new
spirit of Chivalry (BiLshido), the knightly ideal
— the ideal of Japan.

"Among flowers the Cherry,
Among men the Samurai/'

and —

" It is a Cherry blossom, it falls when it must,"

suggest, in the haunting, elusive way of the
Japanese, the courage and faith of Japan.

CHAPTER XVI

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS— (ll)

" Herbs and trees, stones and rocks, shall all enter into Nirvana."

Buddhist Proverb

THE Peach (Momo) has neither the popu-
larity with the masses nor the high
regard of the select few that the Plum
and Cherry blossoms have. It is the favourite
flower of the little girls' festival, early in March,
of which more elsewhere. Hideyoshi's palace
on Momo Yama (Peach Mountain), the most
beautiful of any of the many beautiful palaces
he built, was set about with Peach orchards,
and how glad must have been the old warrior's
heart in the spring !

A favourite story of the Peach is that of
Momotaro, a kind of Far Eastern version of
Tom Thumb. An old woman (it always seems
to be an old woman in these legends) was wash-
ing clothes on the bank of a stream, when she
saw a magnificent Peach come floating along,
which she charmed to the bank with a song.
It was so unusually fine that she stopped
her work and hurried home to take it to her

282 JAPANESE GARDENS

old husband, who was away at his work. So
she had to wait for his return, and then, when
they had sufficiently admired the fruit, they
prepared to eat it; but before they had time
to cut it open it broke in two, and a tiny child
stepped out of the middle of it, and informed
them that the gods had sent him to be the son
of their old age. The child grew up to years
of discretion and developed into a model son ;
but at the age of fifteen he asked permission
to go away on a long journey for the purpose
of fighting and conquering a band of devils
who had their stronghold on an island to the
north-east of Japan. After some conversation
the old man gave his consent, and Momotaro
started off on his perilous journey. On his
way he collected a little band of followers, a
somewhat heterogeneous lot, consisting of a
Dog, a Monkey, and a Pheasant, with whose
assistance eventually he subdued and exter-
minated the demons, and returned in triumph
loaded with treasure. He brought also with
him two lovely damsels, daughters of daimios,
whom he had released from the clutches of
the devil chief ; and him too he brought as a
prisoner.

Although the Peach is a fast-growing tree
— Momo means a hundred as well as a peach,
and is the emblem of longevity — it is an appro-
priate gift for a girl or a woman. This notion
must, I think, have come from China, where the

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 233

ruddy blossoms or the carmine buds of the
Peach are an invariable accompaniment of
the China - New - Year (usually occurring in
February), and where the blossoms are much
prized. There is a tale of a certain miraculous
being, named Seibo, a ruler in Western China,
who sent some of the fruit to the Emperor
Butei. This variety, he told him, bore fruit
only once in three thousand years, and if he
would eat them he would live for ever. Evi-
dently Butei died before he had time (or
inclination?) to eat the Peaches, for we
do not hear of him to-day, and no Chinese
Peach which one sees in our times would
inspire one with even the wish for eternal
life.

Another pretty fairy story is that of the Old
Man who made the Trees to Blossom. A poor
old man had a dog of which he was very fond,
and his affection was reciprocated. Living next
door was another old man, of a cruel, avaricious,
evil disposition, who lost no opportunity of
beating and otherwise ill-using the dog whenever
he got a chance. One day the owner of the
dog heard him barking loudly in the field at the
back of the house, and went out to see what
was the matter. He found the dog digging
furiously under a Yenoki tree, and, getting a
spade, immediately began to assist him. After
digging for some time, he found a very large
heap of gold and silver coins, which he and his

234 JAPANESE GARDENS

wife carried home with great glee, for they were
now rich. The neighbour, who in the mean-
while had seen everything through the hedge,
became very envious, for, as he said to himself,
why should not he also find a treasure ? So he
borrowed the dog and went into his field, where
he too had a Yenoki tree, and made the dog
begin digging there. But when he got his
spade and dug deeper he could find nothing but
dirt. Furious at his disappointment he killed
the dog and buried him in the hole he had dug.
\'\Tien the dog's master heard of this he was
very sad, and asked his neighbour to give him
the tree under which the dog was buried, which
was agreed to ; whereupon he cut it down and
made a rice mortar of a part of the trunk. This
mortar turned out to have miraculous properties,
for it not only pounded the rice itself, but
multiplied it, and made it into cakes which
lasted indefinitely. The neighbour then borrowed
the mortar, but was not able to profit by it, as
it changed the rice into dirt ; so he burnt it.
Then our old man begged for the ashes of the
mortar, which were given him ; and, accidentally
spilling some of them on a withered Peach tree,
he saw to his astonishment that the tree instantly
blossomed. The fame of this spread all round
the country-side, and he was summoned to the
palace of the daimio, who had many withered
Peach trees, which our friend made to blossom ;
at which the daimio was so delighted that he

■|gwiMwiMwwwrMffiHiMHWBgiiirfiMwriTrT°'"-'""~~«*"

r'hON;

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 235

raised the old man to great honour and riches,
while the cruel neighbour was cast into prison,
whence he never emerged.

The Paeony is another flower more admired
in China than in Japan. The reason for this, if
one regards the characteristics of the two races,
is not far to seek. China is all for the rich
outside, Japan for the delicate heart of things.
China is magnificent, flamboyant, in her tastes ;
Japan's are refined, subdued, fair without show,
the most perfect in the world. The splendid and
gorgeous reds and pinks and crimsons of the
Azaleas and Pgeonies are all very well for savages
like the Chinese and myself ; the Japanese will
revel in the pearly half-tints, the mauves and dove
colours of their Irises and Wistarias, the pale
rosy clouds of their masses of Plum and Cherry.

The Paeony is called ' the rich man's flower.'
It is difficult and expensive of cultivation, even
in the hands of an expert Chinese gardener, as
I have found to my cost ; and so ungraciously
does it reward patience and care in its growing
in Japan that it is ranked with the favours of
princes. It is associated with lions and peacocks
(both imported emblems) in the decoration of
temples and palaces. It is, perhaps because
of its fickleness, likened to a woman — and not to
too good a woman either, for in their heart of
hearts I am sure the Japanese regard her as a

236 JAPANESE GARDENS

painted Jezebel. Most of the stories in its
praise come from China. The prettiest is that
of Yo Ki Hi, the favoured concubine of the
Emperor Genso, who touched with her red-
stained finger-tips the Pseony petals, and (in
shame, or rivalry, or delight, the story tells not)
they turned crimson.

But Paeonies have also a ghostly association,
in this case not so much in China as in Japan.
The lanterns at the Bon (the ' Festival of All
Souls' Day ') are decorated with that seemingly
incompatible, big, bouncing flower. Lafcadio
Hearn retells, in his inimitable way, the tale of
a ghost play that is given at this season, which I
must condense, but cannot omit.

O Tsuyu, a beautiful girl, was in love with
Shinzaburo Ogihara, a samurai, and died of
love for him, being accompanied to the land of
the spirits by her faithful maid, O Yone. Ogi-
hara was ignorant of their death. One evening
he saw two young women passing the gate of
his house, with Paeony lanterns in their hands,
and he asked them in. These were the ghosts
of the two girls. Every evening for a week
they came to the house to pass the night there,
leaving very early in the morning before it was
light. Then Ogihara was told that they were
not living beings but ghosts, and he appealed
to a priest for a charm against ghosts, which he
hung up at the door, and for some time it
effectually kept them out. But one night he

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 237

forgot to hang up the charm, and he was found
dead in his bed in the morning.

Another Paeony story, which Miss Du Cane
gives, comes from China :

Kosei was a young scholar who Hved in
Kaseikyu, a place famous for its Paeonies. One
morning on looking out of his window he saw a
beautiful young lady, dressed in white, standing
among the Pseonies, which were then in bloom.
He saw her there every day, and fell in love with
her. Then she appeared to him in a dream,
and they promised to love each other ; and they
thus met every day. At last she told him that
she had to go away ; and the next morning he
found that all the Paeonies had disappeared, and
he saw her no more for a long time. But at
last she appeared to him again, and told him
that she was the spirit of the Paeony. While
the flower was in bloom she was a living spirit,
but after the flower was dead she was only the
ghost. She also told him to be careful to water
the roots of the old Paeonies every day, and the
following morning he found that new shoots
were springing up from these old roots.

The Azalea, for some inscrutable reason,
seems to have few superstitions or stories
connected with it. I was told in Hong-Kong
that the Chinese regarded the scarlet flower at
least as unlucky, and that its introduction into
the house would be followed by a death. This
was then contradicted, and the horrid idea

238 JAPANESE GARDENS

accredited to Japan. But there too it was
vehemently denied ; and, if any such behef in its
powers of misfortune exists, our servant must be
very careless for us, in running us into danger,
for my entire house in Hong-Kong is decorated
for six weeks in the early spring with rosy
Azalea branches, brought in from the hill-side
by our Chinese gardener. Moreover, in Japan
my little Japanese maid kept fresh red and pink
Azaleas in my room, and, still more to the point,
in my children's day nursery, as long as they
lasted. The white Azalea, they told me, was
the returned soul of a woman who had died of
love, and a wicked friend asked if the yellow
flower was the soul of a Chinaman who had not.
Of other ill omens about flowers I may say
here that the alleged aversion of the Japanese
to the so-called ' Death Lily ' (the Nerine)
is greatly exaggerated. One reads constantly
that it is never seen in the peasants' houses, or
anywhere except, disregarded, at the edges of
rice-fields. I can state emphatically that I
have frequently seen it in bamboo vases in the
niche of small shopkeepers' houses ; I have seen
the children gathering great bunches of the
blood-red blooms; and I have been given nose-
gays of the fatal flower by good old country-
folk who, if they had had so baleful a superstition
about it, would be the last to offer me such a
gift. I do not imagine, however, that they care
particularly themselves for these Lilies. Red,

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 239

except in the autumn Maples, when the bright,
glowing sun seems to call for gaiety and brilliant
colours, does not seem to appeal to them. The
Nerine (Lycoris radiata) blooms at the time of the
September rains, and the name 'Equinox Flower,'
as it is often called, is really, I believe, the only
suggestion of bad omen there is about it. In
the same way a red Camellia, Mr. Chamberlain
points out, is regarded by the Japanese as
suggestive of a decapitated head, and I can
understand it (though he says he cannot),
becauvse the heavy, hard, round bloom drops or
breaks off in such a horrid sudden manner from
the neck ! Yet the glossy leaves of the same
handsome tree decorate more than half the way-
side shrines all over Japan — a poor compliment,
if they really disliked it as much as such a belief,
in so refined and aesthetic a people, would imply.
The Iris — the Undine of plants — is never
contented without water, and she is happiest
when she can stand ankle-deep in it, not stirring
on her slender stalk, so that she may use the
smooth surface of the pool as a mirror. The
Iris and the Wistaria are both suggestive of the
feminine qualities, but the latter has the more
clinging grace, while the former, like a Quakeress,
has more shyness and modesty. But the Iris — or
rather the Shobu or Sweet Flag so often mistaken
for the Iris — is a healer too, and her very presence
is supposed to ward off disease. On the fifth
of May, the ' Festival of the Boys,' its sword-

240 JAPANESE GARDENS

like leaves bound in sheaves are hung ;from
the eaves of all the houses, are put to perfume
all the baths, and are even steeped as tea or
drunk in sake. One of the ceremonies of
Purification used formerly to consist of waving
ferns and rushes (and are not Shobu leaves im-
plied ?) over the person to be purified, and later
these were flung into the water.^ In more
recent times, first linen and then sheets of
paper, called unsa (really gohei), were substi-
tuted. I cannot find any reason for this ; the
fact is recorded by several writers without
comment, so I must be my own authority
for explaining it. Cleanliness is ever next to
godliness, and often ahead of it, in Japan.
The fragrance of the Shobu makes cleanliness
a joy, and therefore a rite on the day when
the plants have first begun to appear. The
medicinal efficacy of the root of the plant
those persons may know who remember the
' Sweet Flag Root ' of their childhood. What
wet feet we got hunting for it ! How nasty
it tasted, nibbled raw ! And what fabulous
prices, the farmers' children told us, the ' Shakers '
who made ' medicine from the Yarbs ' would
give for it ! Poor, graceful plants, sacrificed
to make a spring tonic !

I like better to think that the pretty
feminine things have given up their lives in

* See Mr. Percival Lowell's Occult Japan for an account of the
full ceremonial.

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 241

the cause of beauty — made into powder, to
take the shine off a dainty lady's cheek, or to
dry the dimpled, rosy skin of a baby. They
say that, in the old days, in order to save their
Shobu roots, and thus their fragrant powder,
when the order went out that every available
inch of land was to be planted in rice, the Irises
were set on the house roofs. From this exalted
position they have not to this day been banished,
although now poor indeed is the house which has
not Iris plants in its garden as well.

All sorts of delicate compliments and poetic
congratulations are conveyed to friends by
these latter flowers, but the colour should be
considered carefully, and on no account must
the most lovely of mauves or purples be sent
on the occasion of a marriage, as that is a
fickle colour, and would presage change. A
girl may not even meet her betrothed for the
first time in a kimono of a soft violet shade,
nor wear an obi of purple brocade then, and
how a foreign lover's offering of violets would
be regarded by her I cannot say.

Shobu leaves are religiously significant, too,
and are used in Shinto rites of Purification ;
while, waved in the air and thrashed upon the
ground, they keep away malignant spirits.

A Japanese friend has given me a legend about
the Shobu, which originally came from China.
Once upon a time, in China, a man was chased
by a demon, and he was forced to take refuge in

i6

242 JAPANESE GARDENS

a Shobu field. To his great astonishment, the
evil spirit could not come into the field on
account of the odour of the Shobu. As this is
supposed to have happened on the fifth of May,
the custom of using Shobu, as a token of casting
out of evil spirits, was adopted on that date.

Many more quaint and charming ideas about
other plants and things there are to tell. There
is the Cassia or Cinnamon tree (Katsura), for
instance, which grows in the moon, and reddens
in the autumn with the changing leaves. The
Japanese also have a ' Herb of Forgetfulness '
(Wasurigusa), and Mr. Chamberlain has trans-
lated a pretty poem about it —

" I asked my soul where springs th' ill-omened seed
That bears the herb of dull forgetfulness ;
And answer straightway came : ' The accursed weed
Grows in the heart which has no tenderness.' "

There is the pretty coupling of the Les-
pedeza and her lover the Stag — the modest
Lespedeza, so loved by the Japanese. Then
there is the tale of the Melon Rock (Kwashi Seki),
in the Choin-in Temple at Kyoto, from which
a Melon seed sprouted, splitting the stone by
the strength of its growth ; and grew, bloomed,
and bore fruit, all in a single night.

The Persimmon, an uninteresting fruit
enough to me, in the East, although so bound
up with childish adventures in Virginia and

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 243

Arkansas, took on a new charm after I heard
the story of the Poet of the Persimmon tree.

A great warrior, called Ayabe, one day
found in his garden, standing beneath a
Persimmon tree, a child more beautiful than
anything human can be. Asked who he was
and whence he came the child replied, " I have
no father and no mother, but the moon and
the winds obey me, and poetry's my delight."
The husband and wife at once adopted the
child, and named him Hetomaro (Kakinomoto),
which means ' Persimmon tree,' and he became
in time a great poet. The guileless chronicler
concludes that the veracity of this tale is un-
impeachable, as the surname Ayabe is still borne
in that place, and a Persimmon tree grows on
the poet's grave, whose fruit is pointed and black
at the end, like a pen (ink-brush) !

In the JJtsuho Monogaiari we read of demons
cutting up an immense Kiri tree (Paulownia
imperialis),^ when a boy comes down from the
sky with a fine accompaniment of thunder and
lightning, and a dragon to ride on, and demands
part of the tree to make into lutes. He makes
thirty lutes, and sets off again with a convenient
whirlwind to carry the musical instruments
for him.

One curious belief is that only virile, healthy
young men may graft trees or plant seed. A
hundred — a thousand — graceful, pleasing ideas

^ The flower of which conventionalized forms the Imperial crest.

244 JAPANESE GARDENS

in regard to plants could be given ; Japanese
literature teems with them, for flowers are
bound up in the lives and affections of every one,
and even peasants make poems, or quote them.
Here is an example : Prince Ota Dokwan,
hunting in the mountains with his suite, was
overtaken by driving rain. He stopped at a
wayside inn to ask for the loan of one of the
straw rain-coats the Japanese wear. The girl
of whom the request was made went off, and
returned greatly embarrassed without the coat
and without an explanation, but with a Yama-
buki blossom (a kind of yellow Rose) on her
outstretched fan. The Prince was furious, and
started away in a tremendous rage, when one
of his followers interpreted the poor girl's action
by quoting the verse by which her behaviour,
a subtle apology, was prompted —

"The Yamabuki blossom has
A wealth of petals gay ;
But yetj in spite of this, alas !
I much regret to say,
No seed can it display,"

which by a play upon words really means, " The
mountain flower herself has no rain-coat."^

' " Nanae yae
Hana wa sake dome

Yamabuki no
Mi no hitotsu dani
Naka zo kanashiki."

A Hundred Verses from Old Japan
(W. N. Porter)

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 245

Again, there is a fable (in a No play) of
the Angel and the Pine Tree. An Angel (or
' Fairy,' as Mr. Chamberlain translates it)
came to a Pine forest, and, for some reason
not explained, hung her coat of feathers on one
of the Pines and left it there while she climbed
up a near-by mountain to look at Fujiyama.
This show of aesthetic taste and praiseworthy
confidence in man was hardly rewarded as it
should have been, for she got back just in
time to find a fisherman making off with the
robe.i With great politeness she begged its return,
as without her feathery garments she would
not be able to fly back to her home in the moon.
With an equal show of courtesy the fisherman
promised to restore it to her if she would first
dance for him. So, draped in her light and
beautiful dress of feathers, beneath the great
Pines on the sandy beach she pirouetted and
floated, and at last, on fairy wings, disappeared
into the evening sky.

Yet again, there is the story of the White
Rose with a Red Centre. A beautiful princess
loved the wrong man, so a Buddha turned her
lovely white body into a pure white Rose, but
her heart still beat red and warm for love of

^ I can hardly credit this story, however well vouched for. In
my many journeyings in Japan I have never yet had anything
stolen, and in long rambling or sketching expeditions in the country
we have all of us left coats, umbrellas, paints, and Japanese cushions
half-way along our route to be called for on our way back, and they
have never been disturbed.

246 JAPANESE GARDENS

the man for whose sake she suffered, and so to
this day the flower keeps its deep red heart.

Some of the ideas connected with flowers,
which are not legends, are often very charming.
The Mimosa, for instance, is called Nemu
(' The Sleeper'), as it shuts its leaves at a touch,
and slumbers at night and until late in the
spring. Maple leaves typify ' Changing Love.'
A heartless beauty of the Yoshiwara (I do not
believe that any other type of woman would
do it, for cruelty and inconstancy are not traits
of ordinary women in Japan) will sometimes
send her lover a branch of the red leaves to
signify that her affections have changed also.
Prettier is the notion that a Maple leaf, five-
fingered, delicately veined, resembles a baby's
hand, and that a girl who blushes has ' scattered
red leaves on her face.'

But there are legends, too, of the Maple, and
Imperial ones at that. The Emperor Takakora-
No-In had many of the trees which he loved
planted at Kita-No-Jin, which he called Momiji
Yama — that is, ' Mount Maple Tree.' Like many
of us others, he loved to see the carpet of scarlet,
bronze, and crimson leaves on the ground,
and, perhaps, to shuffle through them with
noisy feet, and so no gardeners were allowed to
rake up or sweep away the fair matting that the
night winds had laid down. But, alas ! some
gardener, incorrigibly neat, cleared them away —
red leaves for the burning. The Emperor, luckily

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 247

for the culprit, bethought him of the famous
hues of the poet, Ri-Tai-Ha-Ku, which go, in
Enghsh —

"We'll warm our bodies gathering maple leaves,
In turn those red boughs to the flames consign;
And then we'll warm the sake, hot and sweet.
To warm our Autumn hearts with the hot wine/'

and, naturally being pleased with his apposite-
ness, he forgave the delinquent.

There is a Maple tree reported from Matsuoora
to have blushed like a girl in the midsummer,
deliberately, to call forth the praise of the poet
Chunagou Takasuke, and to have remained green
as the Laurel ever after, having won her bays.

The Chrysanthemum (Kiku) is, in more
ways than one, an emblem of Japan. Its many
rays are like the rising sun — the Imperial flag
and the national crest of the Emperor ; ^ and
its petals are also like the spokes in the wheel
of life. But there is another reason why the
flower has been chosen as the insignia of royalty.
The wild Chrysanthemum is a straggling plant,
of long fibrous stems, and is called Kakura-no-
Hana (' Bind- weed ' or ' Binding Flower ') as the
yeUow blossoms are tied together in a bunch
at the top ; even so does the Mikado bind the
separate lives and interests of his people into

1 The national crest, or that of the Mikado as Emperor of Japan,
is the Chrysanthemum. His personal crest is that of the Paulownia
imperialis.

248 JAPANESE GARDENS

one golden head — the emblem of the sun itself.
Also it is the ' Flower of the Fom- Seasons,' as
it blooms at all times of the year, like Majesty.
And, in the case of this particular monarch, his
birthday is in the Chrysanthemum month —
November. The flower typifies also, with its
numerous petals, many years of a long life, hardi-
ness, and courage. It is one of the Sikunshi, or
' Four Floral Gentlemen,' and is the nobleman of
the group. Many are the legends that concern it.
That of the fair girl whose maud on her
kimono was, like the Emperor's, a Chrysanthe-
mum, is beautifully told by Lafcadio Hearn.
One day, she saw a handsome young samurai
passing in the street ; their eyes met ; her heart
w^ent out to him ; but he disappeared in the
throng. After that, whenever she went out she
wore that purple A:iA:w-adorned kimono, in
order that he should recognize her again if they
met, and when she was at home she wept and
prayed before it, and sighed her heart and finally
her life out, in vain longings. After her death
the beautiful robe was given as an offering to
one of the temples, and by the priests sold four
times, for each time it was returned because
the wearer had died obsessed by the image of a
handsome young knight. Then at last, at the
temple, the haunted garment was solemnly set
on fire. At the invocation {Munu myo ho renge
Kyo) great sparks flew up that set fire to the
temple, and, at last, to all Tokio.

GARDEN FOLK-LORE AND LEGENDS 249

The Chrysanthemum is supposed to make a
fairy wine that is a drink of forgetfulness, which
is the foundation of the Far Eastern version of
Rip Van Winkle. Mr. Chamberlain tells it as
follows ^ : —

" There is an old Chinese story of a peasant
who, following up the banks of a stream, bordered
with flowering Chrysanthemums, arrived at the
mountain home of the elves and fairies. After
spending a few hours feasting with them, and
watching them play at checkers, he set out on
his homeward route, but found, to his amaze-
ment, on reaching the spot whence he had set
out, that more than seven hundred years had
elapsed and that the village was now peopled
by his own remote posterity."

Another Chrysanthemum story, of the girl
O Kiku, has already been given in the chapter
on Wells, but the one I like best of all is that
of the Chrysanthemum Promise :

Samon Hase, a scholar and samurai, enter-
tained a perfect stranger to whom he offered a
night's lodging. His guest, whose name was
Soemon Akana, was suddenly taken ill in the
night, and Samon nursed him until he was well
again, the two becoming fast friends and sworn
brothers. Soemon had to go back to his home

1 He has also translated it into verse — from that rare thing in
Japanese literature a long poem on the subject.

250 JAPANESE GARDENS

on business, but swore to return and pass the
remainder of his days with his new brother,
indicating the time of the Chrysanthemum
Feast as the date of his return. The appointed
day came, but up to sunset there were no signs
of Soemon, and Samon was about to retire for
the night when he saw a curious black shadow
approaching swiftly under the moon. This was
Soemon, who explained that he was dead,
having killed himself, but, being under a bond
to come on that day, he had redeemed his
promise.

I like to think that this story shows the
Japanese faith in keeping their word in a truer
light than the conduct of merchants who have
dealings with foreigners might suggest. The idea
is the old knightly one that only death itself —
and sometimes not even death — can hinder a
man from keeping a promise, and, as such, the
Chrysanthemum is a true emblem of Japan.

CHAPTER XVII

FLOWER FESTIVALS

" Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we
must carry it with us, or we find it not. — Emerson

" 'Tis not the gift which marks the festival.
Nor lights nor garlands make the holiday,
The happy mind in working is at play;
Spring's herald-bird brings summer on its wing;
The heart's the happy day's best madrigal."

NO country on earth has more poetic
reasons for its hoUdays and fetes than
has Japan. If they are not dehberate
rejoicings over the perfection of some flower — as
in the case of the festivals of the Cherry, the
Chrysanthemum, the Maple — they are so adorned
by, and inextricably mixed with, the blooms of
the day they celebrate that we can hardly
distinguish between the offerings on the altar
and the decorations there.

When Japan ceased to hold to her ancient
calendar, and reckoned time no longer as China
does, but as Western nations do, part of the
meaning of these holidays disappeared. But, as
the perfume of the blooms tells the poet that he
is once more at his old home, although in the

252 JAPANESE GARDENS

darkness he cannot see the ancient Plum tree's
shape beside the door,^ so with infinite art and
patience the prescribed flowers are forced for the
earher dates, and the fragrance of the old loved
blossoms converts the new time into the familiar
season.

The festival of the New Year in Japan
really begins before the end of the old year.
According to the new calendar, this celebration
falls on December 13th, as the New Year is now
celebrated, like that of the Western nations, on
the first of January. Koto Hajime means ' The
Beginning of Things,' but it ought to mean
' getting ready for the beginning of things,'
unless the New Year is not the 'beginning,' but
the thing accomplished, finished. It is like
American College ' Commencements,' — it is the
end of school, but the beginning of all that for
which education has been fitting the student.
If there is a pother over the preparation for the
closing of the schools in America and England,
there is fuss enough over the preparation for
the New Year in Japan. Such a pounding, all
m time, as there is of rice for cakes — for the
Oriental does his whipping of eggs for his
omelette, his mashing of vegetables, and his
beating of batter for pudding in a rhythmic
cadence, as regular as that of castanettes or
negro ' bones ' — a kind of ' devil's tattoo.' It
is almost as stimulating to the mind as the

^ An idea from a well-known tanka.

FLOWER FESTIVALS 253

fragrant scents from the kitchen are to the
nostrils at a later stage of the proceedings. And
how they scour and scrub and brush ! A New
England housekeeper at her house-cleaning orgies
in the spring and autumn in Massachusetts can
hardly be so thorough. For, to begin with,
Japanese houses are so bare of adornments —
lacking furniture, carpets, curtains, antimacassars,
lamp mats, and what-nots — that the bed-rock
business of cleaning must receive more attention
even than in the mansion in Vermont. Then,
when everything has been pounded or dusted
or washed and set in the sun, and when, from
soft-toned walls to new pale-hued mats (the
fleas in the straw padding of the latter, however,
I have reason to believe, after a refreshing
beating only change quarters and hibernate in
their soft nest to bide their time till spring),
when inside and out all is fleckless and spotless
— unless it be for glints of dull gilding on the
sliding panels of the doors, — ^then the decorating
begins.!

And so shall you find that on New Year's
Eve all is ready for the great day. Around the
pillars of the gateway a straw rope (shime-
nawa) will gracefully sway — god-evoking gohei
on it. Besides the Pine tree, there already,
more cut Pine branches will be put, to bring

^ At the Koto Hajime presents of money are given the servants —
who are invariably in the beautiful patriarchal way of Japan an
integral part of the family.

254 JAPANESE GARDENS

health and strength and years to those who
dwell inside ; and golden oranges and ruddy
* mandarins ' to ensure them wealth and pros-
perity ; and perhaps a lobster, to signify the
desire for old age (' crabbed age,' as Himself
says) because of its crooked back. Other de-
corations there are, too. Bamboo sprays. Ferns
perhaps, and Laurel leaves, sometimes vivid
orange-coloured Marigolds (though this is rather
a South China custom, where the flowers are
more easily to be had at that time of year),
and, last of all, dried fruits and nuts, persimmons
and chestnuts, to ensure plenty and contentment
for the year to come.

The two Pines at the gate are the most
important, and after them the first week of the
New Year is named the Kodo Matsu (' Gate
Pines'), or Matsu no Uchi (or 'Within the Pines').
How they are placed, the male Pine on the side
of honour, the left ; the more light and delicate
female Pine on the right, has been told in the
chapter on Flower Arrangement, as also the
custom of putting Pine boughs and Plum blossoms
— or perhaps I had better say buds — on the
takenomos at the New Year. Indeed, the Plum is
as important as the Pine, and the two together
might well signify youth and old age.

During many long months have careful
gardeners been training and cultivating these
miniature Plum trees, snipping, pruning, giving
or withholding light and water, so that they may

ii!iiii!iiiiiiiii;iiiiiiii!iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!iiiiiii::ii^

OS

q:

FLOWER FESTIVALS 255

come to perfection at the allotted hour, and all
over the land the pretty, tender-blossomed
miniature trees or larger branches are bought,
to be sent or carried home as a token of the
love and goodwill of the season. I have many
fond associations with the thorny-leaved Holly,
scarlet-berried; with the bronze branches of
Mistletoe, with their milk-white fruit ; but I
like these fragile Plum blossoms almost better,
with their sentiment of renewal of life out of
the death of the Old Year ; for that is what, in
its essence, the New Year means in Japan — the
lapse of winter, the first sighing breath (almost
the agony of birth) of the spring.

The accompanying picture shows girls casting
for gold-fish, which are caught only to be put
back again uninjured — the game being to see
who can get the most. It is a favourite sport
at Atami at the season of the New Year.

Seven days after the festivities of the New
Year are ended — which, by the old way of
reckoning, had a meaning that is now almost
lost — occurs the festival of the ' Seven Herbs,'
the Nana Kusa, also called the Setsubun, ' The
Eve of the First Day of Spring.'

Red beans are an invariable accompaniment of
all ceremonial feasting in Japan, and, cooked in
many delicious ways, they make a dish at which
the most carnivorous-minded man need not sneer.
At the Koto Hajime also a stew of them is made,
mixed with potatoes, sliced fish, mushrooms,

256 JAPANESE GARDENS

and a kind of tasty root called Konuyaku ;
but at the Setsubun the very demons are scared
out of the house by the scattering of beans (full
of virtue !) about. Each member of the house-
hold, from the master down to the scullery- maid,
and not omitting the baby, must get rid of the
foul fiends that possess them, by eating beans
to a number at least greater than the years of
their age.

On the third of March is one of the prettiest
festivals of the year — that of the Dolls, the Little
Girls, and the Peach Blossoms. It is called the
Jomi no Sekku (' Little Girls' Fete '), or Hina
Matsuri (' Dolls' Festival '). The Peach blossoms
are not mentioned in the title, but the festival
would lose half its charm if they were not to be
had for its celebration, and due provision is
made by the gardeners — if the season is stingy
or backward — to ensure blooms at that time.
On every takenomo, Momo branches are put in
the ceremonial vase, and the great family of
dolls, which makes its collected appearance on
that day alone of the year, are set out in the
special alcove on five shelves covered with strips
of rich scarlet brocade. Such joy of colour there
is — the flaming blossoms of the Peach, the
gorgeous Venetian-rivalling brocade, the in-
describable beauty and richness of the costumes
of the dolls ! They are not the everyday kind,
with broken noses and entrails of hair, or stream-
ing gore of sawdust protruding from a torn

FLOWER FESTIVALS 257

side that we loved so in our youth ; nor yet the
sort, blue-eyed and prim, in pale silk frock and
bronze shoes which we kept in a cupboard,
pretending we loved it so much that we wished
to keep it from harm ; nor are they even of the
sort we buy our own little daughters in Yoko-
hama, with a stiff bowl-shaped fringe of black
hair, and dainty little kimono and obi of gaudy
silk. No, these are not common dolls — even the
little Marquise from Paris is hardly exalted
enough in rank to appear with the dolls of a
Japanese girl on her National Birthday. These
are Emperors, and eminent ancient Royalties,
magnificently clothed princesses in the ceremonial
costumes of old days. Jimmo Tenno, the first
real Emperor, may be there, and Jingo, the
Empress who was so great that she is put on
the shelf with men monarchs, and not in the
lesser place that is devoted to her own sex.
Famous generals you may see : Hideyoshi,
builder of palaces and of a nation ; court
officials in flowing robes ; princesses with long
loose hair ; samurai, with two swords ; and,
last of all, obsequious servants to wait on
the whole company. Then there may be the
five court musicians with their quaint, per-
fectly made instruments ; and even kagos for
carrying common folk, horses for samurai, and
lacquer carts, drawn by bullocks, for Royalty
to ride in.

Such a court of dolls I was shown in Kyoto
17

258 JAPANESE GARDENS

— a miniature pageant, the most wonderful
collection.^ As valuable heirlooms they are
handed down for generations in a family, and
sometimes, when a girl marries, she takes her
own set to pass on to her little girl when she
gets one. They are never broken or damaged,
it would appear, for the Japanese show few signs
of that wilful love of smashing things with which
all the rest of the world seems cursed. Even
flimsy, jerry-built toys, made for the foreign
market, if possessed by a Japanese child are
taken care of and guarded heedfully.

Of course all little girls do not own such
grand and impressive dolls as those I have
described ; these would be only for higher-class
maidens, who, by means of the puppets, are
taught the involved and elaborate ceremonial
of the Court. No disrespect is permitted towards
the doll dignitaries ; they are as if endowed with
life. A little girl who did not behave as she
ought in the Imperial presence would be in
danger of being turned into a lizard, or perhaps
a horrid writhing snake ! Court-table manners
are also taught them, with those dainty, almost

» It should be added that, while children of the nobility and
samurai class were allowed these wonderful collections of dolls,
which have been handed down to the present day, according to the
sumptuary laws established in the year a.d. 68i, by the Emperor
Temmu, the number and value of even the dolls a little girl might
receive on her birthday were strictly regulated. For instance, a
farmer assessed at lo koku of rice (which would imply an income
of £g or ;^io a year) could give his daughter only " one paper doll
or one ' mud doll ' a year," and a boy only one toy spear.

FLOWER FESTIVALS 259

priceless, little dishes of gold lacquer, old silver,
or fragile porcelain. The small maiden owner
receives grown-up as well as younger guests on
that day, and gives them tea — the thick, horrid
ceremonial sort usually — and minute cakes, with
pink sugar Peach blossoms on top.

Every little girl in the land, even if her parents
are too poor to provide dolls for her on this
festival, has a Peach blossom to sniff at and to
set up in the takenomo — a real one usually,
but at least a paper one, and that so perfectly
made that it would deceive any but the elect.
Another pink bloom adorns the glossy black
hair, and probably the dainty kimono shows
the flowers all through its graceful folds of
crepe, or its glowing colour in lining or in obi.
So the day may as well be called the ' Peach
Festival' as the 'Little Girls' Birthday' or the
'Dolls' Fete.'

March the 17th and the next six days follow-
ing are the Buddhist equinoctial festival of
Higan, most important to all those who love
gardens. On the day of the equinox the sun
is supposed to whirl round and round at sunset.
Perhaps it does, but, as the Japanese sky is
usually dark with rain at that time, one cannot
say for certain.

April the 8th is Buddha's birthday, and this,
like the Koto Hajime, is celebrated as if its
scene were New England, by cleaning houses
and systems of the supposed-to-have-been-pent-

260 JAPANESE GARDENS

up poisons and impurities of winter — a kind of
purification of the soul by means of the cleansing
of the body and of all places where both are
housed. In temple grounds, in the streets, in
private shrines, little images of the infant
Buddha are set up, as, in Catholic countries,
the figure of the Christ-Child is seen at Christmas.
But then comes the odd part : liquorice tea
in an open jar is set beside these images, and
from time to time is poured over the figure
with a ladle. This tea is bought by all and
taken home to drink, — to ' kill worms,' they say, —
and is set at the corners of the house to prevent
ants and other insects from coming in. Some-
times favourite trees in the garden get a dose
of this germicide, less to make them holy than
to ward off the creepy, crawly things that
love them not more wisely, but as well as the
owners.

In April the many feasts of Cherry-viewing
begin. Some time about the middle or third
week in the month, when the Cherry blossoms
are at the height of their beauty in Tokio, the
Emperor's far-famed garden-party to view the
flowers is held.^ This is the show affair of the
year. All the Court are there, the Emperor
and royal princes dignified in spite of their
foreign frock-coats or uniforms aglitter with

* This festival was inaugurated in the ninth century (of our era) by
the Emperor Sago. It still occurs annually — of late years in the
garden of the old summer palace of the Shoguns, Shiva Kikyu.

FLOWER FESTIVALS 261

gold lace, which assort so ill with the freshness
of the Cherry trees in bloom.

Yes, they are imposing, it is true, for dignity
is the stuff that is in a man, not on him ; but
as much cannot be said for many of the Japanese
nobility and gentry, who are forced, by Imperial
Edict if not by inclination, to ape the foreigner
in the most hideous garb known to civilized
man (I do not even exclude that of the Korean)
— the silk hat, frock-coat, and striped tubular
trousers of the Western world — in place of the
beautiful, low-toned, heavy silks, of the graceful,
yet imposing, ceremonial garb of their own land ;
while on feet accustomed to the foot-freedom
of spotless white tabi, and geta of the most
exquisitely wrought bamboo, are forced stiff,
ugly, and unyielding patent leather boots.

And the ladies — the dear, demure little ladies —
are cheapened, vulgarized almost beyond recog-
nition, by the adoption of stays, of frilled and
furbelowed dresses from Vienna or Paris,
instead of the subdued richness of their own
graciously revealing lines of kimono and obi !
Big hats and feathers conceal the glossy black
hair and pretty coiffure of the old days, and the
whole outrageous garb turns them from sweet
and charming Japanese ladies into objects of
only slightly superior Eurasian aspect* Japanese
men often look extremely well in foreign dress,
but the women almost never do.

All this, at the most poetic of outdoor fetes.

262 JAPANESE GARDENS

is truly heart-rending. Trousers and ham sand-
wiches take away all the poetry of the poetically
inspired festival ; wooden fences keep the hoi
polloi from the enclosure of Royalty ; champagne
and claret cup are served in place of the pre-
scribed sake ; and, instead of writing verses
to hang on the grey, rose-clouded branches,
a crowd of tired, blas6 foreigners, " who have
not spent a year in Japan," and of Japanese —
yearning for the comfort of kimonos — wander
dejectedly about, wondering if it will be over
in time to catch the five o'clock train back to
Yokohama.

How different if the Feast of the Cherry-
viewing is confined to their own people, done
in their own way ! — the whole nation out for
the day (and no ' benk 'olidi ' sort, either)
and en fete, the flowers divinely beautiful.
Then all Japan is half child and half poet, as
always at heart — only on this day they let
themselves go. Wherever the trees are (and
where are they not ?) there are crowds of
happy, but not boisterously happy, people in
holiday attire, walking about and gazing at
the blossoming trees, — for in this land there are
no warnings to ' keep off the grass.' There is
but little grass, to be sure, but it is not that
that makes the difference. There are brightly
draped little booths, erected near all the finest
view-places, where tea and sake and little cakes,
stamped or iced in the image of the festal bloom,

FLOWER FESTIVALS 263

can be had ; and there are sprays of the blooms
for sale — real ones that seem artificial, they
are so perfect, and artificial ones that seem
real, for the same reason ; and toys, and little
lanterns, all reminiscent of the Cherry flower.
And still are verses in praise of the blossoms
hung on the boughs in the old-time way,
written by anyone — the man in the street, per-
haps.

The Boys' Festival, on the fifth of May (the
Fifth Day of the Fifth Moon, as they put it),
might be called, although somewhat erroneously,
the Iris Festival, for they are plants sacred to
that day and the boy. The Shobu {Acorus
spuriuSy or Sweet Flag) is so often confused with
the Kakitsubata {Iris Icevigata), that even well-
informed people think them the same plant.
The Iris is a water plant, the Sweet Flag, or
Shobu, a land one, but they seem to appear near
each other wherever they grow. Both plants
have long, pointed leaves, which suggest the
blade of a sword, the boys' chosen weapon, and
is the insignia of these would-be samurai. The
Iris, however, can hardly be called fragrant,
while the Sweet Flag is, I believe, the source of
Orris root, and is as delicately sweet as Violets.
On that day, as I have told in the chapter on
Folk-Lore and Legends, Shobu are put in all the
baths, are steeped and drunk in tea and sake^
and are tied in sheaves from the roofs of houses.
In old days the boys wore wreaths of Shobu stems,

264 JAPANESE GARDENS

where now the German military cap is seen.
They made ropes of the twisted, long, tough-
fibred leaves, and used them to skip and dance
with; and w^ove them into flags, to beat the
ground with, to scare aw^ay goblins and demons
and all prowling evil spirits from their festival.

The fish is also the boys' emblem, and what
glorious fish they are ! — great painted cloth or
waxed paper things, streaming out from the
tops of high bamboo poles. I shall never
forget Nagasaki, with its waving forest of
brilliant fish flags plunging and bellying in
the breeze, and the boys marching like soldiers,
with all their martial spirit aroused, and all
their play-soldier games and decorations brought
out. I love boys anywhere, — unless they are
too good, and this they certainly are not in
Japan, — scamps and rascals all, bright-eyed and
impudent, yet polite, eager, impetuous, warlike,
and surely the carp which can fight its way
upstream is a fit symbol for them.

There are several festivals connected with
Rice, — at its planting, at various stages of its
growth, and at the time of its harvest, — and
these are celebrated every year by the peasant
and farmer people all over Japan. Never
before the year 1910 has any one of these
occasions been observed outside Japan, but
at the Anglo-Japanese Exhibition at Shepherd's
Bush, on the 28th August of that year, the
festival of the Rice Harvest was celebrated,

FLOWER FESTIVALS 265

and offerings to the goddess Annomozi-Inazi
were niade.^

The festival of the Bon, or ' Feast of
Lanterns,' which occurs from the 13th to 16th
of August, is the ' All Souls' Day ' of Japan, To
this the Paeony, though it is not then in bloom,
— so that one might consider it as but the ghost
of a Pseony, — is dedicated. It is curious that
this lusty, buxom, flaunting flower should, on
every lantern, every lighted float and illumin-
ated shrine, be the one chosen to typify the
dead, or the returned soul of the dead. Of
course the Lotus also is there, for this is a
Buddhist as well as a Shinto Holy Day, and
the spirit food is set out in Buddhist fashion
on Lotus leaves. Models of spirit horses and
oxen are also supplied — images made of straw,
or perhaps of vegetables. A cucumber with
four pegs stuck in it simulates a horse ; an egg-
plant, with wooden or bamboo legs, is the
usual type of an ox. White lanterns are lit
at the grave itself, coloured ones at the gate-
ways of houses, to illuminate the coming and
going of the visiting dead. A ghost can find
its way back to its own home and haunts by

1 There is a goddess also of the Rice Pot — O-Kama-Sama — wor-
shipped in the kitchen. It should be remarked that the local gods
are those usually invoked in these Shinto rites, and that they differ
in name and character in different places. Lafcadio Hearn, in
Japan, an Interpretation, says : " It is not to the Buddhas that
the farmer prays for bountiful harvests, or for rain in time of drought ;
it is not to the Buddhas that thanks are rendered for a plentiful
rice-crop ; but to the local god."

266 JAPANEvSE GARDENS

means of the Pseony which decorates the lantern
set out to welcome its return.

I have seen the festival of the Bon a
number of times, but never in so perfect a
way as I did a year ago at Hakone. We had
travelled from Yokohama in burning heat on the
16th of August, and had had an interminable
ride, on rough-gaited Japanese horses, up the
pass from Yumoto. past Miyanoshita, to our
village beside the lake. We had been on the
go all day, and I was so tired that I could
hardly sit up in the saddle; while the poor
horses, after ten or twelve miles of rough,
uphill work, stumbled along dully. It was
pitch dark at the top of the mountain pass
when we began to descend, and just then —
when we first caught sight of the lake — a fairy
pageant passed before our eyes. A fleet of
tiny, sparkling lights — for it seemed as if each
one sent out the prescribed number of a
hundred and eight welcoming fires — set in
spirit ships (shoryobune) swept in a long line
across the lake. Faintly, weirdly floated up-
wards the sound of music — wild and curious
music, a march of the dead — from a lighted
boat that followed. In an unbroken line the
ships of souls, launched to return the ancestor
spirits to the under world, glided out across
the dark water, lay still, and then, one by one,
the lights went out. Of all the hundreds,
three, bravely burning, alone were left ; and

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FLOWER FESTIVALS 267

then the clouds swept across the desolate sky,
the mists fell, and we were left scrambling
stupidly among the rocks again, and in a land
of shadows. The vision was gone.

There are other festivals, of which I have not
space to speak — that of the Autumn Equinox;
that of the Seamstresses on the Seventh
Night of the Seventh Moon, when the Bamboo
is the votive plant, and the star Vega is adored
and invoked by all, down to the babies ; that
of the Housewives, later on in October ; and,
in November, several Shinto festivals, or
matsuri. In that month also comes the Fete
of Chrysanthemums {Kiku-no-Sekku, the ' Ninth
Day of the Ninth Moon'), when the Emperor
gives a garden-party, like in all ways to that of
the Cherry Blossoms, to view the pots of autumn
flowers. I have never had the good fortune to
see it, but my parents and sister told me that,
bar the interest attending a foreign party and
an unfamiliar crowd of people, the flowers were
no better than, if as good as, those at Chrysan-
themum shows at home.

Last of all the year, and best of all in some
ways, is the Maple - viewing, the feast of the
Maple leaves.^ Then all the world makes
holiday outdoors again for the last time ;
up and down the mountain slopes the people
go in swarms, climb rugged hill paths, descend
rocky valleys, to admire, near and afar off,

* See Frontispiece.

268 JAPANESE GARDENS

the glory of the dying Maples. Hot sake
warms their blood, and the blazing leaves their
hearts. Our artist told me that he nearly
froze to death while painting the Maples, but
I can scarce believe it when I see the glowing
pictures ; it seems as though one could almost
warm one's stiff and aching fingers at the open
fire of the trees.

This is, after all, but a bald statement of
the festivals of Japan, because the day hardly
passes in which is not celebrated somewhere or
in some way the gracious gifts of Nature, or
in which the invisible and benign gods, who
exist for the Japanese in every manifestation
of life, are not invoked by rites of sacrifice,
or worshipped in some outward act of rejoicing.
These people have been taught since the earliest
recorded era to hold constant communion with
the unseen forces of Nature. Ideas which
are strange and novel to us are commonplaces
— if such things can ever be that — to them.
Everything visible and material has its unseen
spirit ; no humblest tool, no agricultural pursuit,
no trade, no profession, but is sanctified by the
thought of a guardian deity being a part of it.
No house or temple is built, according to their
strict laws, without prayers and a calling down
of a ghostly blessing upon every part of it, to
the very beams and the plaster. The mason's
trowel, the carpenter's saw, the artist's brushes,
the writer's pens — and above all his unblemished

FLOWER FESTIVALS 269

paper — are dedicated. Nothing is too humble,
too lowly in its own sphere of usefulness, to
be without its patron saint. The broom, by
this, becomes a symbol ; the very cooking
utensils are altar vessels ; and the glowing coals
of the hibachi, sacred fire.

Lafcadio Hearn tells us in regard to customs
of old days — still observed in the remoter
country places — that

"Gardens, too, were holy, and there were
rules to be observed in their management,
lest offence be given to the gods of trees and
flowers. . . . The trees were haunted and holy ;
even the rocks were endowed with conscious
life."

With this constant, almost daily, ceremonial
and rejoicing over the outward forms of Nature
to its inmost spirits, it may easily be seen that
the fetes and matsuri I have mentioned but
brush the fringe of the subject.

Attention, too, in Japan, is paid to the
national holidays of other countries, more
especially in the Treaty Ports. I never saw
more beautiful fireworks or street decoration
in the United States than in Yokohama on
the several Fourths of July I have spent there.
Nor was it done by the foreigners in the Settle-
ment alone, by any means. The street of
native shops — Benten Dori — was decorated

270 JAPANESE GARDENS

from end to end with exquisitely made vines
of paper Wistaria, which, in their dehcate
waving grace and colours, quite put to shame
the garish flags and gaudy streamers of the
foreign quarter.

But there the secret of the whole thing lies.
The festival is not all in noise and dangerous
play and fire-crackers. I, an American, think
that the Japanese celebrate our Independence
Day better than we ourselves do, for theirs is
a manifestation of the spirit — a kindliness and
courtesy that sympathizes with us in a patriotic
sentiment. I cannot help thinking that ours
would be more real if it too came from the
heart, and did not at every street corner encroach
on the rights of others, their feelings, and their
claims to safety.

But we can all learn something. England's
Bank Holidays and Eastern ' Race Weeks,'
Europe's ante - Lenten Carnivals and New
Year's festivities, as well as America's ' Terrible
Fourth ' and Labour Day, can take from the
Japanese, if their movers will, points on the
simple joy of celebration ; from days spent,
not in boisterous picnicking, in tedious street
parades, gambling, or unhealthy gaiety, but in
intimate communion with that which is cleanest
and most serene, sanest and sweetest in the
worl d — Nature .

CHAPTER XVIII

THE FOUR SEASONS OF FLOWERS
I. SPRING

" Spring, spring has come, while yet the landscape bears
Its fleecy burden of unmelted snow !
Now may the zephyrs gently 'gin to blow,
To melt the nightingale's sweet frozen tears.

Too lightly woven must the garments be —
Garments of mist that clothe the coming spring, —
In wild disorder, see them fluttering.
Soon as the zephyr breathes adown the lea ! "

Basil Hall Chamberlain
(From Classical Poetry of the Japanese)

OUT of the ugliness of pain beauty may
spring, — the child from the travail and
suffering of his mother; the picture
from that of the artist ; the poem, the great
book from the hardly-caught, anguish-snatched
inspiration, wrought in labour, of its author, —
and out of the storm and frost, and the painful
melting of winter, spring.

With each birth there must also be love, the
courage, the persistency of love, which faces
the torture of production, that the child of the

272 JAPANESE GARDENS

heart, of the imagination, may be born into the
world. Without love there is no miracle, with-
out suffering there can be no splendour of beauty.
The artist who creates as a hen lays an egg
attracts us no more to his work than the hen
by her frenzied cackling does to hers. And
as without love all is naught, so, without the
ardours and anguishes of the soul, is all useless.
The spring that is not wrenched painfully from
the lap of winter, the spring that follows
languidly and tamely after the heat and green-
ness of a tropic season, has lost much that makes
it dear. What we gain in ease of attainment
is forfeited in delight — the high, sharp edge that
is suffering and joy in one.

In Japan the suffering almost overbears
the joy. The spring comes and is gone again,
the bitter cold is back, the biting wind, the
sullen ache of the chill air. The swelling buds
are pinched, the frost grips them and bids them
wait ; and even when, a little kinder, he bids
them open, the winter, jealous of the white
flowers of the Plum, may send an envious snow-
storm to rival the fallen petals.

As early as January the Plum blossoms begin
to appear. First the fragile, frightened-looking
white ones; then the healthier, less wraith-like,
creamy ones ; and last of all those of pearly pink,
pure pink, and even hardy crimson. Of course
these are out of doors ; already, from New Year's
Day onward, there have been the forced blooms

THE FOUR SEASONS OF FLOWERS 273

in jars for the place of honour on the takenomo,
where the ' Three Friends of Winter ' — the Plum,
the Bamboo, and the Pine — appear together.

The Plum-blossom Viewing is, with the
Japanese people, almost a sacrament. To it is
brought none of the rather boisterous joy and
merriment of the Cherry-blossom Feast. Nor
is it wholly because of the cold, which to them
is as nothing when under the spell, the emotion,
of the hour. Huddled up in their wadded
kimonos, drinking hot tea and sake at the pretty
little booths always erected for the purpose near
the groves of trees, or rubbing numb and aching
hands over the glowing coals of a hibachi, they
care nothing for the temperature ; for the awe
of earth's awakening, the wonder and amaze-
ment of the yearly miracle, is upon them. Even
the children are touched by the sense of mystery,
it would seem, and their usual strenuous gaiety
is subdued. They look at their little brother the
Spring in hushed astonishment.

The father whose newborn child is placed in
his arms regards it with pride, with tenderness,
with yearning, and with some possible dislike, but
with wonder always. This is his child, his own,
who has drawn down into the shadow of death
the woman he loves, and for whom the woman
he loves made the sacrifice gladly and thank-
fully.

" Trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our Home."
i8

274 JAPANESE GARDENS

The halo is still about the infant brow. So the
Year holds its breath, is afraid to speak aloud,
for fear this wonderful thing, this child of its
begetting, may slip away again to the darkness
from which it came. We become less fearful
as the days go on, the times grow lusty, and awe
gives place to delight.

Spring is everywhere a well-loved time, as a
thousand poets have testified. Even in Hong-
Kong, where it comes as boldly and as flauntingly,
in autumn clothing, as an Eastern queen ;
even in Singapore and Manila, where it drags
itself in tiredly after heat ; even in the grimiest
Northern town, smoke-obscured and foul, the
young, timid grass that peers up from the rough
edges of pavements, the small, misshapen trees,
hopefully green, bring the message of youth
and gladness. But in Japan it is the most
rapturous, enchanting time, ethereally, earthily
beautiful ; of soft, misty, tender-coloured skies ;
of sudden tears and of as sudden sunlight ;
laughing, coaxing, teasing, elusive — ^joyously and
exuberantly young.

In February the Plum blooms on, and
the Camellias — small double pink ones, big
single red ones, pure waxy white ones, and
those which, they say, resemble a decapitated
head when they fall off — appear in crowds.
Indeed, the Camellia goes on pretty well
throughout the cold season — from November
to March — and might almost be called, like

THE FOUR SEASONS OF FLOWERS 275

the Chrysanthemum, ' The flower of the Four
Seasons.'

Early March sees the Plum blossom ended,
and the Peach blossom arrive — the flower dedi-
cated to girls. The hills that have had the
real snow on the ground, and the flower-snow in
the air and on the trees, have lost the white
to gain the green. The world is broad awake
now, and birds are twittering. Daphnes, pink
and white, have come, and pink Forsythias, and
the fluffy golden balls of Edgeworthia papiri-
fera, from which Japanese tough-fibred paper is
made, and a multitude of little plants the spring
brings to other lands. The Peach boughs flaunt
their fiery signals, and the Cherry blossoms are
beginning to cloud the sheltered groves of silver-
grey trees, as if rosy mists lay low upon them.
One may follow the Cherry blossoms, as I used
to do strawberries when I was a child, from South
to North, and get them at their best for many
weeks, from Nagasaki to Chuzenji, or, longer
yet, to Hakodate.

April sees the new shafts of Bamboo come up,
like fairy telescopes to look at the stars of Sakura,
the Cherry. The Columbine's elfin bugles, loved
wild flower of my youth, appears, and Cypri-
pedium, wild Lily of the Valley, and Violets
galore. And before the Sakura has vanished,
towards the last weeks of April, the tree Paeony
has begun. Like the Cherry it flowers in many
shades of pink, and even in crimson. Simul-

276 JAPANESE GARDENS

taneously, and later too, appear the forced kind
of splendid curves and colours grown in flower-
pots.

Then comes the floral month of May, when
no artist can paint fast enough — so Mr. Tyndale
says — to hope to show on his canvas one-half of
the flowers which Nature so prodigally lavishes
on the year.

Cherry blossoms are scarce fading before
Azaleas are ready to carry on the rich harmonies
of colour ; and as a passionate love motif begins
to weave itself into the end of a symphony's
movement before we get it presented in all its
full splendour of great crashing notes and full-
gathered chords in its final evolution, so the
Azaleas begin suavely in shadowy mauve blooms
before the gorgeous climax of their scarlet,
orange, crimson, and snow-white blossoms bursts
forth. Like love, again, the Azaleas linger
long, painting the hill-sides from early in May,
at Kyoto, well into August at Nikko and Chuzenji.
Oh ! the fire of the red ones, and the fragrance
of the white ones, and the beauty of them all !
Barbarian that I am, I like these flowers best,
but the subtle-minded Japanese prefers the
Wistaria, which comes as early but does not
last so long.

But is anything lovelier ? As I look back
on the bowers of pale purple blooms that I
have known, I hesitate. When I think of an
old gate, decked as if for a bridal arch, with

THE FOUR SEASONS OF FLOWERS 277

delicately fashioned, pure white blossoms, I
hesitate still more. And the exquisite bean-
blossom fragrance of them !

Never was a falser statement made than that
the flowers of Japan have no fragrance. All the
species that have perfume in other countries are
even sweeter here. Wistaria, Azalea, all the
many Lilies are rich in delicious scent, while
Plum and Cherry, wild Apple and Peach have
something more than the sweet pungent odour
they offer in other lands. Magnolias, in Kyoto,
have the mystic fragrance, half religious, half
sensual, that they have in Virginia. Woods,
banks, and hill-sides in Japan are often as heavily
sweet as Easter churches at home.

Of the last named, April's flower and May's,
Sir Francis Piggott has a pretty simile : " Mag-
nolia trees, leafless as yet, with blossoms
standing up like great candles which seem to
make the daylight linger and live longer in
the night."

In May, or April in the South, in Wistaria-
time, comes also the Pseony, the small sort,
cultivated in pots. This is one of the various
China-New- Year flowers in Hong-Kong, but
it was too flauntingly Chinese to appeal to
me very much (although its pink and white
and deep red blooms are as splendid as befits
the ' Rich Man's Flower '), until Mr. Tyndale's
poetic presentation of it (see page 234) put it in
its transformed light as a Japanese flower.

278 JAPANESE GARDENS

Irises one sees in May, and well into June.
At Hakone I know peasants' gardens where
they may be found in late July, and even in
August. Adorably, fragilely perfect things, are
not they best of all ? I remember a faultless
group of them on the banks of an ugly
little stream on the road to Kurihama, Perry's
landing-place. They were fluttering, like true
flags, in a wind which was sharp enough to
tear into rags the silk gossamer texture of
their petals, but which left them uninjured.
They were planted and tended by peasants,
but no millionaire, with a staff of highly paid
gardeners, could have had more exquisite
specimens. There were pale blue ones, delicate
as a misty April sky ; and rosy mauve ones,
like a flushing Western one ; there were Quaker-
garbed blooms, silvery grey and white ones,
thin and crinkled like almost transparent silk.
These plants must have been lovingly as well
as judiciously looked after, for Irises of such
perfection are most difficult things to grow.
With infinite affection, but, alas ! without scientific
knowledge, I have never been able to persuade
those I have had from Japan to do anything, and
even scientific growers, who have not perhaps the
necessary love for them, have been disappointed
in the same way. They are nowhere else so
beautiful as in Japan. Near Yokohama, in a
shallow valley, there is a vast field of them.
The picture facing page 194, although not

THE FOUR SEASONS OF FLOWERS 279

painted there, but nearer Kyoto, gives an idea
of them. A tiny silver ribbon of a stream
slips zigzag down among them, and doubles
the beauty of those near enough to be reflected
in it ; fluttering their silken flags, with leaves
like swords high in air, they fill the place like a
fairy army. Irises usher in the summer.

II. SUMMER

" Like strips of cloth laid down to bleach,
Snow-white in moonlight lie
The Deutzia bushes by the path
For summer's finery."

So says the poet, and his acclaimed flower is
the great white mark of June in the mountains
— the broad white stripe that distinguishes
the first-class compartment.

Spring is the favoured first-born of the year,
and has the most wealth of bloom, as his entail
from the Father Year. But summer, well-
beloved second son, has a rich inheritance also,
from his mother Nature. Even those fragrant
blossoms rightfully accruing to spring. Azaleas
and Irises, in the Northern parts and in the
mountain altitudes creep into summer's lap.
Here, in my garden in Hong-Kong, bewildered
by the heat coming before the rains, as it has
done this year, my Japanese Azaleas, snow-
white, amber, orange, and carmine, are adorning
September with flowers ; yet no bait of double

280 JAPANESE GARDENS

daily waterings could lure them out in the
fierce unusual heat of spring.

June should be as full of Irises as of rain.
Honeysuckle, coral and white, lap over from
May ; and Spiraea in varying shades, from
untinged white to nearly a crimson — so deep
is the pink froth of flower, and so red the
intricate pattern of branch and stem — are
seen all the summer, and even into the early
autumn. I sprained a shoulder gathering it,
and nearly broke my neck besides, climbing
up a slippery, friable, red hill-side after it at
Ashinoyu. Under any name I love it — its
proper botanical nomenclature, its stately lady-
name ' Veronica ' ; or as the homely ' Meadow
Sweet ' I called it as a child. Another home
flower decks this full time of the year — Clematis.
There is a big-bloomed purple kind, much like
our New England south-porch favourite, which
is called Clematis florida ; and another, the
wild sort, except for a difference in the shape
of the leaves is almost exactly the same as
that which clambers so gracefully over stone
walls and grey fences, whose starry white
blooms mingle so happily with the deep red
berries of the Choke-cherry in Massachusetts.
Its fluffy seed-vessels, which give it the ugly
name of ' Old Man's Beard,' have rather longer
filaments than at home, however.

The Bignonia blazes brightest at mid-
summer, the epitome of the summer's sunshine,

THE FOUR SEASONS OF FLOWERS 281

so yellow that it is orange, like sunset on
fairy horns of brass. Mr. Tyndale's picture
facing page 92 shows a tea-house roof, gay
with Bignonia grandiflora, sl luxuriance of
waving vine that recalled the ruins of the
Residency at Lucknow to me — for Japan's
sun in July is like India's in January. But
his picture was painted at the end of June
in Kyoto, as the season there is three weeks
earlier than in the part I know best near
Yokohama.

In June, and until late in the autumn, the
wild Hydrangeas bloom in every hedgerow.
Besides the bright blue which every one knows,
and which is so much grown in pots with us,
there is another {H. hortensia, va jajponica),
which is greenish-white in the centre, with
purple flowers like a halo around the edge.
Another (H. virens) has hard, round blue
balls in the centre, with florets at the edges of
pale blue fading to white, and even into a kind
of rusty pink. It is rather coarse, but most
effective, and in bud both are very striking
looking, for the whole flower-head appears like
a round green ' snowball.' The prettiest ones
of all are the graceful, slender- stemmed, white
Hydrangeas, which we were never tired of
gathering, although, in spite of slitting the
stems, they drooped so soon in water. These
were often varied by pink florets, and in under
the great Cryptomeria trees, on the paths near

282 JAPANESE GARDENS

Miyanoshita, I have found them of a deep
carmine.

The lovely Deutzia bells have ceased ringing
as the Hydrangeas begin to appear, but long
before the latter are finished the various Lilies
— big temple bells — have come to take the
place of the Deutzia's fairy chimes. I never
got used to those wonderful Lilies of Japan.
My heart simply stopped beating the first
time I saw, on a wild, rough hill-side above the
sea, the splendid, stately blooms, standing up
like royalty over the humbler flowers in the
grass. No, surely Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these ! And that
these kings of the plant world should appear
thus in all their rich state garments, crowned
and sceptred, without a Court to set off their
glory ! . . . I saw whole fields of our Easter or
Madonna Lilies (L. longiflorum), pure and
white, bathed in the sunshine of an August day ;
I saw hill-sides, rugged and coarse with Bamboo
grass, glorified with gold-patterned Lilium
auratum; rocky cliffs above the bay at Dzushi,
where they climbed fearlessly, but I dared
not follow; I saw the crimson-spotted Lilium
speciosum rubrurriy atilt in a scrambly waste,
unconscious of the price their blooms would
fetch in New York or London ; the orange
Day Lily (Hemerocallis fulva), on peasants'
roof-trees ; L. Krameri, pink and flawless as a
Court beauty, cuddled like a gipsy under a

THE FOUR SEASONS OF FLOWERS 283

Bamboo hedge ; Tiger Lilies, burning in a
jungle, as if they were the beast, not the blossom;
and blood-red L. elegans, like a great ruby
dropped from a crown, glowing serenely in
the ditch that drained a paddy-field. It was
always a miracle. Like every new baby, each
one was an individual, a solemn and beautiful
gift, straight from God.

That the Japanese themselves do not value
and admire Lilies is another of the fallacies so
often repeated, which no one has ever taken the
trouble to dispute. One of the first writers on
the flora of Japan made the rash statement that
her flowers had no perfume, her birds did not
sing, and — but I will not repeat the third. I
have heard it quoted and requoted ad nauseam^
and on one occasion by a friend who was walking
beside me as I carried homeward through the
woods, lyric with birds' voices, a sheaf of Lilies
almost overpoweringly sweet. So the tale goes
on that, because the Japanese love so deeply the
subtle, poet- sung blossoms of Plum, Wistaria,
Cherry, and Iris, they disdain those more obvious
beauties of their fields and hill-sides ; that they
eat the roots of their Lilium auratum ; ergo, they
cannot love or admire them. Yes, and also do
they eat the roots of the sacred Lotus and the
young shoots of Bamboo, and yet no one suggests
that these are not regarded and honoured. I
have seen peasants by the tens, and small boys
by the dozens, carrying home those same Lilies

284 JAPANESE GARDENS

carefully, to decorate their homes. And further-
more, I have seen them exalted in the sacred
niche, the honourable altar of the house, in
many, many humble homes. A fine old Japanese
gentleman at the Yokohama Nursery told me
that the Auratum Lily is cultivated for its
flowers as well as for its edible bulb ; but it is
only the bulb more or less worn out by age that
is eaten, when it is past its prime, and its
flowers are not such as it produced in earlier
years. Also it provides a bigger dish, with just
as good a flavour as that of the smaller ones.
Like the darkie saying about Hyacinth bells, the
Japanese believe that for each year there is a
new flower on the old stalk.

August is the month of Lotus flowers, as
Japan is the land of them. At dawn, on dream-
ing moat and lake, their reveille salute of opening
buds is sounded. Hardly longer than the much
loved Convolvulus blooms do they last, for a
day sees the height of their perfection of shape
and line, and then the petals fall, to show, like
the other favourite, a seed-pod of a design as
richly decorative, as gracefully shaped, as the
flower. For both these poetry-inspired plants
will the Japanese (and even some foreigners)
get up an hour before day — when the day comes
very early — to catch, at the hallowed moment of
transformation, the opening blossoms. Kofu is
famous for its Lotuses — the great Castle moat
is starred white with them, as in the picture

THE FOUR SEASONS OF FLOWERS 285

facing page 116, while in the Public Gardens
there are lovely pink- and carmine-tipped ones,
as shown facing page 212.

At this time of year, too, the flora of Fujiyama
is more than beautiful, and most prodigal.
Here we find all sorts of Alpine flowers,
prominent among which is the lovely Actcea
spicata with its raceme of white flowers, as
well as a host of Anemones.

III. AUTUMN

" Faded tlie clover now^ sere and withered the grasses ;
What dreams the matsiiiniishi m the desolate autumn fields?

Strangely sad, I thought, sounded the bell of evening ;
Haply that tone proclaimed the night in which autumn
dies !

Viewing the autumn moon, I dream of my native village.
Under the same soft light, — and the shadows about my
home." Lafcadio Hearn

On invisible feet slips the stately autumn
into summer's place. Something has come to
the air, a hint of change, some glory which
cannot be defined into the sky and the leaves.
Perhaps it has rained, and the languid, burning
heat of the day before has now a sparkle in it ;
as hot, it may be, but alive, vivid. Perhaps it
comes with a chill wind at evening, when
faithful little Matsu, sent with coats and a
lantern from the hotel to find us, is very wel-
come. Or it may be that at dawn one feels

286 JAPANESE GARDENS

too cold to get up and look at a mother-o'-pearl
Fuji, rising from and repeated in the lake,
but draws over one the heavy wadded fvion
instead.

The flowers are at first the same. Lilies
linger, the sharp little red tongues of Nerine
are not yet stuck out mockingly from the brown
earth. They await the time of the equinox,
when, like goblin fires, they may burst wickedly
from the dark soil. Campanulas, which all
through August have rung their bells as con-
stantly as church chimes I wot of in Cuba, peal
on in fairy joy into September, and even October.
Spiraea is never done fringing the roadsides, it
would seem, and Hydrangeas go on heroically,
with almost a Spartan stoicism. And there are
still Orchids, a dainty little pink one {Spiranthes
australis), which sets its tiny flowers in a spiral
around its stalks, wreathed like a maypole.
Crape Myrtle, or the Monkey Box shrub {Lager-
strcemia indica) still blooms, white and a deep
old rose, on its trim little trees ; ^ while Bignonia,
with orange trumpets, which is the true flower
of August, bugles long into September. Even
Spider Wort, whose blue is so easily extracted
that it is used for dyeing, and to symbolize
fickle love, is constant in the mountains to the
season, and has to be driven away by autumn's
chilliest looks.

* A small specimen of this may be seen in the Hakone Garden
in Chapter VI. pago 82.

THE FOUR SEASONS OF FLOWERS 287

But with that coquette's cold glances the
leaves blaze into fire — a consuming passion of
love. The Sumach and its kin, the various sorts
of Lacquer trees, are aflame first ; but beware
of breaking their glowing branches to carry home
to warm your takenomo, for the juice may poison
you, and bring out a horrid red rash. Then
creepers, one after another, are lighted up like
strings of lanterns at an evening fete. The
Virginia Creeper is the best, and wreathes the
Cryptomeria trunk with scarlet and deep crimson.
The Japanese think that this plant steals the
blood from the sacred tree, so near the ground
the stem is cut, and the vine above is left to die
out in ineffectual fire.

On sweeps September. The hills are pinky
silver with that loveliest of grasses Eulalia
japonica. Hazel bushes and Birches have taken
on a luminous pale gold, and Asters, by the
path, spell Autumn in their starry blooms.
Dozens of other Compositae have appeared,
Michaelmas Daisies, Arnica, pale blue Scabious,
wild Geranium, and tiny straggling wild Pinks,
Toad Flax, Lespedeza or Indigo dressed in
mauve and rose colour, and a Gentian, not much
unlike that which was the prize of September
in my American childhood's day. Monkshood
or Aconite, regally, superbly blue, is every-
where ; the mere naming of it is a delight,
recalling the happy hours spent in gathering
its blossoms or sketching among them in

288 JAPANESE GARDENS

the richest flower land I have ever known.^
Glorious Campions, fiery red, there may be,
too, before the Maples, with the frost, turn
the world into a pageant of colour, and make
even gay things dull by contrast. The streams
run red as blood with their fallen leaves.
The land is dressed in its rich brocade of
autumn.

The Autumn comes from the West, the
Japanese say, and on Western-sloping hills
there are the Maples set to catch the very last
gleam. All the poets have a word to tell us
about it, for next to Spring it is their favourite
theme. One says —

"Like far-ofF smoke upon the hill-side lies
The purple haze of Autumn, pale and chill :
Is it the blazing Maples, whose flame dies,
And trailing off in smoke would linger still?"

November has brought the Chrysanthemum,
and its fete day, of Emperor and common
people, but the true Autumn flowers " are the
Maple leaves, little fiery hands of babies, loved
and cherished by a nation, themselves still
delightfully, divinely, children."

1 It is the good Rein, I think, who says that only the wild flowers
of the Mississippi Valley can surpass, in variety and beauty, the flora
of Japan, but although early affection forArkansas and Missouri wild
flowers would prejudice me in their favour, I am sure Japan can boast
more (Sir Joseph Hooker bears me out in this, I see). Indeed, it must
be so, for she has almost all the American plants and trees, and those
of China, Formosa, and Manchuria as well, — temperate, tropic, even
Alpine or Arctic flowerf..

THE FOUR SEASONS OF FLOWERS 289

IV. WINTER

" Flowers blossom and then fall. The flower-like snow
Falls first and blossoms later." — Baron Takasaki

(Translated by Arthur Lloyd)

The year is not dead and shrouded with
the coming of the Winter and the snow. Late
into November the Maple's glory lasts, like a
fiery sunset, burning itself slowly out. Bass
and Birch trees, turned warm, sunny yellow,
eke out the meagre noon sunlight, too, with
their ochre and saffron leaves. Oaks, heavily
clad in russet, velvety brown, or sienna garments,
keep their warmth of colouring past December,
while the Cryptomeria trees change to such a
rich bronze that the other dark which evergreens
give the landscape is nullified. The ' Iron
Creeper ' (Kadsura japonica), which has stems
as thick and nearly as strong as steel- wire
hawsers, clings to its brownish red foliage as
long as possible. And there is plenty of green
left — Laurels, of all sorts, glossy and well-
groomed looking ; Fir trees and Junipers,
Mosses and Ivy, and the constant Bamboo.
There is real colour, too, in the winter berries :
Nandina domestical known (along with several
other plants) as the 'Holly of the Orient,' has
brilliant red fruit, like the true home sort,
but with leaves not prickly and intractable,
though glossy and decorative. Another variety
has orange balls, and is handsome, though not
19

290 JAPANESE GARDENS

so appealing. There is Mistletoe, too (so kissing
is not unknown in Japan — among foreigners,
at least) ; but it must be picked young, as
the berries, which are at first waxy white like
ours, change later to yellow, and finally to a
reddish orange. There are many other winter
berries, deep red, black, dark purple, pale
greeny white; and the brown seed -pods of
various plants are interesting and beautiful in
design and harmony of tone.

All these things, far into the winter, provide
food for the birds, glowing flecks of colour to
the shrubberies, and variety and a sense of
cheer to the bleak outlook. But I should not
use the word 'bleak,' or suggest that to me,
any more than to the Japanese, does the country
look dreary or forlorn at this season. The air
is sharp and keen, not damp and raw, as it may
be later on — ^that is, earlier in the new year.
The exquisite tracery of twigs — like the tiny
musical notes that go to make up one of the
great harmonies of Nature — are seen then at
their best. The purply gloom beneath the
trees is as satisfying as the green of summer ;
the buds, rounded and reddening, give the
world a tender charm, even at its harshest
moment of cold. Then there is time to look
at the mellow tints of cryptic markings on tree-
trunks ; at the delicate silver lichens encrusting
them, like the exquisite filigree work of Mexico ;
to learn to find the pregnant beauty of common

|»jaju4a!jMaRjiij«BBgaai»«JLJ.'JwjBi»AHaui.t^i^^

LLIAS A
TOKIO

THE FOUR SEASONS OF FLOWERS 291

everyday things, which we are so used to that
we forget to admire — as, when guests are gone,
we may look again at the home faces that are
dear to us.

With the snow there is no sense of the
shroud — rather the Western notion of bridal
finery. The poets love it ; the Court writes
verses on it ; the boys delight in it ; the common
people, pinched with cold in paper-and-wood
houses, leave their charcoal hibachi to go out
to admire it.

" 'Tis the first snow.
Just enough to bend
The Gladiolus leaves.^

'Tis the first snow,

Yet some one is indoors :

Who can it be ? "

The garden now is transformed, glorified ;
each rounded hill is sheeted, the loved shape
beneath softly covered, but discernible, as of a
woman sleeping. The stone lantern, shaped
for such a time low and fiat, crouches like a
gnome with a magic umbrella, or like a great
white mushroom in a garden of ghosts. The
little bamboo summer-house is made of marble
now, and the well-cover and gateway too are
of fairy marble, unstained by time and storm.
The Plum tree blooms, even before its early
season. Each twig and branch is weighed

1 Basho, translated by W. G. Aston

292 JAPANESE GARDENS

down as with flowers, as the Japanese say —
the Flowers of the Snow.

To one who loves them it is hard to say
when they are best, these Japanese gardens :
pearly with spring, green and cool in the heat
of summer, ardent and flaming with the exhilara-
tion of autumn, or pure and undefiled in winter
snow. Each time, each season has its message,
its particular excellence, and we find in the
garden, beautiful or dull, fair or grim, that
which is already in our own hearts. We may
search the world for beauty, for tranquillity, for
joy, and search in vain, unless we take it with
us on our travels in the strong box of our own
souls. In every garden in Japan those three
things are planted, and we may enjoy them as
freely as their owners, if we have the sun in our
hearts to make the flowers bloom.

INDEX

Aconite, 153, 188, 287

Actesa spicata, 285

Advice to women, 174

American and other gardens
compared with Japanese, 23,
74, 88, 91, 94, 96, 187, 288

' Arbor Vitse,' 72

Arnica, 287

Ash, 187

Aster, 139, 142, 287

Aston, Mr. W. G., 125, 174, 212,
291

Awata palace, 22

Azalea, 5, 68, iii, 129, 130, 134,
136, 137, 142, 151, 153, 175,
176, 180, 185, 186, 237, 276,
279

Bamboo, 74-76, 83, 87, 88, 90, 92,
96, 117, 134, 139, 192, 197.
200, 201, 204, 214-216, 219,
221, 222, 254, 266, 273, 275,
289
Bass tree, 289
Bignonia, 87, 280, 286
Birch, 130, 187, 287, 289
Bon festival, 155, 264, 266
Box, 90
Brambles, 187
Bridges, Chap. vii. (156)
Faggots, 105
Full-moon, 104
of Heaven, 176
Stone, 105
Wood, 105
Buddhism, 14, 17, 21, 60, 71, 118,
178, 195, 198, 213, 259, 264

Camellia, 89, 90, 130, 139, 239, 274
Campanula, 286
Campion, 288
Cassia, 241

Cha-no-yu. See Tea Ceremonial
Chamberlain, Mr. Basil Hall, ix,

15, 27, 29, 239, 244, 248,

271
Cherry, 69, 74, 102, iii, 130, 136,

139, 172, 175-177, 194. 197.

199, 227-230, 235, 251, 260,

275, 277
Cherry-blossom festival, 260, 273^
Chinese influence, 8, 14, 15, 20, 34,

60, 70, 76, loi, 121, 123, 132,

138, 149, 153, 162, 165, 214,

216
Choin-in temple, 105
Chrysanthemum, 9, 134, 141, 142,

176, 194, 197, 215, 247-250,

251, 267, 288
Chu-men-ton-kwan, 16
Cleanliness, 38, 51, 56, 68, 97, 113,

116, 117, 168
Clematis, 280
Colour-sense, 77-79, 85, 133, 135-

140, 199, 241, 256, 282, 286,

287, 289
Columbine, 275
Compositae, 187, 287
Conder, Mr. Josiah, vii, \iii, 27,

43. 47-53, 79, 108, 149, 154.

201
Convolvulus, 2, 9, 87, 139, 142,

187, 203, 211
Coolness, 38, 116, 146, 175
Cryptomeria, 89, 90, 152, 175, 177,

213, 287, 289
Cypripedium, 275
Cyprus vine, 87

Dahlia, 191
Daito-kuji, 21
Daphne, 275

Dedication of gardens, 51, 268,
269

294

JAPANESE GARDENS

Deutzia, 282.

' Dish ' gardens. See Miniature

Gardens
' Distance Lowering ' style, 36
' Distance Raising ' style, 36
Divinity in gardens, 2, 12, 18, 40,

73. 268
Dolls' festival, 256
' Dried-up Water Scenery,' Chap.

XI. (145) ; 18
Du Cane, Miss, viii, 223,237
Dunn, Mr. S. T., ix
Dutch influence, 20
Dwarfed trees, 28, 78, 255.

Edgeworthia papirifera, 275
Equinoctial festivals, 259, 266
English and other gardens com-
pared with Japanese, 23, 74,
88, 91, 94, 96, 187, 288
Eulalia japonica, 287

Fences and hedges, Chap. vi. (73)
Fences —

Bamboo, 75, 83

Method of decorating. Chap. xv.
(209); 75, 77, 80

Nightingale, 84

Open work, 79

Painted, 78, 79

Plaster, 76, 77

Reeds, 84

Rustic, '82

Screen or Sleeve, 85, 86

Tiles, 77

Wood, 76
Fern, 254

Fir trees, 99, 175, 212, 213, 289
Fish flags, 180, 263
Flower arrangement. Chap. xiv.

(190) ; 19
Flower festivals, Chap. xvii. (251) ;

155
Autumn equinox, 68, 266
Bon, or ' Feast of Lanterns,'

155, 264-266
Boys', 239, 263
Buddha's birthday, 259
Cherry-blossom, 260-262
Chrysanthemums, 267
Dolls'orlittlegirls',204,256, 259
Equinoctial, 68, 259, 266
Housewives', 266

Flower festivals {continued) —

Maple- viewing, 267

New Year (Plum), 252

Peach-blossoms, 256, 259

Rice, 264

Seamstresses', 266

Seven Herbs, 255

Shinto (Matsuri), 266
Flowers, admiration of, by

Japanese, 11, 159, 205
Flowers, Four seasons of. Chap.

xviii. (271)
Folk - lore and legends, Chaps.

xv. (209), XVI. (219)
Foreign festivals, 269, 270
Forsythia, 275
Four Floral Gentlemen, 215, 224,

247
Fuji flower, 184
Fujiwara period, 21
Fujiyama, 34, 116, 164, 285
Fung-shui, 34, 148
Furuba Oribe, 36

Garden accessories. Chap. v. (59)
architecture. Chap. vii. (93)
fences and hedges. Chap. vi.

(73)
folk-lore and legends. Chaps, xv.

(209), XVI. (219)
making, 6, 8, 32-40, 128-131,

135. 170
stones. Chap, iv, (41), 9, 10, 17,
19, 23, 33, 76. 128, 135, 152,

156. 171
Gardening history, Chap. 11. (13)

principles. Chap. iii. (26)
Gardens —

Dedication of, 51, 268, 269

Divinity in, 2, 12, 18, 40, 73,
264, 268

Green, Chap. x. (133)

Japanese in general. Chap. i.

Copies of nature, 1,4, 6-8,
18, 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 31, 32,
37, 40, 42, 46, 56, 82, 121, 124,
127, 132, 134, 135, 137, 150,
156, 175, 180, 182, 190,
195

Landscape, Chap. ix. (121) ;
14, 20, 26, 156, 161

Miniature, Chap. xii. (161) ;
34, 190, 193,

INDEX

^95

Gardens {continued) —

Particular, Chap. xiii. (173)
Poetry in, 2, 4, 5, 13, 15, 17, 22-

24, 31, 54, 121. 137, 147, 200,

210, 251
Prices paid for objects in, 7, 9,

24. 47
Spirit of the. Water, 106, 109,

117
Spiritual appeal in, i, 3, 10, 12,

24, 27, 114, 124, 160, 273
Tea, 23, 24, 156, 180, 182
Uses of, I, 27, 35, 44, 70, 73, 102,

135
Water, Chap. xi. (145)
Water in. Chap. xi. (145) ; 7,

18, 35. 38. 46. 47, 49. 53. 72.

102-106, 107-120, 130-131,

171, 179, 180, 184
Gates, summer houses and

bridges. Chap. vii. (93)
Gentian, 287
Geranium, 191, 287
Girls' festival, 256
Gisu, 133, 183
Gladiolus, 291
Gohei, 99
Gold-fish, I, 56, 102, 131, 180, 181,

204, 255
Gourd, 99

Graining of wood, 78, 82, 105, 113
Gray, Asa, 187

Hachi-niwa. See Miniature Gar-
dens

Hazel, 287

Hearne, Lafcadio, ix, no, 140,
236, 248, 264, 268, 285

Hedges, Chap. vi. (73)

Hemlock, 175

Hemp, 224

Hewlett, Mr. Maurice, 40

Hinges and bolts, 96, 115

Hiroshige, 133

Hokusai, 133

Holly, 255

Holly of the Orient, 289

Honeysuckle, 280

Hooker, Sir Joseph, 187

Hydrangea, 158, 177, 188, 281, 286

Ilex, 90

Indian influence, 14, 154

Indigo, 287.

Influence, Chinese, 8, 14, 15,
20, 34, 60, 70, 76, loi, 121,
123, 132, 138, 149, 153. 163,
165, 216
Dutch, 20
Indian, 14, 154
Korean, 14
Portuguese, 20
Iris, 9, 56, 103, III, 131, 136,
137, 139, 142, 143, 150, 155,
159, 173, 181, 185, 193.
194, 197, 199, 203, 235, 239,
278, 279
Iron creeper, 289
Islands —

Cloud-shaped, 18
Crane, 176
Guest's, 10
Pine-bark, 18
Thread-fall, 18
Tortoise, 176
Ito, Prince, 182
Ivy, 90, 289

Japanese garden in England, 8
gardens in general. Chap i.
gardening history. Chap. 11.

ideas in America, 31, 88
Juniper, 289

Kadsura japonica, 289
Kamakura period, 17
Khayyam, Omar, 122
Kiku. See Chrysanthemum
Kiri (Paulowniaimperialis), 243
Kobori Enshu, 21, 22, 175, 180
Kwannon, 50, 158

Lacquer, 287
Lagerstrcemia indica, 286
Landscape gardening. Chap. ix.

(121); 14,20,36,156,161
Lanterns, Chap. v. (59) ; 37,
179

Aging of, 67

Bronze, 61, 66

Hanging, 66

Iron, 62, 67

Kasuga-shaped, 64

Legged, 60, 61, 64

Mushroom, 63

296

JAPANESE GARDENS

Lanterns (contifiued) —

Nondescript, 64, 65

Porcelain, 62

Rough, 65, 66

Shiratayu-shaped, 64

Snow-scene, 63

Standard, 61, 64

Temple, 62
Larkspur, 187

Laurel, 89, 129, 141, 254, 289
Legends —

The Bamboo shoots, 216

of the Cherry, 227-230

of the Chrysanthemum, 247-
250

The Fairy and the Pine tree,
244

The Fir trees, 212

The Ghost of O Kiku San, no

The golden Lotus petals, 223

Kosei, 237

of the Maple, 246

Momo Taro, 231

The Moon Princess, 217

O Tsuyu, 236

The Old Man who made Trees
to Blossom, 233

of Paeonies, 14, 235-237

of the Peach, 231-235

of the Plum, 224-227

The Poet of the Persimmon
tree, 242

The White Rose with the
Red Centre, 245

of the Shobu. 241

The Tongue-cut Sparrow, 218

of the Wistaria, 211

of the Yamabuki, 244
Lespedcza, 242, 287
Lichens, 38, 67, 82, 128, 199, 290
Lilies, 28, 33, 59, 68, 70, 134, 139,
142, 153, 157, 188, 282, 286

Auratum, 68, 153, 282-284

Day, 282

Death, 153, 188, 238

Elegans, 283

Hoemerocallis, 282

Krameri, 282

Longiflorum, 282

Speciosum, 282

Tiger, 68, 283

of the Valley, 275
Lloyd, Mr. Arthur, ix, 190

Lotus, 2, 142, 149, 151, 158, 204,

222, 284
Lycoris, 153, 188, 238

Magnolia, 277

Manet, 127

Marigold, 254

Maple, 44, 69, 70, 105, 129, 130,

136, 138, 139, 151-153, 176,

187, 197, 199, 206, 245, 251,

267, 288, 289
Meadow-sweet, 280
Michaelmas Daisy, 287
Mimosa, 245
Mistletoe, 290
Momo, or Peach, 131, 204, 231-

235. 256. 275, 277
Monet, 127

Monkshood, 153, 188, 287
Moon-gazing platform, 176, 202
Morning Glory, 2, 9, 87, 139, 142,

187, 203, 211
Muro-machi period, 19
Muso, 21

Nandina domestica, 153, 289

Narcissus, 203

Nasturtium, 88, 216

Nature, Japanese gardens, copies

of. See Gardens
Nerine, 153, 188, 238
Nightingale, 84, 215

Oak, 289
Ogari Sotau, 23
Oleander, 89
Orange, 16, 204
Orchids, 187, 215, 286
Osage Orange, 90, 91

Paeony, 139. 142, 215, 235-237,

275. 277
Pagodas, Chap. v. (59)
Palms, 123
Particular gardens. Chap. xiii.

(173)
Passion Vine, 88
Paulownin intperiali!^. See Kiri
Peach, 131, 204, 231-235, 256,

275. 277
Peach-blossom viewing, 256
Pergolas, 88, 131
Perry, Commodore, 79

INDEX

297

Personification of impersonal
things, 58, 66, 209

Perspective, 35, 153, 158

Phlox, 78, 185, 191

Piggot, Sir Francis, viii, 277

Pine tree, 65, 69, 74, 75, 99, iii,
130, 134, 151, 172, 175, 194,
197. 199. 202, 204, 205, 207,
211, 213, 214, 244, 253, 254,

273

Pinks, 287

Plum, 16, 69, 83, 84, 130, 137,
139. 140. 151, 153. 176, 193,
199, 204, 207, 215, 224-227,
235, 252, 254, 272, 277, 291

Plum-blossom viewing, 273

Poems, t, 13, 26, 41, 55, 73, 84,
93, 107, 121, 133, 140, 145,
161, 173, 186, 190, 207, 209,
211, 212, 227, 242, 244, 246,
251, 271, 273, 279, 285, 288,
289, 29T

Poetry in gardens, 2, 4, 5, 13, 15,
17, 22-24, 31. 54. 121, 137,
147, 198, 200, 210, 251

Pomegranate, 7, 74

Porcelain ornaments, loi

Porter, W. N., 13

Portuguese influence, 20

Prices paid for garden objects,
7. 9, 24, 47

Primula, 187

Rakuyo, 126

Reeds, 84, 131, 134, 149, 150, 184,

215
Rein, 187, 288
Rep tition in gardens, 40
Rice, 264
Roses, 10, 88, 92, 98

Scabious, 287

Scale, importance of, 4, 7, 21, 32,

33. 37. 39. 45. 62, 80, 94, 107,

114
Sen-no-Rikiu, 22, 23, 36, 180, 195
Shaw, Mr. Bernard, 20
Shindai-shiki, 16, 21
Shinto, 24, 60, 117-119, 197, 198,

213
Shobu, or Sweet Flag, 239-241,

263
Soami, 21

Soseki, 19

Sparrow, 102, 215, 218

Spider wort, 286

Spiraea, 187, 280, 286

Spirit of the garden, water, 106,

109, 117
Spiritual appeal of Japanese
gardens, i, 3, 10, 24, 27, 114,
124, 160, 273
Stones, garden. Chap. iv. (41) ;
7, 9, 10, 14, 17, 19, 23, 33,
76, 135, 152, 156, 171
Stones —

Arching, 48

Cascade, 171

Dead, 43

Diseased, 43

Distancing Rock, 52

Flat, 48

Guardian, 17, 152, 171

Kwannon, 50

Label, 57

Lantern-lighting, 57

Master's, 10

Mist-enveloped, 50

Moss-grown, 51

Mountain-base, 50

Mountain-side, 50

Mountain-summit, 50

Obi, 57

Passing, 52

Peeping, 52

Poor, 44

Propitious-cloud, 50

Recumbent, 37, 49, 63

Recumbent-ox, 49

Shoe-removing, 57

Statue, 37, 48

Step-dividing, 57

Stepping, 37, 53, 54, 102 103,
112, 171

Sword-hanging, 57

Transporting of, 7

Of three gods, 51

Of two gods, 51

Vertical, 43, 48, 11 1

View-completing, 52

View-receiving, 52

Waiting, 52

Water, 53

Water-falling, 57

Wayside, 52

Wine-cup, 52

298

JAPANESE GARDENS

Stones — Of worship, 52
Streams, diverting course of, 7,

35. 147
Sumach, 287

Summer houses. Chap. yii. (99)
various shapes and designs, 100
Superstitions, 34, 99, 146, 147

Tea ceremonial, 19, 23, 36, 80, 180

Tea gardens, 23, 24, 156, 180, 182

Tempo period, 47

' Three friends of Winter,' 273

Tidiness, 38, 97, 141, 175

Torii, 68, 98, 179, 213

Trees and shrubs, clipped, 5, 20,

78, 90, III, 126, 142
Transplanting trees, 7, 129
Triangular system, 49, 195

Veronica, 280

Vetch, 187

Violets, 275

Virginia creeper, 131, 287

Wasurigusa (Herb of forgetful-
ness), 242

Water buckets, 107, 113, 115

Water, direction of flow of, in
gardens, 7, 35, 147

Water gardens. Chap. xi. (145)

Water in gardens, Chap. xi. (145) ;
7. 18. 35, 38, 46, 47, 49, 53,
72, 102-106, 107-120, 130,
131, 171, 179, 180, 184

Water, the spirit of the garden,
106, 109, 117

Weathering, artificial, 38

Wells, water basins, etc.. Chap.
viii. (107)

Whistler, Japanese influence of,

30

Whitman, Walt, 41

Willow, 88, 134

Wistaria, 38, 85, 87, 98, 103, 131,

134, 136, 137, 145, 210, 235,

276

Yatsu Hashi style, 103
Yohan-kohan-han, 16
Yoboan, 21

Zinnia, 191

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