_Japan and Italy--The Sense of Beauty--Poetry--Japanese Poems by
an American Woman--A Poem on a Kimono--Garden Ornaments--Garden
Parties and Gifts--The Four Periods of Landscape Gardening--The
Volcanic Principle in Gardens_
It is interesting to observe that the two races in which highly
specialized artistic feeling is almost universal have, despite their
antipodal positions on the globe, many common problems and one common
blessing. Both Japan and Italy are poor and overpopulated, both are
handicapped by a shortage of arable land and natural resources, both
lack an adequate supply of food and raw materials for manufacturing,
both are mountainous, both are afflicted by earthquakes; but both are
endowed with the peculiar, passionate beauty of landscape which is
nature's compensation to volcanic countries--a beauty suggesting that of
some vivid and ungoverned woman, brilliant, erratic, fascinating,
dangerous.
Where Nature shows herself a great temperamental artist, her children
are likely to be artists, too. As almost all Italians have a highly
developed sense of melody, so almost all Japanese possess in a
remarkable degree the artist's sense of form.
One day in Tokio I fell to discussing these matters with a venerable art
collector, wearing silks and sandals.
"What," he asked me, "are the most striking examples of artistic feeling
that you have noticed in Japan?"
I told him of two things that I had seen, each in itself unimportant.
One was a well-wheel. The well was in a yard beside a lovely little
farmhouse, one story high, with walls of clay and timber, and with a
thick thatched roof, upon the ridge of which a row of purple iris grew.
There was a dainty bamboo fence around the farmyard, with flowering
shrubs behind it, and a cherry tree in blossom. The well-house was
thatched, and the pulley-wheel beneath the thatch seemed to focus the
entire composition. With us such a wheel would have been a thing of
rough cast-iron, merely something for a rope to run over; but this wheel
had been fondly imagined before it was created. Its spokes were not
straight and ugly, but branched near the rim, curving gracefully into it
in such a way as to form the outlines of a cherry-blossom. It was a work
of art.
My other item was a little copper kettle. I saw it in a penitentiary. It
belonged to a prisoner, and every prisoner in that portion of the
institution had one like it. The striking thing about it was that it was
an extremely graceful little kettle, embellished in relief with a
beautiful design. It, too, was a work of art, and there was to me
something pathetic in the evidence it gave that even in this grim place
the claims of beauty were not entirely ignored.
These trifling observations seemed to please my friend, the art
collector.
"But," said he, "I think our national love of the beautiful is perhaps
most strongly exhibited in our feeling for outdoor beauty--our
pilgrimages to spots famous for their scenery, our delight in the
cherry-blossom season, the wistaria season, the chrysanthemum season,
and by no means least in our gardens."
Undoubtedly he was right. The feeling for nature among his countrymen is
general, mystical, poetic. Almost all Japanese write poetry. The poems
of many emperors, empresses, and statesmen are widely known; and among
the most celebrated Japanese poems those to Nature in her various
aspects are by far the most numerous.
* * * * *
Let me here digress briefly to mention the interesting custom of _O Uta
Hajime_, or Opening of Imperial Poems, a court function dating from the
ninth century.
Each December the Imperial Household announces subjects for poems which
may be submitted anonymously to the Imperial Bureau of Poems, in
connection with the celebration of the New Year. The poems are examined
by the bureau's experts, who select the best, to be read to the Imperial
Family.
The choice for the year 1921 was made from seventeen thousand poems sent
from all parts of the Empire, and when announcement was made of the
names of those whose poems were read at the Court, it was discovered
that, among them was an American lady, Frances Hawkes Burnett, wife of
Col. Charles Burnett, military attaché of the American Embassy at Tokyo.
Mrs. Burnett thus attains the unique distinction of being the only
foreign woman ever to have won Imperial approval with a poem in the
Japanese language.
[Illustration: Mrs. Charles Burnett in a 15th-Century Japanese
Court costume. Mrs. Burnett's poems written in Japanese have
received Imperial recognition]
It is interesting, in this connection, to remark that the lady is a
grand-niece of the late Dr. Francis Lister Hawkes, of New York, who
accompanied Commodore Perry to Japan, and was Perry's collaborator in
the writing of the official record of the voyage, published under the
title, "The Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron."
* * * * *
But to return to my friend the art collector.
"Speaking of poetry and the love of Nature," said he, "have you noticed
the kimono of our host's daughter?"
(We were strolling in a lovely private garden as we talked.)
I had noticed it. It was a beautiful costume of soft black silk, the
hem, in front, adorned with a design of cherry-blossoms and an
inscription in the always decorative Chinese character.
"Do you know what the inscription is?" he asked.
I did not.
"It is a poem of her own," he explained; and presently, when in our
stroll we caught up with the young lady, he made me a literal
translation, which might be done over into English verse as follows:
Farewell, O Capital! I grieve
Thy lovely cherry-blooms to leave.
But now to Kioto must I fare
To view the cherry-blossoms there.
We fell to talking of Japanese gardens.
"You must see some of our fine gardens," he said, "before you leave
Japan."
I mentioned some I had already seen--the gardens of the Crown Prince,
the Prime Minister, Marquis Okuma, Viscount Shibusawa, Baron Furukawa,
and others.
"But do you understand our theory of the garden?"
I told him what little I then knew: that flowers are not essential to a
garden in Japan; that, where used, they are generally set apart in beds,
and removed when they have ceased to bloom; that because of the skill of
the Japanese in transplanting large trees a garden of ancient appearance
may be made in few years; that boundaries are artfully planted out, so
that some houses, standing on a few acres of ground in great cities,
appear to be surrounded by forests; that small garden lakes are
sometimes so arranged as to suggest that they are only arms of large
bodies of water concealed from view by wooded headlands; and that
optical illusions are often employed to make gardens seem much larger
than they are, this being accomplished by a cunning scaling down in the
size of the more remote hillocks, trees, and shrubs, increasing the
perspective.
Also, I had seen examples of the _kare sensui_ school of landscape
gardening--waterless lakes and streams, their beds delineated in sand,
gravel, and selected pebbles, and their banks set off by great
water-worn stones brought from elsewhere, and by trees and shrubs
carefully trained to droop toward the imaginary water--water the more
completely suggested by stepping-stones and arched bridges reaching out
to little islands, with stone lanterns standing among dwarf pines.
I knew, too, of the fondness of the Japanese for minor buildings in
their gardens. Thus in the garden of Viscount Shibusawa, there is an
ancient Korean teahouse of very striking architecture; in that of Dr.
Takuma Dan, General Manager of the vast Mitsui interests, a farmhouse
several centuries old; in that of Baron Okura, a famous museum of
Chinese and Japanese antiquities and art works; and in the gardens of
Baron Furukawa and Baron Sumitomo, smaller private museums. Tucked away
in the corner of one garden near Kobe I had even seen a little factory
in which the finest wireless cloisonné was being made, the owner of that
garden having a deep interest in this art and using the productions of
his artist-workmen to give as presents to his friends. And of course in
many gardens I had seen houses built especially for the _cha-no-yu_, or
Tea Ceremony.
Moreover, I had been to garden parties at some of which luncheons were
served under marquees of bamboo and striped canvas, while at others were
offered entertainments consisting of geisha-dancing and juggling. At
such parties souvenirs are always given--fans and kakemono painted by
artists on the premises, or bits of pottery which, after being painted,
are glazed and fired, and still warm from the kiln, presented to the
guests.
"Yes, yes," said my venerable friend, "you have seen a good deal; but as
to the history and theory of our gardens, what do you know?"
"Very little," I admitted, and asked him to enlighten me.
* * * * *
Japanese landscape gardening began twelve hundred years ago, when the
Emperor Shomu, in residence at Nara, sent for a Chinese monk who was
famed for his artistry and ordered him to beautify the ancient capital.
This the monk accomplished chiefly by cutting out avenues among the
lofty trees which to this day make Nara not only a place of supreme
loveliness, but one rich in the aroma of antiquity. Thus came the first
period of landscape gardening in Nippon, the Tempyo period.
Five and a half centuries ago the second period began when, in the
terrain surrounding the Kinkakuji Temple at Kyoto, gardens containing
lakes, rocks, and gold-pavilioned islands were constructed in
resemblance to the natural scenery near the mouth of the Yangtse River
in China.
The third period is best represented by the gardens of the arsenal in
Tokyo. These were made three hundred years ago by a Chinese master named
Shunsui, who was brought to Japan for the purpose by the Lord of Mito,
brother of the shogun who at that time ruled Japan. In order to get
water for this park a canal thirty miles long was constructed, and this
same canal later supplied water to the city of Yedo, as Tokyo was then
called.
The current period is the fourth, and it is the aim of the present-day
masters to combine in their work all the fine points of the preceding
periods. This development is largely due to the ease of modern
transportation, which has enabled the landscape gardeners of our time to
travel widely and become familiar with the best work of their
distinguished predecessors and the finest natural scenery. For instance,
the Shiobara region, in northern Japan, a district famous for its lovely
little corners, has been the inspiration for many modern gardens.
* * * * *
"And now," said my learned friend as we paused in a little shelter of
bamboo and thatch, overlooking the corner of a lake bordered with
curiously formed rocks and flowering shrubs, "I will tell you the great
secret of this art; for of course you understand that with us landscape
gardening is definitely placed as one of the fine arts." He paused for a
moment, then continued: "The one sound principle for making a garden
wherever water is used is what may be called the volcanic principle.
That is to say, the artist in landscape gardening should go for his
themes to places of volcanic origin; for in such places the greatest
natural beauty is found.
"And why? First of all, you have hills of interesting contours, made by
eruptions. Then you have mountain lakes which form in the beds of
extinct volcanoes. Our famous Lake Chuzenji, above Nikko, for example.
From these lakes the water overflows, making splendid falls, like those
of Kegon, which empty out of Lake Chuzenji. Below the falls you have a
torrent rushing down a rocky valley, like the River Daiya, which flows
from the Kegon Falls past Nikko, where it is spanned by the famous
red-lacquered bridge. There is the basis for your entire garden
composition.
"But you must also remember that volcanic outpourings make rich soil.
This soil, thrown into the air by volcanic explosions, settles in the
crevices of rocks. Pines take root in it. But in some places the pocket
of soil is small; wherefore the roots of the pine cannot spread, and the
tree becomes a dwarf, gnarled and picturesque. Again, on the hillsides
the rich soil makes great trees grow, with rich shrubbery and verdure
beneath them. The torrent completes the landscape effect by sculpturing
the rocks into fascinating forms. In that combination you have every
element required. Reproduce it in miniature, and your garden is made."