LANDSCAPE GARDENS
Having made some attempt to elucidate the mysterious and wonderful
construction of Japanese gardens, I feel the reader will expect
to learn something of their effect as a whole when completed.
Unfortunately many of the finest specimens of landscape gardens, the
old Daimyos’ gardens in Tokyo, have been swept away to make room for
foreign houses, factories, and breweries, and no trace of them remains;
old drawings or photographs alone tell of their departed glories.
Probably the largest of these gardens which still remains entire is
the Koraku-en, or Arsenal Garden, as it is more commonly called. It is
now empty and deserted, and seems only filled with sadness, its groves
recalling days gone by, when succeeding Daimyos entertained their
friends in regal pomp, and the sound of revelry broke the silence of
the woods; to-day only the incessant sound of metal hammering metal
breaks the silence of the glades, and the sound of explosions from the
Arsenal near by might well rouse the dead. The garden covers a large
extent of ground, and is an example of a scheme in which many separate
scenes were skilfully worked together to form a perfect whole. Its fame
dates from early in the seventeenth century, when the Daimyo of Mito,
who was a great patron of landscape gardening, laid out the grounds.
The fact that they are remarkable for many Chinese characteristics is
not surprising, when we learn that the Shogun Iyemitsu took an interest
in the work, and lent the aid of a great Chinese artist called Shunseu,
who completed the scheme. A semicircular stone bridge of Chinese
design, called a _Full-moon Bridge_, spans a stretch of water in which,
in the scorching heat of August mornings, the great buds of white
lotus flowers will crack and slowly open, their giant leaves almost
hiding the bridge; this important feature of the garden is called Seiko
Kutsumi, after a famous lotus lake in China. The island in the lake is
the Elysian Isle of Chinese fame, and formerly was connected with the
shore by a long wooden bridge, which has long since disappeared; but
the path wanders on, past the rocky shore, skirting the headland and
high wooded promontory, through the dense gloom of a forest, and by the
time I had made a complete tour of this garden I felt as though I had
paid a flying visit to half Japan.
There was an avenue of cherry-trees to recall the avenues of Koganei;
the river Tatsuda in miniature, its banks clothed with maples and other
reddening trees, to give colour to the garden in autumn, when the
setting sun will seem to light the torch and set all the trees ablaze;
there also is the Oi-gawa or Rapid River with its wide pebble-strewn
bed, down which a rapid-flowing stream is brought; then we are
transported to scenes in China; and beyond, again, the wanderer is
reminded of the scenery of Yatsuhashi, where one of the eight bridges
crosses in zigzag fashion a marshy swamp which in the month of June
is a mass of irises, great gorgeous blossoms of every conceivable
shade of lilac and purple, completely hiding their foliage; then this
little valley becomes a stream of colour and recalls the more extensive
glories of Hori-kiri.
Perhaps most ingenious of all is that part of the garden where the cone
of Fuji-yama appears, snow-capped in May, as it is densely planted
with
[Illustration: AN OLD GARDEN]
white azaleas. Many other scenes there were--tiny shrines built in
imitation of great temples, cascades and waterfalls named after other
celebrated falls, rare rocks, moss-grown lanterns, bridges of all
designs; in fact, the garden seemed a perfect treasure-house, and I
felt glad that this one garden has escaped the hand of the destroyer
and is left entire, a masterpiece of conception and execution.
Of another Tokyo garden--which unfortunately has not been left
untouched, as it is shorn of half its former glories, a glaring
red-brick brewery covering half the area of the beautiful grounds
formerly known as Satake-no-niwa--only a portion remains, though a
very lovely portion, and as it seems complete in itself it is still
worth a visit. Unlike the Koraku-en, the Satake Garden was a rather
artificial example of hill gardening, more open, with no dense groves,
but essentially a hill and water garden. The large lake remains, and,
like most of the gardens in the Honjo district of Tokyo, its waters are
salt and tidal, being connected with the neighbouring river Sumida.
Thus at high and low tide the shores of the lake present a very
different aspect; pebbly bays can only be crossed by stepping-stones
at high tide, and even some of the stone lanterns by the water’s edge
have their standards half submerged. The hills are closely planted with
evergreen bushes and shrubs, and most of the year the garden is all
grey and green; the island is reached by a grey stone bridge formed
of two slabs of granite of giant proportions, the grey lanterns stand
among shrubs, cut into rounded form, and the mossy rocks and boulders
have still more neutral tones; so it is only in spring when Nature
asserts herself, and no gardener can prevent the young leaves of the
maples being a variety of vivid colouring, and the grey rounded azalea
bushes become perfect balls of scarlet, rosy-pink and white blossoms,
that the garden has any colour in it. But to the mind of the Japanese
all sense of repose and quiet charm would be gone if the eye were
always worried by a distracting mass of colour; so even if flowers were
grown in these more extensive gardens they had a special part of the
grounds set apart for their culture. In one corner of the lake a piece
of swampy ground was thickly planted with irises and water-plants, and
a wistaria trellis overhung the lake, otherwise no flowers entered
into the scheme; but it was a perfect specimen of the typical Japanese
arrangement of garden hills planted with rounded bushes and adorned
with lanterns.
[Illustration: SATAKE GARDEN, TOKYO]
A magnificent example of a modern landscape garden is that belonging
to Baron Iwasaki, made some forty years ago. The venerable pine-trees
supported by stout props overhanging the lake are suggestive of
countless ages; but in this garden old trees of gnarled and twisted
growth, rare rocks, and immense boulders were collected from all parts
of the empire, regardless of expense, and brought together to ensure
the success of the scheme. The grounds cover many acres, the one blot
in the landscape being the large red-brick foreign house; but luckily
the most lovely part of the garden is laid out in front of the perfect
specimen of a Japanese gentleman’s house, where the verandah of the
cool matted rooms looks over a scene of indescribable beauty. The large
lake is cleverly divided, and the portion of the garden in front of
the foreign house is left behind; groves of evergreen trees screen
the house--the one jarring note; and here the lake becomes the lagoon
of Matsu-shima, tiny pine-clad islets rise from the water, and in the
distance rises the cone of Fuji from an undulating plain of close-mown
turf and groups of dwarfed pines. Here again flowers have no official
existence; azaleas there are in profusion, but they are only introduced
as shrubs; so the garden is not a flower garden, but a true landscape
garden--the reproduction in miniature of natural scenery. The lanterns
and bridges near the foreign house are of immense size, carrying out
the law of proportion; the rocks and boulders are large to correspond,
and the whole effect is one of great breadth; only near the tea-house
and the main Japanese house does the garden become more finished in
style and on a smaller scale. The balcony overhangs the rocky edge of
the tidal lake; each rock has its history and its especial place; but
the laws which have governed the making of such a garden are laws drawn
up by great artists,--there is no false note, even the grouping of
the reeds and irises by the water’s edge has been planned by a master
hand, so the picture remains graven on one’s memory as that of an ideal
pleasaunce for leisure and repose.
In Kyoto there still remain the gardens of the Gold and Silver
Pavilions--gardens of much older date, the splendour of their pavilions
dimmed by age, more especially in the case of Kinkakuji, the Golden
Pavilion. Mr. Conder says, “Long neglect has converted what was
once an elaborate artificial landscape into a wild natural scene of
great beauty.” The little pine-clad islets remain, but they are now
island wildernesses; the trees have partially resumed their normal
shapes; great leaning pines overhang the shores of the _Mirror Ocean_,
representing the Sea of Japan, and its three islands suggesting the
Empire of the Mikado. It was in the fourteenth century that this quiet
spot became the so-called retreat of the scheming Yoshimitsu, who,
pretending to have resigned the Shogunate in favour of his son, here
lived in the garb of a monk, but in reality directing the affairs of
State. The two-storied Pavilion itself, seen reflected in the _Mirror
Ocean_, is possibly more picturesque in decay than it was in the days
of its splendour; the gilding from which it takes its name has been
partially restored; it is backed by the wooded hill fancifully called
the _Silken Canopy_ or _Silk Hat Mountain_, from the fact that the
ex-Mikado Uda ordered it to be covered with white silk on a scorching
summer’s day, in order that his eyes might enjoy the sensation of
gazing on a cool, snow-covered scene. To this day the garden of
Kinkakuji under a light canopy of snow is one of the favourite sights
of the people of Kyoto. In days gone by there were smaller arbours in
which the Shogun, wearied with his walk among the groves of the _Silk
Hat Mountain_, would rest, and compare the scene which the garden was
intended to represent, to the real Sea of Japan, whence the name of one
of the arbours, _The House of the Sound of the Seashore_.
To the north-east of Kyoto, nestling among the woods that clothe the
lower hills of Hiei-san, lie the grounds of Ginkakuji or the Silver
Pavilion. In imitation of his predecessor Yoshimitsu, the Shogun
Yoshimasa after his abdication retired from the affairs of the world,
built himself a country house with grounds of vast extent, even with
despotic impatience sweeping away a temple because it interfered
with his plans,--though we are told he was filled with remorse, and
afterwards restored it at great expense. The two-storied Pavilion was
partly copied from its rival, the Golden Pavilion, though it never
seems to have attained to the same splendour; but here the ex-Shogun
and his boon companions, the philosopher Soami and Shuko the Nara
priest, held their æsthetic revels. They may be said to have laid down
the laws which raised the tea-ceremonial to the rank of a fine art. Mr.
Farrar, in writing of it, says:--
It has its prescribed ritual of appalling rigidity, this
tea-ceremony, invented and elaborated by a pious monk to
[Illustration: A TOKYO GARDEN]
distract a young and giddy Shogun from his debaucheries. It was
taken up as a political weapon by the House of Tokugawa, and
crystallised into its present adamantine form, becoming a social
engine of the most powerful nature in its power of bringing all
the nobles together. Here, then, is one of its temples where
the rites were celebrated in their due ordinance, with their
prescribed compliments, obeisances, and admiring exclamations
over the prescribed flower, arranged in the prescribed spot, and
indicated by the host in the prescribed words, to be followed by
the invariable litany of conversation and courtesy over the cup of
tea to be made, handed, accepted, and drunk all with remarks and
gestures and smiles of ancestral rubric.
Outside any tea-house built in accordance with these prescribed
regulations one sees “a row of stepping-stones, finishing beneath a
little _œil-de-bœuf_ in the wall above, by which the visitors had to
enter, ignoring the thoroughly practical door. They approached, making
the due bows upon each stone, and at last their host was to fish them
in through the window.”
Another ceremony inaugurated within these precincts was the ceremonial
of “incense sniffing,” to our minds merely an innocent, childish game,
the winner being the person possessing the keenest sense of smell, as
the pastime consisted of five or more different kinds of incense being
burnt, sniffed, given poetical names, then mixed up and sniffed again,
and the man who guesses best the names of the various kinds, is the
winner. The boxes which contained the incense, the burners in which it
was burnt, were all works of art, and the same grave etiquette which
governed the tea-ceremonial governed these incense-sniffing parties,
in which poets, writers, priests, philosophers, Daimyos, Shoguns, the
greatest and most learned in the land, took part. We can only gaze
with wonder and perplexity--not hoping to understand--at a “nation’s
intellect going off on such devious tracks as this incense-sniffing
and the still more intricate tea-ceremonies, and on bouquets arranged
philosophically, and gardens representing the cardinal virtues. Such
strict rules, such grave faces, such endless terminologies, so much ado
about nothing!” (Professor Chamberlain’s _Things Japanese_.)
To return to the garden proper, laid out with great elaboration by
Soami. Although it is now much neglected, the trees are not kept
trimmed according to the rigid laws, their stems are lichen-clad, and
Nature has tried to reassert herself over art, yet the beauty of the
spot is great. The lake, of ingenious form, backed on the north side
by the thickly pine-clad hills and to the west by the regulation
grove of maples, is an admirable example of the arrangement of garden
stones, its shores being rich in rare and precious rocks, each with its
characteristic name. One of the principal stones lying in the lake is
the stone of _Ecstatic Contemplation_; the little bridge which divides
the lake is the _Bridge of the Pillar of the Immortals_; the water
of the cascade which fills the lake, being of exceptional purity, is
called the _Moon-washing Fountain_. In the foreground of many of these
older gardens was an open space covered with white sand, carefully
raked into ornamental patterns, and here is a large mound of the sand
suggestive of a mammoth sugar-loaf with a flattened top, called the
_Silver Sand Platform_, the smaller one of the same shape being the
_Mound facing the Moon_; on these sat Yoshimasa and his favourites,
indulging in another favourite pastime of moon-gazing, to our prosaic
minds merely another elaborately conceived method of killing time.
I know no garden in Japan which seemed to take one back so far into
the world of the Old Japan as this little garden of Ginkakuji, and
no more peaceful spot to sit and enjoy the reddening maple leaves on
a bright evening in late autumn, when there is a touch of sadness in
the air, in keeping with the departed glories of the Pavilion and the
fast-fading beauties of the trees.
Many of the smaller and most interesting gardens in Japan are those
attached to tea-houses or small suburban houses, showing, as they
do, the ingenuity and resource of the landscape gardener in making a
perfect garden of any size, from ten acres to half an acre, or only
a few square yards. Among tea-house gardens, that attached to the
Raku-raku-tei at Hikone can hardly be counted, as it was formerly
the garden of a great Daimyo and is one of the finest gardens in the
country. The numerous little summer-houses built out on piles in the
lake have been erected for the entertainment of the guests of the
tea-house, a gathering place for the most _élite_, but otherwise the
garden remains unchanged; the paths which wind round the lake, across
the bridges, past the _Stone of Worship_, from where the beauties of
the garden may be enjoyed to best advantage, are the same paths which
the feet of successive Daimyos trod in the feudal days of old.
It is rather to the Hira-niwa, or Flat Gardens, that I allude, made in
the small enclosures at the back of private houses or tea-houses in
towns, or even in the actual courts, no space being apparently too
small for the construction of one of these little fresh-looking and
artistic gardens. How superior to the dusty, neglected back garden
or court of a European house, too often only a piece of waste ground
where the rubbish of the house accumulates, the space being condemned
as too small for a garden. I can recall visions of many a tiny court
no more than twenty feet square, within whose limits were compressed
a liliputian pond, fed with clear water by the overflow of the
water-basin; a dwarf pine, the soul of every Japanese garden, which in
conjunction with a few small evergreen shrubs sheltered a moss-grown
lantern. Some small rocks and a few foliage or water plants in a tuft
by the water’s edge, were the sole materials used for the making of
this court-garden. Stepping-stones, let into the beaten earth, led from
the step of the verandah to the edge of the pond, ending in one stone
larger than the rest, suggesting the _Stone of Worship_, or the _Stone
of Amusement_, in case there should be any goldfish in the pond. As
these little courts are kept profusely watered, being sprinkled out of
a wooden ladle several times a day in the hottest days of summer, the
effect is always damp and cool, the mossy stones are always fresh and
green, however fierce the heat may be. The variety in the actual form
of these gardens seemed infinite; in some the pond was omitted, and
the suggestion of water and dampness came from the rustic garden well
or the ornamental water-basin, behind which always stands a portion
of screen-fencing of elaborate design. When the area is not quite
so limited, bridges will be introduced to cross the pond, possibly
consisting only of a single stone slab supported on a natural piece
of rock, or a granite bridge slightly curved in form, or perhaps only
the suggestion of a bridge, formed of a branch of juniper or some
flat close-growing evergreen trained in a curve across the water.
According to the size of the ground, so these gardens will increase in
elaboration of their design, and many an enclosure at the back of a
merchant’s house in Kyoto or Osaka has been transformed into a perfect
specimen of Hira-niwa.
One I recall which always gave me as much pleasure as the most
extensive landscape garden in the country. The lake was of the
prescribed form known as the _Running Water shape_, fed by a
fast-flowing stream which came in at the far end of the garden over the
regulation Cascade Stones; a garden arbour of elaborate form overlooked
the lake, in which stood the “Elysian Isle” with its pine-tree
[Illustration: A LANDSCAPE GARDEN]
growing out of the rock, and a few azalea bushes filling the
interstices of the stone, forming a most attractive feature of the
garden; banks there were planted with more azaleas; pines, kept dwarfed
to about two feet in height, grew out of cushions of thick moss;
bridges crossed and re-crossed the stream; stepping-stones, discs, and
label stones guided our feet as we wandered about at leisure. There
were the two garden entrances, and even the back entrance, or _Sweeping
Opening_, was a thing of beauty. Every detail of this garden had
been first carefully thought out, and then as carefully carried into
execution.
The landscape gardener in Japan is no gardener in the sense that we
regard a gardener in the West--a cultivator of flowers: he is a garden
artist; he leaves none of his effects to chance; so carefully are his
plans made that before the first sod of the new garden has been turned,
he knows exactly how the garden will look when completed. He will see
in his mind’s eye the appointed place for every tree, every stone,
which is to be used in its composition. I could not help thinking that
if more thought were given to the planning of our English gardens
there might be something more complete and satisfying to the eye than
the meaningless gardens--often laid out by the owner of the house,
who by the wildest stretch of imagination could not be called a garden
artist--which too often surround our English homes. Our gardens are
made beautiful in summer by the wealth and profusion of their flowers;
but when the winter comes and the beds are shorn of their summer
glories, the deficiencies of the plan of the garden are laid bare, and
might well give us food for thought through the long winter months.