NURSERY GARDENS--DWARF TREES AND HACHI-NIWA
A nursery garden in Japan may be called a revelation in the art
of pruning. A singular idea exists in the minds of many people,
that all the trees in Japan are like the dwarf specimens they have
occasionally seen in England on a nurseryman’s stand at a flower-show,
and frequently they display surprise, not unmixed with incredulity,
when assured that such is not the case. I would recommend those
unbelievers to take a walk in the cryptomeria avenues at Nikko, among
the camphor groves of Atami, or to wander through the pine-woods which
clothe the hillsides above Kyoto, when they would see for themselves
the magnificence of the trees, untouched by the pruning knife of the
gardener. The Japanese bestow as much time and care on the trees in
their gardens as the Western gardener would give to his choicest
flowers. The gardener’s ideal tree is not the ordinary tree of the
forest, but the abnormal specimen which age and weather have twisted
and bent into quaint and unusual shapes. Here, in the nursery garden,
we shall find specimen trees; old trees it is true, but trees giving
proof that art has had to improve upon nature, as scarcely a single
tree in the whole collection--waiting, possibly, to transform the new
garden of a _nouveau riche_ into an ancestral home--will have been
allowed to follow its own inclination of growth and shape.
The pine-tree is generally chosen as the subject for the operating
knife, and is cut and trained into all manner of shapes; an umbrella
made of a single tree of _Pinus densiflora_ trained on a framework
of light bamboo, or a junk of perfect form, the reward of years of
patience, will be waiting until it is required to be the chief feature
in a landscape garden. The curiously twisted appearance characteristic
of a Japanese pine-tree, in gardens and temple grounds, is achieved by
a clever system of pruning, and gives the trees a stunted and venerable
appearance, which they would otherwise not attain for years. The
leading shoot of each branch and most of the side ones are removed,
giving the branch a new direction, sometimes at right angles to the
previous year’s growth. This operation is repeated every year, and the
branches thinned out, so that every line of the stems can be followed.
Another favourite and very effective way of training a pine, is to
carry a long branch out over a stream or pond, and by skilful training
and cutting to give it the direction that, after a few years’ growth,
will have become natural to it, and the whole strength of the tree will
seem concentrated in that one branch. These trees should be placed
by the water’s edge or on the slope of a hill, and are often planted
leaning at all manner of angles. The gardener is never sparing in his
use of stout bamboo props, which to our Western ideas would appear
unsightly.
It is not in these trees, interesting as they always are, that the
admiration of the visitor to a Japanese nursery garden will be centred;
for how few foreigners remain long enough in the country, or take
sufficient interest in their temporary home, to construct a new garden
round it; yet how easy it seems to accomplish, when old gnarled trees
are ready grown. It would appear as though a few hours’ planning and
plotting, a few stones and trees, a few days’ work for a few coolies,
are all that is required, and the thing would be done; but remember
success depends upon the plan, one false touch would set the whole
conception ajar, so woe betide the foreigner if he were to attempt to
interfere with the making of his garden; left to himself a Japanese is
never guilty of that one false touch.
Arranged in rows on wooden platforms will be the object of our visit to
the nursery garden--the dwarf trees--whose fame has spread throughout
the world, and who seem to share with the cherry blossom the floral
fame of Japan. When first I visited the country I went prepared to
be disappointed with the dwarf trees; I had seen inferior specimens
shipped to Europe no doubt because of their inferiority, pining away
a lingering life in a climate unsuited to them, deprived of all care
and attention; for an idea prevailed in England when they were first
imported, that these tiny trees, the result of years of patient
training, required no water, and either no fresh air or else were
equally indifferent to the fiery rays of the summer suns or the icy
blasts of the winter winds. A visit to a garden in their native country
will soon reveal that such is not the case. The trees are not coddled,
it is true, but the proper allowance of water, especially in their
growing season, is most important, and they are impatient of a draught;
though many seem to stand the full rays of the sun, the best specimens
had generally some light canvas or bamboo blinds, arranged so that
they could be drawn over the stands during the hottest hours of the
scorching summer days. I have heard these trees described as tortured
trees; to me, good specimens never gave that impression, their charm
took possession of me, and a grand old pine or juniper whose gnarled
and twisted trunk suggested a giant of the forest, and yet was under
three feet in height, standing in a soft-coloured porcelain bowl, gave
me infinite pleasure. I could see no fault in them, they are completely
satisfying and give a strange feeling of repose.
Their variety is infinite, from six inches in height to as many feet;
pines, junipers, thujas, maples, larch, willows, and, among the
flowering trees, pink and white plum, single and double cherries, tiny
peach-trees, smothered by their blossoms, pyrus trained in fantastic
shapes, all will be there in bewildering choice of beauty. I have heard
of a single treasure, a weeping willow, only six inches in height, the
reward of years of patience, for which the price of 7000 yen (£700)
was paid; probably to our eyes it would have had no more value than
a humble “dwarf” which, in consequence of some slight imperfection,
would not fetch more than _sevenpence_. In a perfect specimen not only
each branch, but each twig and each leaf, must conform absolutely in
direction and proportion to the same unbending laws which govern this
art, as well as its sister arts of landscape gardening and flower
arrangement--laws which a writer says were “the iron rules laid down by
the canons of taste in the days when Iyeyasu Tokugawa paralysed into an
adamantine immobility the whole artistic and intellectual life of the
country.” So in every garden there will be failures as perfect works
of art, but beautiful in our eyes, which fail to see any difference
between the perfect specimen with its boughs bent down by the weight
of the laws which have trained it and priced it at some hundred yen,
or the “failure” by its side, beautiful and wonderful, with all its
imperfections an exquisite and dainty thing, priced at as many pence.
Perhaps one of the best opportunities for buying these imperfect trees,
which are still admired and readily bought by the Japanese themselves,
though not to be treasured as works of art, is at
[Illustration: THE OLD WISTARIA]
the sales which take place at night in the streets of Kyoto on certain
days of the month. The plants are arranged on stalls down each side
of a narrow street, and the intending purchaser has to fight his way
through a dense crowd to choose his plants. No lover of dwarf trees
should miss attending one of these sales, and perhaps the uncertainty
as to whether the plant is in good health, or the bowl containing it
is broken, adds to the excitement of bargaining with the stall-holder;
every Japanese loves a bargain, and the transaction is eagerly watched
by the crowd, and the “foreign devil” will gain their admiration if he
can hold his own against the rapacity of the salesman. As the plants
vary in price, from a few sen to two or three yen, one can afford to
carry off a sufficient number to ensure having some, at least, that
will be a reward for one’s patience. On the 1st of April the best
night-market of the year is held. The stalls will be covered with
tempting little flowering trees, their buds almost bursting and full of
promise of lovely blossoms to come--sturdy little peach-trees, their
branches thickly covered with soft velvet buds just tinged with pink;
drooping cherries wreathed with red-brown buds; slender pyrus trained
into wonderful twisted shapes; little groves of maple-trees, their
scarlet or bronze leaves just unfurling, or miniature forests of larch,
shading mossy ravines with rivers of white sand; ancient pine-trees
spreading their branches over rocky precipices rising from a bed of
pebbles; sweet-scented daphnes, golden-flowered forsythias, and early
azaleas in porcelain dishes, which are round or oval, square, shallow
or deep, and of every shade, from white, through soft greys and blues
to a deep green. Every plant is a picture in itself, and the difficulty
lies in deciding, not which to buy, but which one can bring oneself to
leave behind.
Siebold, who visited Japan and wrote the _Flora Japonica_ upwards of
sixty years ago, thus describes the dwarf trees:--
The Japanese have an incredible fondness for dwarf trees, and with
reference to this the cultivation of the Ume, or Plum, is one of
the most general and lucrative employments of the country. Such
plants are increased by in-arching, and by this means specimens are
obtained which have the peculiar habit of the Weeping Willow. A
nurseryman offered me for sale in 1826 a plant in flower which was
scarcely three inches high; this _chef d’œuvre_ of gardening was
grown in a little lacquered box of three tiers, similar to those
filled with drugs which the Japanese carry in their belts; in the
upper tier was this Ume, in the second row a little Spruce Fir, and
at the lowest a Bamboo scarcely an inch and a half high.
The Japanese still love their dwarf trees as much as they did in the
days of Siebold, and the trade in them has received additional impetus
of late years, as great numbers are exported annually to Europe and the
United States, where I fear they are not treasured as works of art, but
are only regarded as curiosities.
At different seasons of the year the nursery gardens will be gay with
the display of some especial flower. Early in May the gaudy-coloured
curtains and paper lanterns at the gates will announce, in the bold
black lettering which is one of the chief ornaments of the country,
that a special exhibition of azaleas is being held. It is scarcely
conceivable that any plants can bear so many blossoms as do these
stiff and prim little azalea-trees; the individual blooms are small,
but their serried ranks form one dense even mass, flat as a table, for
no straggling branches are allowed in these perfectly grown plants.
Every shade is there, an incredible blaze of colour, all the plants
the same shape, all practically the same size, and all in the same
shaped pots; the only variety being in the delicate hue of the faience
pots or the vivid colouring of the blossoms. The pots are arranged in
rows or stages under the blue and white checked roofing, which seems
peculiarly to belong to flower exhibitions; the effect cannot be said
to be artistic, but there is something very attractive about the little
trees, which are visited by the same crowd of sight-seers, who seem to
spend their days in “flower-viewing” and quiet feasting on the matted
benches, the latter being inseparable from these flower resorts.
Other flower exhibitions will follow in their turn--great flaunting
pæonies, brought with loving care from the gardens near Osaka; and then
the last and most treasured flower of all, the chrysanthemum. Again the
little matted or chess-board roof will be brought into requisition, and
an unceasing throng of visitors will discuss the merits of the last
new variety, or of a plant more perfectly grown than its neighbour.
Here, too, I saw plants of single chrysanthemums, like great soft pink
daisies, grown in tall narrow porcelain pots, grey-blue in colour;
left untrained and unsupported the main stem fell over the side of the
pot, and the whole plant hung down with natural grace; the effect was
charming, and I could not help thinking might easily be accomplished in
any garden.
At the end of the year may also be seen the dishes being prepared
with a combination of plum, bamboo, and pine which will be found on
the _tokonoma_ of almost every house throughout the empire at the New
Year, bringing good luck and long life to the inmates. Sometimes the
combination will be merely a flower arrangement, but usually it is of
a more lasting nature, and a little plum-tree covered with soft pink
buds, a tiny gnarled old pine, and a small plant of bamboo, will be
firmly planted in the dish, a rock and a few stones may be added for
effect, and the ground mossed over to suggest great age. Occasionally a
clump of some everlasting flower, such as _Adonis amurensis_, is used
instead of the plum.
It is probably in the nursery garden that the traveller will first
see one of the toy gardens called _Hachi-niwa_--dish gardens--where
a perfect landscape and a well-known scene is accurately represented
within the limited area of a shallow china dish, varying in size
from six inches in length to two feet. Here we have another art, for
the making of _Hachi-niwa_ is almost as much trammelled by rules and
conventions as its fellow-arts of flower arrangement and landscape
gardening, and the same unbending law of proportion is the first
consideration. Just as the landscape gardener chooses the scene which
his garden is to represent, in proportion to the size of the ground
which the future garden is intended to cover, so the maker of a
_Hachi-niwa_ must choose his scene in proportion to the size of his
dish; or, as his choice of dishes may be infinite, varying from a few
inches upwards, and being in shape round or oval, long and narrow,
with square or rounded ends; so having decided on his landscape, he
may then choose his dish. As I had been much attracted by these little
miniature gardens, each in itself a perfect picture, I determined to
learn something of the manner of their construction and to try and
grasp a few of the principles of the art. I had heard of a gardener
in Kyoto who was a great master in the art, a disciple and pupil of
one of the Tokyo professors, who might tell me what I wished to learn.
On my first visit to his house he looked incredulous at the idea of a
foreigner wishing to study the art of _Hachi-niwa_. Thinking I could
only wish to purchase a ready-made garden to carry off as a curiosity,
he appeared decidedly reserved, and reluctant to impart any information
on the subject of their composition. A friend who accompanied me, and
was more eloquent in his language than I was, assured him that I was in
earnest--not merely a passer-by, but one who had already spent many
months in his country; then his interest awoke, and he asked me to
return the next day, when he would have all the materials prepared and
I could choose my own subject.
Many a happy hour did I spend making these little gardens and learning
something of their history. A certain paraphernalia is necessary for
the construction of these miniature landscapes, and the requisite
materials include a supply of moss of every variety--close cushions
of moss to form the mountains, flat spreading moss to clothe the
rocks, white lichened moss to carpet the ground beneath the venerable
pine-trees, which in themselves are especially grown and dwarfed,
till at the age of four or five years they will only have attained
the imposing height of as many inches; leaning and bent pines for
the scenery of Matsushima or the garden of Kinkakuji, groves of tiny
maples for Arashiyama, and pigmy trees of all descriptions. Finally,
there are microscopic toys to give life to the scene--perfect little
temples and shrines, in exact imitation of the originals, modelled
out of the composition that is used for pottery, baked first in their
natural colour, then coloured when necessary and baked again; coolies,
pedlars, pilgrims in endless variety, less than an inch in height;
bridges, lanterns, _torii_, boats, junks, rafts, mills, thatch-roofed
cottages--everything, in fact, that is necessary in the making of a
landscape, down to breakwaters for the rivers, made like tiny bamboo
cages filled with stones, such as exist at every turn of rivers like
the Fuji-kawa. The necessary implements consisted of chop-sticks, the
use of which is an art in itself, a trowel suggesting a doll’s mason’s
trowel, a tiny flat-iron for smoothing the surface of the sand, besides
diminutive scoops for holding only a few grains of sand, a pair of
enlarged forceps for placing the moss, little fairy brooms about two
inches long to sweep away sand which may have got out of place, and a
sieve of like dimensions to sift white powder for a snow scene, and,
finally, a fine water sprayer to keep the moss damp and fresh.
When the selection of the dish has been made--the regulation kind being
of white or mottled blue china, in size twelve inches by eight, or
eighteen inches by twelve, about one inch deep--and the scene decided
upon, damp sifted earth will form the mountains and the foundations
in which the rocks are embedded; the hills are carefully carved and
moulded into perfect shape; crevasses, down which a torrent of white
sand will flow, to represent a river, or a mountain road running
between a gorge of terrific rocks, are marked out. Then will come the
firm planting of the stones, toy temples, houses, or bridges; the
position of the trees is carefully weighed and considered; and last of
all comes the sand--sand of a deep grey colour for deep water, lighter
in colour for the shallows, yellowish sand for the ground or roads,
snow-white granite chips for water racing down from the mossy mountains
or dashing against the cliffs, coarser shingle for the beach in sea
scenes; and the correct use of all these sands is a history in itself,
as all the different coloured varieties come from the different rivers
of Japan, and to use the wrong sand to represent water or earth would
be an unforgivable crime in the eye of the master.
To show that great men have turned their attention to these little
toy gardens, no less an artist than the celebrated Hiroshige, whose
colour-prints of the fifty-three stages of the journey on the old
Tokaido road, along which the Shoguns, in days gone by, travelled
with all the pomp and state due to their rank, from Kyoto to Yedo,
are well known and prized by all lovers of these prints, evidently
considered these scenes so suited for the making of toy gardens, that
he designed a special book in which the fifty-three views appear as
_Hachi-niwa_. The book is now, unfortunately, scarce and difficult
to obtain, but I had the delight of seeing the whole set of views in
real life, each in its little dish. My teacher told me that the first
Exhibition of _Hachi-niwa_ ever held in Kyoto would take place at the
Kyoto Club, where the various competitors would exhibit different
views, and a prize would be awarded, from votes by ballot, to the best
in the collection. Needless to say, as soon as the doors, or rather the
sliding _shoji_, of the club were thrown open to the public, I hastened
to study these perfect little works of art. Round three white-matted
rooms they stood, each dish on a low black wood stand a few inches
high, raised on a dais only another few inches from the ground, so
that to view them properly it was necessary to kneel in adoration
before them. I was asked to vote for the three I liked best, and never
did I have a greater difficulty in deciding. At first a view of Kodzu
attracted my attention, with its pine-clad cliffs, deep-indented coast
line, stony beach with a moored junk, and stretching away in the
distance an expanse of pale blue sea, in the offing being a fleet of
fishing-boats with sails not more than half an inch in size bellying in
the breeze. This seemed to me perfection; every ripple on the water
was marked in the sand, the crests of the waves white, the shadows a
deep blue, and the reflection of the junk in perfect outline--a marvel
of neatness and ingenuity. But to the Japanese this did not appeal;
they condemned it for its very perfection; any one, they said, could
make such a scene who had sufficient patience and neat fingers; whereas
the view of Kanaya appealed to them as having something grand and
yet simple in its conception. A river of white sand threaded its way
through the mossy plain, and in the distance stood the little mountain
village nestling at the foot of a range of mountains carved in stone.
This was awarded the prize, and, I was glad to think, had been made
by my teacher. Such an exhibition I had expected would be principally
visited by women and children, as I had heard that the making of
_Hachi-niwa_ was a favourite occupation for the ladies of Tokyo, but
here in Kyoto they found interest in the eyes of “grave and reverend
seigneurs” who gathered in groups about the rooms. I saw all the
members of the club, politicians, writers, poets, the greatest in the
land, engrossed in discussing the merits or demerits of toy gardens,
and I could not help thinking that here was a country indeed where
“small things amuse great minds.”