"All the joy of my existence is concentrated around the
pillow which giveth me nightly rest, all the hope of my
days I find in the beauties of Nature that ever please my
eyes."
"Hō-jō-ki" (Trans. by F. V. Dickins).
Japanese and English Gardens
There is nothing particularly æsthetic about the average English garden. When the bedding-out time comes a slow old gardener puts in his plants. Later on we see a crude blaze of colour—scarlet geraniums, yellow calceolarias, blue lobelias, the green grass and the ochre-coloured paths. And this is the colour effect of the average English garden, a colour effect that makes the eyes ache and shames the very flowers so unwisely set in this fashion. The truth of the matter is that we do not understand the art of flower arrangement. We buy flowers just to make the garden look bright, under the impression that brightness is an abstract quality with which we should like to spend our summer days. An Englishman once attempted to make a landscape garden after the Japanese manner. He was extremely proud of the result, and on one occasion he took a Japanese gentleman round to see it. The Japanese gentleman exclaimed, with extreme courtesy: "It is very beautiful; we have nothing at all like it in Japan!" The Englishman failed in his attempt to imitate because he considered gardening a hobby, while in Japan the garden is something indelibly associated with Japanese life itself. In Japan it is an ancient cult to which poets and artists have given years of thought, a cult[Pg 155] in which emotion, memory, and religion play their part.
The Love of Flowers, its Growth and Symbolism
One of the most striking, and certainly one of the most pleasing, characteristics of the Japanese is their intense love of flowers and trees. Merry parties set out to see the azaleas bloom, or the splendour of the pink-white cherry-blossom, or the scarlet glory of the maple-trees. This "flower-viewing" is an integral part of their existence. The very kimono of the laughing children look like little gardens of flowers themselves. Take away their landscape, and you take away at once their sense of poetry, and, we may almost add, the floral side of their religion too, for the Japanese worship flowers and trees in a way utterly impossible to the more prosaic Westerner.
During a recent spring the magnolia-trees in Kew Gardens afforded a wonderfully beautiful spectacle. But there were few to see these leafless trees with their profusion of lotus-like blossom. The most appreciative spectator was a child, who sat under the sweet-scented branches, gathered the fallen petals in her little brown hands, and made up a quaint story as she did so. But in Japan, where magnolia-trees bloom too, a hundred little poems would be threaded to the branches, and little cakes made in imitation of the petals. Perhaps, too, a branch of magnolia would be set in a vase, the object of silent admiration of the members of some tea ceremony. And afterwards the spray of blossom would be gently placed on a river or buried with joy and reverence for the beauty it had exhibited in its brief hour of life.
The love of flowers is only a small part of the Japanese love of Nature. There was an evolutionary growth in this worship as in every other, and we are[Pg 156] inclined to think that the Japanese go very far back in this matter, and learnt first of all to love rocks and stones. To us rocks and stones are of interest only to the geologist and metallurgist, merely from a scientific point of view, and it seems almost incredible that rocks and stones have a poetical meaning. But it is otherwise to the Japanese. The Japanese garden is essentially a landscape garden. The owner of a garden falls in love with a certain view. It haunts him, and awakens in him some primitive feelings of delight that cannot be analysed. He brings that view perpetually before him in his garden, in miniature, perhaps, but a miniature of wonderful exactness. His garden thus becomes a place of happy memory, and not a plot laid out with gaudy flowers and terraces that can have no meaning, no poetry to his mind. Without a doubt Japanese gardens, with their gorgeous flowers, merry sunshine, and the sweet tinkle of dainty fairy-bells suspended from the branches of the trees, are the most delightful in the world.
Japanese Gardens
One thing that strikes us about Japanese gardens that we do not find in England is the wonderful economy displayed in their schemes. Suburbia often makes the excuse that their pocket-handkerchief of a garden is much too small to be made beautiful. Too small to be made beautiful? Why, the Japanese can make a wonderful little garden in a space no bigger than a soup-plate! Necessity is the mother of invention, and if we only loved Nature more we should soon find the means to make our smallest gardens attractive. The great Japanese designer of gardens, Kobori-Enshiu, said that an ideal garden should be like "the sweet solitude of a landscape clouded by moonlight, with a half-gloom between the trees."
[Pg 157]
Miss Florence Du Cane has much to say concerning Japanese rocks and stones. What poetry is suggested in the names of some of these garden stones—for example, "The Stone of Easy Rest." Then, among the lake stones we have one called "Wild Wave Stone," that at once suggests Matsushima, with its waves breaking against innumerable rocks.
The stone or wooden lamps are very important ornaments in a Japanese garden. The idea was borrowed from Korea, and they are still sometimes known as "Korean towers." They are seldom lit, except in temple gardens, but they need no jewel of light to make them beautiful. They are rich in amber and green moss, and in the winter they catch the snow and make ghost lanterns of exquisite beauty. Another feature of a Japanese garden is the Torii, a simple arch of wood shaped like a huge Chinese character. Shintō in origin, no one has as yet discovered what they were originally intended to represent, though there have been many diverse opinions on the subject. These gates to nowhere are extremely fascinating, and to look at them with the sea about their feet is to dream of a far-away fairy tale of childhood.
The lakes, cascades, tiny bridges, the stepping-stones over the winding ways of silver sand, form a place of retreat indeed. And then the colour of the Japanese garden! Every month has some fresh colour scene as the plum and cherry and peach-trees come into bloom. Trailing over the ground among the pine-needles or looking into the clear blue lake, one may see the azaleas. If there were ever a flower that personified colour then it is surely the azalea. It is the rainbow of flowers, and there seems scarcely a shade of colour not to be found in its blossoms. To look at the azaleas is to look into the very paint-box of Nature herself. Then[Pg 158] at another season of the year we get the iris in purple and lavender, yellow and white, or the beautiful rose-coloured lotus that opens with a little explosion on the placid waters, as if to herald its coming to perfection. The last colour glory of the year is the splendour of the maple-trees. We have a fine crimson effect in our English blackberry leaves, but they lie hidden in the wet autumn hedges. In Japan the maples do not hide. They seem everywhere alive in a splendid flame. In the autumn it appears as if the maple-trees had conjured with the sunset, for at that time Japan is not the Land of the Rising Sun, but the land of the sun going down in a great pageant of red leaves. And is that the end of Nature's work for the year? No, indeed. Last of all comes the snow, and the beauty of its effect lies not so much in the soft flakes themselves, but in the way they are caught and held upon the beautiful little houses and temples and lanterns. See a Japanese garden then, and you see the white seal of Nature's approval upon it all. The snow scene is perhaps Nature's supreme touch in Japan, after all; and it is a scene dear to the hearts of the Japanese. In midsummer a Japanese emperor once had the miniature mountains in his gardens covered with white silk to suggest snow, and, no doubt, to give an imaginary coolness to the scene. A slight acquaintance with Japanese art will reveal the fact that snow affords a favourite theme for the artist's brush.
Nature in Miniature
The Japanese, for the most part, are little in stature, and have a love of things in miniature. Lafcadio Hearn tells a charming story of a Japanese nun who used to play with children and give them rice-cakes no bigger than peas and tea in very minute cups. Her love of[Pg 159] very small things came as the result of a great sorrow, but we see in this Japanese love of little objects something pathetic in the nation as a whole. Their love of dwarf trees, hundreds of years old, seems to say: "Be honourably pleased never to grow big. We are a little people, and so we love little things." The ancient pine, often less than a foot in height, does not render its age oppressive, and is not a thing to fear just because it is so very small. Westerners have been inclined to describe the dwarf Japanese tree as unnatural. It is no more unnatural than the Japanese smile, and reveals that the nation, like the Greeks of old, is still closely in touch with Nature.
The Pine-tree
The pine-tree is the emblem of good fortune and longevity. That is why we see this tree at almost every garden gate; and it must be admitted that a pine-tree is a more graceful talisman than a rusty old horse-shoe. In a certain Japanese play we find the following: "The emblem of unchangeableness—exalted is their fame to the end of time—the fame of the two pine-trees that have grown old together." This refers to the famous pines of Takasago. Mr. Conder tells us that at wedding feasts "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." In other words, it shows that Woman's Suffrage exists not in Japan, and that the Japanese wife is subject to her lord and master, which is a very pretty way of suggesting, what is in England a very dangerous subject. The design referred to above typifies "eternal union." The pine-tree really[Pg 160] symbolises the comradeship of love, the Darby and Joan stage of old married people in Japan.
A Great Nature-lover
Kamo No Chōmei was a Buddhist recluse of the twelfth century, and he wrote a little book called Hō-jō-ki ("Notes from a Ten-feet-square Hut"). In this volume he describes how he left the ways of the world and took up his abode in a hut on the mountain-side. Chōmei used to sing and play and read his beloved books in the very heart of the country. He writes: "When the sixtieth year of my life, now vanishing as a dewdrop, approached, anew I made me an abode, a sort of last leap, as it were, just as a traveller might run himself up a shelter for a single night, or a decrepit silkworm weave its last cocoon." We see him, a happy old man, slowly trudging along the hills, gathering blossom as he went, ever watching with delighted eyes the ways and secrets of Nature. With all his musings, so full of poetry, his religious character plays a part. He writes with dry humour: "I do not need to trouble myself about the strict observance of the commandments, for, living as I do in complete solitude, how should I be tempted to break them?" A very different experience to that of some of the Indian anchorites, who find in solitude a veritable thunder-cloud of temptation! But Chōmei was a happy soul, and we mention him here to show that the mainstay of his life were not the things of the world, but the workings of Nature on the hills and in the valleys, in the flowers and in the trees, in the running water and in the rising moon. To quote his own words: "You have fled from the world to live the life of a recluse amid the wild woods and hills, thus to bring peace to your soul and walk in the way of the Buddha."
[Pg 161]
The Festival of the Dead
We find the Festival of the Dead the greatest argument of all in support of Japan's love of Nature. It was a woman's thought, this Festival of the Dead, and there is something about it so tender, so plaintive, that it could only have come from a woman. In July the spirits of the dead return from their dark abode. Little meals are prepared for this great company of ghosts, and the lanterns hang in the cemeteries and on the pine-trees of good fortune at the garden gates. The Japanese used to commit hara-kiri,[1] but let us not forget that their souls come back again to wander in a country that seems to be one great garden. And why do they come back? They come back with their soft footsteps over the hills and far away from over the sea to look at the flowers once more, to wander in the gardens where they spent so many happy hours. They come, that invisible host, when the sun shines brightly, when it seems that blossoms floating in the breeze suddenly turn into butterflies, when life is at its full, when Death and the dark place where Emma-Ō reigns cannot be endured. What a time to come back again! What a silent compliment to Nature that that great company of souls should wander back to her arms in the summer-time!
The Japanese Flag and the Chrysanthemum
Most of us are familiar with the Japanese flag depicting a red sun on a white ground, and we should naturally suppose that such an emblem was originally connected with the Sun Goddess. In this supposition, however, we should be entirely wrong. Astrological designs in[Pg 162] ancient days figured upon the Chinese banners, and Professor B. H. Chamberlain describes them thus: "The Sun with the Three-legged Crow that inhabits it, the Moon with its Hare[2] and Cassia-tree, the Red Bird representing the seven constellations of the southern quarter of the zodiac, the Dark Warrior (a Tortoise) embracing the seven northern constellations, the Azure Dragon embracing the seven eastern, the White Tiger embracing the seven western, and a seventh banner representing the Northern Bushel (Great Bear)." The Chinese banners depicting the sun and moon were particularly noteworthy, because the sun represented the Emperor's elder brother and the moon his sister. In the seventh century the Japanese adopted these banners; but as time went on they dropped many of the quaint astrological designs so dear to the heart of the Chinese. When in 1859 a national flag became necessary the sun banner pure and simple was adopted; but a plain orb without rays was not sufficient, and a more elaborate design was executed—the sixteen-petalled chrysanthemum. We can only conjecture the connection between the sun and the chrysanthemum. Both were venerated in ancient China, and we may assume that the Japanese artist, in wishing to depict the sun's rays, found excellent material in copying the flower of a wild chrysanthemum.
The chrysanthemum is Japan's national flower, and we owe to Nippon its culture in our own country. Mythological scenes, particularly that of the Treasure Ship with the Gods of Luck on board is a favourite[Pg 163] device, fashioned entirely with innumerable chrysanthemums. Boats, castles, bridges, and various other objects are designed from the same flower with wonderful dexterity. Japan has always been happy in her use of names, and to no greater advantage than in the naming of her chrysanthemums. There is poetry in such names as "Sleepy Head," "Golden Dew," "White Dragon," and "Starlit Night."
The chrysanthemum is certainly a fitting symbolism for the Imperial standard. Once, like our English rose, it figured as a badge in the War of the Chrysanthemums, a protracted civil war that divided the nation into two hostile factions. Now the chrysanthemum stands for a united Empire.
Lady White and Lady Yellow
Long ago there grew in a meadow a white and a yellow chrysanthemum side by side. One day an old gardener chanced to come across them, and took a great fancy to Lady Yellow. He told her that if she would come along with him he would make her far more attractive, that he would give her delicate food and fine clothes to wear.
Lady Yellow was so charmed with what the old man said that she forgot all about her white sister and consented to be lifted up, carried in the arms of the old gardener, and to be placed in his garden.
When Lady Yellow and her master had departed Lady White wept bitterly. Her own simple beauty had been despised; but, what was far worse, she was forced to remain in the meadow alone, without the converse of her sister, to whom she had been devoted.
Day by day Lady Yellow grew more fair, in her master's garden. No one would have recognised the common flower of the field now; but though her petals[Pg 164] were long and curled and her leaves so clean and well cared for, she sometimes thought of Lady White alone in the field, and wondered how she managed to make the long and lonely hours pass by.
One day a village chief came to the old man's garden in quest of a perfect chrysanthemum that he might take to his lord for a crest design.[3] He informed the old man that he did not ............