as it were, so as to seem to take possession of the whole thing.[1] 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 representation 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 Shui 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 Hemisphere, 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.
