CHAPTER X
GREEN GARDENS
“Tranquillity and peace in this still place,
No more of movement than white birds that stand
Leg deep in water, silent as the land.
Oh! cool green garden, give me of thy grace.”
One of the first things that strike the ‘Foreigner’ (a title the Anglo-Saxon will never willingly assume anywhere; and he has to use the word ‘Native,’ in Japan, for the first time without thereby implying a compliment to his own country) is the absence of vivid colour in Japanese gardens. He has come all a-tiptoe with expectation, perhaps, thinking that the land of the flower-loving Japanese will far surpass in brilliancy and splendour of colour the Gorgeous East, as he has seen it in Egypt and India, even in China. He is chilled and saddened by the slanting rain, which he may have hoped would greet him only in Hiroshige’s and Hokusai’s prints; he cannot yet see the beauty in the delicate, pale ribbons of mist that are laid across the landscape; he is outraged, perhaps, that, having travelled so far to escape his own English climate, he has happened on a wetter example; he will not see the poetry of its dim distances, the pale beauty of its wan skies; he is annoyed and disgusted that the peasants wear dull blue, and the high-class people soft greys and mauves and browns, instead of the rainbow-hued kimonos he had looked for; and he is aggrieved when he visits his first gardens—expecting that there, at least, he will find the colour he has come so far to see—to discover that there are only little bits of country landscape that lie behind the picturesque gates, and that, as likely as not, it is all green—as Nature generally is.
The gnarled old trees are a deep and sombre green, the slender saplings are a delicate golden green (these two types so loved by this gentle nation, who venerate age and adore youth); the Pines are a rusty green, the new Reeds by the water are emerald green, the Bamboos and the Willows are silvery green; the stone lanterns, even, have their embroidery of mossy green, while the very lake itself, overhung by trees and shrubs, is of that cool green that only shadowed nooks know. But who, at first, thinks of even all this range and variety of green as colour? Where we had looked for a passion of scarlet Azaleas, a riot of purple Wistaria, a mingling of many-hued Lilies, and of Chrysanthemums that should not be like any that we had ever seen at flower shows at home—who but is a little disappointed to find only the rest and serenity of green? Do all the books form a conspiracy to lie? These artists, too—has even Mr. Tyndale joined the league to deceive? Or where do they find the flowers and the colours that they paint? Shall we, too, join them, and waste away our letters of credit by buying highly-coloured picture post cards, and try to delude ourselves, or, better still, our friends at home, into the belief that we have seen these colours, these gardens?
Now, the truth is, as usual, that we can see only one side of the crystal of verity at a time, and it has many facets. While it is a fact that the basis of Japanese gardening is greenness, its fundamental purpose being a place for peace and repose and for quiet contemplation of Nature, which that harmonious, living colour assists more than any other in securing, yet it does not follow that it is nothing else but this. While vegetation is the last thing to be considered in making a garden,—it being the flesh that covers the bones, or the stones, of its skeleton,—the green might be regarded as the natural complexion, and the basis on which the flowers of dress appear to adorn. It is all another exemplification of how close to Nature these gardens are, that as with her green may be found the year round, so may colour, too, if one knows where to look for it. And although it is easily possible for a man to enter twenty gardens in, say, the Japanese July, and to find no flowers, it would be very hard for him to go into three in April, and see no Cherry blossoms, Irises, Wistaria, or Azaleas. All gardens may, therefore, be said to be green gardens at some time of the year, though few can be called so always.
I venture to assert that, in spite of all that one reads in gardening books on Japan, as to their coldness and sombreness of colouring, no gardeners in the world make a more intelligent effort to have a floral succession the year round than they do; for, with this poetic people, it must be understood that the autumn Maples and winter berries would be included with the flowers. And why the babies in their bright kimonos are not placed in the same category it is hard to say.
It is the greatest mistake to think, as is so often maintained, that in a Japanese garden, because its background and leading features are, as they ought to be, green, its planners have arrived at this end through a defective colour sense. It is probably from a different, a less arrogant, and a subtler colour sense than most nations have. My own theory is that different individuals, and even different races, have eyes sensitive to different parts of the spectrum. For instance, I see reds in a landscape where my sailor husband sees greens and blues. On botanizing expeditions here, in Hong-Kong, some of the
KURADANI TEMPLE GARDEN
KYOTO
party would pass a glowing yellow flower by, but would rescue a tiny purple bloom beside it from what seemed to others of us obscurity. And of those who are most alive to the purple end of the spectrum are the Japanese. It is not, as one hears so often stated, that they do not see colour or care for it, but that, instead, being sensitively organized in that respect, they prefer the delicate to the more striking effect; also, in a way, they are so entirely en rapport with Nature that what she gives them at different times of the year is what they like best. For instance, in winter, the pallid snowflake flowers of the Plum are the loved herald of the oncoming spring-time, when the petals and the snowflakes too will have fallen and finished. Spring, in other lands than Japan, gives us misty purples and pale mauves in her flowers, and if to this poetic people the fragile beauty of the Iris, the delicate, drooping grace of the Wistaria, appeal more than the flaming glory of their Azaleas, it is only, perhaps, because the wistfulness of the charm of these flowers suits their character and climate, and is more in sympathy with their ideas. Certainly, in the autumn, their worship of colour equals that of any nation, if it does not surpass it; but the season is then with them in this. The sparkle of frost is in the wind, the blood runs faster, the sun shines; and Nature, in air, landscape, and man, bounds and glows in harmony. India with her splendid sunshine never gave more lavish colour than this sweet, misty land of grey skies, suddenly glowing with radiant sunlight, furnishes in her many-hued Chrysanthemums; nor can any dyes compare with the red blood that courses then through the Maples, and turns their tiny starry leaves to crimson and flame-colour and scarlet.
Perhaps it should be added that the Japanese sense of the appropriateness of colour is keener than ours. Their babies are ambient bunches of flowers, toddling butterflies; but the reds and rose-colours are for the girls, the blues and golden browns for the boys (bright enough they are, however, for the most gay-minded male!). Such horror as was always aroused in the hearts of the shopkeepers when I wanted a maple-hued kimono for my brown-eyed little son, and a pink peony-ed one for my rose-cheeked smaller boy! They could only recommend such shades for girls. At seven the masculine dress becomes duller, and at twelve the feminine one, and by the time a girl is married she wears the most discreet greys, and demure, dull blues and mauves imaginable. A dear little Japanese friend, who made me a present of a lovely piece of crêpe of mauve and scarlet when I was in my twenties, tactfully excused herself for this insult to my honourable years by explaining that European ladies can wear colours which only young geisha girls wear in Japan. To each his season and colour: so to childhood and autumn the gay hues, to spring and adolescence the pale ones, to winter and old age the dark and sombre ones.
While it is an axiom that four-fifths of the trees in the garden must be evergreen, it would be wrong to suppose that all this vegetation is kept to that sombre note. That the relief of flowers and of colour is sought and intended is seen by the fact that hardly a garden in the country has not its Plum or Cherry tree, its Irises, thin-petalled as if made of tissue paper or of fine soft silk, its pots of Peonies, or Asters, or Morning Glories, or sweet-scented splendid Lilies, or its little Maples to warm it in the fall. Also, among the evergreen trees are included many flowering trees and Camellias, whose waxy blooms come to cheer December and January, and various golden-stemmed Bamboos, that give a warm note of colour even in the snow. Evergreens, in groups, are set near the living-room windows, so that a continued sense of life and greenness may be seen from them throughout the changes of the four seasons. Deciduous trees, always excepting Plum and Cherry, and perhaps, occasionally, Maple, are not usually put very close to the house, because of the litter their falling leaves make in the autumn (for the Japanese are tidy garden keepers), and because dead leaves there bring a sense of desolation. But, with the nice weighing of advantages against disadvantages, those mentioned, because of their beauty in the cheerless early spring season, because of their fragrance, because of the sentiment and poetry they inspire, may be put close to the house, and it is even a particularly delicate attention to plant a Plum tree near the guest-room of houses big and rich enough to afford such a chamber.
Plum trees, however, are for rich and poor alike, and do not cost as much to keep as a dog or a cat, with us. Lafcadio Hearn has a pretty translation of a Japanese seventeen-syllable verse, called ‘Happy Poverty,’ which runs—
“Wafted into my room the scent of the flowers of the Plum tree
Changes my broken window into a source of delight.”
Trees which lose their leaves in the autumn are usually planted in a group with evergreens, because they not only display better the flowers in the blooming-time, but also conceal the bare branches and continue the effect of green in the winter. Indeed, that is the secret of green gardens,—the colour which, according to Chinese ideas, signifies life is always in itself beautiful and worthy of admiration, and at the same time it venerates age, and brings out the tender freshness of youth. It may typify the continuance of life, even though death and change may appear with it.
Flower-beds in hideous geometrical designs—anchors, hearts, and crescents—or patterned ‘carpet’ effects, such as we see in the West, even ‘herbaceous borders’ of a hundred swearing shades, are quite unknown in Japan. What nearest approaches garden-beds are the masses of Chrysanthemums in the grounds of some palaces, in the open space facing the ladies’ chamber, as in the Koma-Chi-Ma, Tsubone-Veya, and in the grounds of the Imperial Palace at Akasake.
Maples are usually placed at some distance from the house, or, as in the case of Plum, interspersed with evergreens and Laurels, as their bold beauty needs distance and atmosphere to enhance it. But those little star-shaped leaves, ‘the shape of a baby’s hand,’ are so admired for themselves that they are often seen set beside stone lanterns (as in the Ashinoyu garden, facing page 156), with a slender branch obscuring the light, and to make a pattern upon it in silhouette, when the lamp is lit at night.
I think it is because the Japanese shrink from the idea of death in their gardens, quite as much as it is that they dislike the litter of fallen leaves, the untidiness of fading stalk and petal, that they do not often introduce floral annuals into their gardens, except in pots. Indeed, one reason why it can be said that more than half the gardens in Japan are green gardens is because, except for the flowering trees and shrubs already mentioned, the Lotus in the pond, the Irises beside it, and the Wistaria on the trellis which overhangs it, most of the flowers seen in them are in pots. Azaleas, of course, there are in plenty, but they are trimmed and cut, perhaps at the very moment of flowering, and they are grown for their greenness as much as for their blooms. These clipped shrubs are used in little gardens, to suggest hills, but, to my mind, look more like green puff-balls, generally. Examples of clipped Azaleas can be seen in the accompanying pictures. Chrysanthemums, Asters, Peonies, Lilies, Morning Glories, as well as other flowers which have been introduced from foreign countries, are all brought out in the prettiest of pots,—in blue and white, clean and fresh, or in cool pale green ones, delicious in colour.
It will be seen from the pictures—of Peonies (facing page 234), of Chrysanthemums (facing page 266), and even of specimen Irises (facing this page)—that the plants appear to have been set out as if at a flower show. The Chrysanthemums were in a tea-house garden, and had light bamboo sheds or screens over them, to protect them from the rain that might come and spoil their fluffy, curled locks. The Peonies—that is, the small variety—are never grown in the ground, although the tree sorts seen in the same picture always are. Irises are usually found in any gardens,
SPECIMEN IRISES
big or small, growing in a group beside the well or water-basin, or on the banks of a lake or stream, with their feet dabbling in the water; but the very finest are grown in pots and tended like babies. These[1] (in the picture) were cultivated by an old priest, who took no end of trouble in helping the artist in grouping and arranging them. His old wife posed as the ‘life’ of the picture, and how delighted was the husband when Mr. Tyndale, dissatisfied with the withered face among the fresh flowers, while still preserving the likeness, changed her into the pretty, wide-eyed mousmé who now peeps out from the flowers.
“Aha!” the ancient Darby said, chuckling, “you have given me a pretty young wife! Very good! Very good!” He felt that he was a fine figure of a man, after all!
Of green pictures, painted at the moment when they are not green, there are many in this book, but of those whose intention it was to suggest repose and peace, undisturbed by the mental uplift of brighter colour, there are only two—that of a Buddhist temple garden at Kofu (page 126), and that of the Kuridani Temple at Kyoto (facing page 136). Nami-Kawa San’s green garden at Kyoto (facing page 160), and the rock garden at Nikko (facing page 284), although green, are more properly classed with water and rock gardens.
But all the gardens are green sometimes, just as Nature is, and they linger in the memory constantly verdant and fresh, joyous with the spring and soothing with the summer, never sad with autumn, and steadfast with the winter.
- ↑ Iris Kaempferi. Some of the blooms were nearly a foot across. The colour, too, was a triumph of the grower, as a true pink is most difficult of attainment, the flowers inclining always to mauves.