CHAPTER II
JAPANESE GARDENING HISTORY
“The stranger who has wandered far,
The friend with welcome smile,
All sorts of men who come and go,
Meet at this mountain stile—
They meet and rest awhile.”
A Hundred Verses from old Japan
The history of Japanese landscape art, like that of its country, is one of the most interesting parts of an interesting subject, because so much myth, so much poetry is intermingled with its facts and its never dull prose. It is a very human art, and it is pleasant to think that priest and prince and pauper alike have all had a hand in the making of it. In the case of the pauper, this perhaps has been by the obedient following of the dictates of the masters, so hardening the rules; but, however this may be, all classes have, sooner or later, been concerned in it, and, if the next greatest man to him who utters a wise or beautiful thought is that one who repeats it, then these others have shown their greatness by appreciation. Imitation has been the sincerest flattery.
The art of landscape gardening is said to have been introduced into Japan from India, via China; or, perhaps, from India, via China, via Korea, as so many of the Japanese arts are supposed to have come, but it seems more probable that Buddhism influenced religious sentiment—which, in its turn, had its effect on the arrangement of temple gardens, and, through those, on other gardens—than that Indian originals served in any concrete form as models. No one who knows the formality and regularity and artificiality of Indian gardens could seriously suppose those of the Japanese to be copies of them. And, in the same way, whatever they have taken from China—and all their arts came first from there—they have so adapted to their own needs and ideas, developed so much by their own genius, that they have evolved them into products wholly Japanese. It is almost as foolish to imagine that India or China created Japanese art influences as to say that, because Shakespeare took his plots from other writers and from other countries than his own, he is not the actual author of his plays; and that they are really Italian or French, as the case may be, because the post on which he flung the mantle of his world-enveloping genius happened to have come from this or that country.
Buddhism has undoubtedly been responsible for more changes in things Japanese that count to the philosopher than has any other outward or moral force. The landing of Commodore Perry, and the subsequent development of Japan into a world Power, was as nothing compared with the all-pervasive sentiment which grew from this into the hearts, the religion, the very warp and woof of the national life, so that no one could say what issues had not been affected by it. But it did not change the people, their habits, their ideals; it simply grew into them.
And so the influence of China on Japan, of which we hear so much, was by suggestion rather than by setting her a formal copy. In painting, how far has Japan advanced since she first began to work along the same lines! Comparisons are odious, but, to instance language, although Japan has taken so many words bodily from the other yellow race,—almost all her gardening names are incorporated direct from them,—how she has turned these words from the hideous, chopped, hasty noise, all consonants, gutturals, and nasals, which it was, into musical sounds, liquid as Italian, only those who have heard both can say. In poetry (although Mr. Chamberlain speaks of it as puerile), how have the Japanese surpassed their masters, and given the world some of the most exquisite (even in translation), most poignant passages in any literature! While in gardening, how have they evolved, from a formal and pretentious Chinese model (which is not without its charms, and here are Mr. Conder’s ‘quaint and fanciful conceits’ if you will) the most spontaneous-seeming, perfectly balanced, and most fascinating art of landscape gardening in the world!
Mr. Conder tells us that the sixth century saw the introduction of Chinese ideas into Japan—in monasteries, of course; for priests, in every country, were the cultivators and earliest workers in all the arts. The Chinese originator is supposed to be Yohan Koan Han, who made great artificial hills, a hundred or more feet high (‘Coal’ Hill, near the Tartar City in Peking, is one of this sort), and brought water by pipes to form artificial lakes and ponds. Later, in the time of the ‘Son’ Dynasty, another artist, Chu-Men-Ton-Kwan, adorned other artificial rockeries of equal height with flowering trees and shrubs. But before this time the Japanese had a style of their own, called the Shindai Shiki, or the ‘Imperial Hall’ style, which shows that the impulse towards artistic gardening, together with a love of Nature, already existed. Although not much is known concerning it, except that the quadrangle, about three sides of which the palace was built, contained an irregular lake, with an island and a little bridge connecting it with the shore, and that a Plum and an Orange tree grew one on each side of the entrance to the hall, it is enough to show that formalism, even then, did not reign any more than it does now. The palace to which I refer was that used for Imperial receptions, but unfortunately Mr. Conder, my authority, does not mention where it was situated.
The next great impulse to gardening, as well as to other arts, was during the Kamakura Period (from the middle of the twelfth to the beginning of the fourteenth century), when the Buddhist priests cultivated and refined it. To them, and not to the Chinese (although the names are of Chinese origin), belongs the credit of designating stones by fanciful names, and attributing sentiments and moral qualities to them. If thinking a thing so makes it so, then this charming and poetic idea well deserves its long-continued perpetuation. I cannot but prefer—even in this materialistic age when we are only just beginning to turn towards the influences of spiritual notions on hard, everyday things—a rock which rejoices in the name of the ‘Guardian Stone,’ and has its place and functions all prescribed for it, to an ordinary stone without a name or associations of any sort. To know something of geology, of botany, of any natural science, helps to interest the most casual walker or stroller in a garden: the artist is never bored by the quietest country life where he can find a picture (and he is not an artist if he cannot); and so, when it is remembered that, in addition to all these gifts of the gods which the ordinary Japanese may bring to his garden love, he may also add the more human one of historical, or mythological (they are much the same thing to him), as well as poetical and ethical, ideas too, it is not to be wondered at that gardens are a national passion.
The priests, then (to go back to history again), ascribed imaginary religious and moral attributes to the grouping of the stones, a custom which has more or less survived to this day; and gave charming and poetic names, such as ‘Cloud-shaped Island,’ ‘Pine-bark Island,’ ‘Spouting,’ and ‘Thread-Fall,’ etc., to little islets (which, with lakes, were now considered indispensable) and to cascades. At that time there was a great insistence on the water part of a garden, whether as pond, flowing river, or leaping mountain cataract; but a little later the ‘Dried-up-Water Scenery’ came into vogue, and still remains a most popular method of indicating, if not the presence, at least the influence of water. Some of these examples are so charming and so convincing that I cannot pass them without a word or two more. Sometimes a dry cascade is formed, a rough-and-tumble torrent of grey and mossy green stones, which would almost make the observer believe that real water had but that moment ceased to fling itself headlong over them, or at least that a tiny stream still trickled there. More often, however, the scene suggested is the shallow bed of a river, with round white pebbles, and a few of the more prominent prescribed rocks of classical rules, with perhaps also a pretty sandy beach which still shows the marks of the receding water, as if drought had but just overtaken it. Hills artificially arrived at, valleys and paths winding through natural-looking plantations, all help the effect and show the art, which reached its height under the direction of Soseki, a priest who flourished during the Muro Machi Period, in the fifteenth century. He laid down many rules which are still observed, although no treatise of his, so far as is known, remains.
At this time,—that of the Ashikaga Regents,—poetry, and those two arts which are so nearly allied to gardening, and which influenced it largely,—the Tea Ceremonial and Flower Arrangement,—also became popular. As more and more ceremony surrounded the dignified tea-drinking, the grounds about the room set apart for the purpose received greater attention too; and it was for this that the classic rules and standards of beauty became so fixed that, later, no man of taste dared to disagree with the opinions of the master, lest he should argue himself without taste; while an ugly design was declared by the experts ‘unlucky,’ so as to keep up the standard of the art. It is as if in our day a bold man might laugh at Dante, and call the Divine Comedy ‘all rot’! As if another Bernard Shaw might scoff at Shakespeare, and (chuckling with inward joy and amusement) declare himself his equal! As if another Robert Ingersoll should thunder out denunciations of the Bible, and jeer at Holy Writ.
Almost the only novelty which these great exponents of the art introduced were clipped shrubs and trees. While the shapes of these were never so exorbitantly ugly as those of the Dutch, they remain to this day, to my mind, the least attractive feature of Japanese gardens. This tree-clipping, one fancies, must have been introduced from Holland,—although it may have been the other way about,—for the Dutch were very early in the field, and at this time were more or less at home in Japan, where they introduced many European ideas. Or the Portuguese, who gained a footing there about this time, may have had something to do with it, for they certainly left their names, at least, behind them, as one can tell by the present pronunciation and spelling of many words.
The Official Catalogue, sent me from the Kyoto Commercial Museum, gives the history of landscape gardening so fully, though in such short measure, that, at the risk of repeating myself, I insert it verbatim, including spelling, which is not always that recognized:—
“At first, when the Chinese style of
AZALEAS BY AN OLD STAIRWAY
KYOTO
architecture was adopted in Japan, especially in palace buildings, the gardens were quite independent of the buildings. It was so when the Emperor Kammu constructed a garden called Shizenen south of his palace in Kyoto. The traces of this fact can still be seen in the garden, though it has suffered some changes. During the Fujiwara Period, a style of architecture called Shinden-zukuri (Shinden Shiki) prevailed among the upper classes. It was at this time that gardens were laid out in connexion with buildings. Besides ponds, bridges, and other ornaments, small cottages called Tsuridono were introduced into the gardens.
“The influence of the Zen sect of Buddhism and of Tea Ceremony began to tell on the gardens and buildings, especially in the Ashikaga Era. It was from this time on that the garden was laid out in harmony with the buildings. This was a decided step towards the perfection of the art. Much credit is due the masters such as the priest named Muso (1276–1351), and Soami (1435–1490), who laid out the garden of Ginkakuji, still in excellent preservation, and Kobori Enshu (1579–1647), whose masterly works are still to be admired in Katsura-no-Rikyu, the detached palace at Katsura, Kodaiji, Daitokuji, Yuboan.
“Kyoto has many gardens of note in good preservation. They show the characteristic superiority of Japanese landscape gardening in that each is so laid out that the distant natural scenery appears a part of it, giving the effect of unlimited expanse. Although the actual size of a garden may be but a small fraction of an acre, it is so constructed as to appear to extend to the distant hills.”
Other great exponents of Cha-no-yu (‘Tea Ceremony’) became, because of the bearing of the one on the other, the veritable dictators of the art. Enshiu and Sen-no-Rikiu were the most famous. The latter is named with the great general patron of all the arts, Hideyoshi, for whom he designed many gardens, and who made him in return an abbot. However, even in Japan, the favour of princes is not to be depended on, for the poor man ended by having to commit Hara-kiri, when he was over seventy years of age. Sen-no-Rikiu’s mandates have become law, but, as they are rules founded on common sense, as well as informed by poetical and ethical sentiment, they have deservedly been long-lived.
Kobori Enshiu has left many gardens to carry on his fame that, even in their present state of comparative neglect, are lovely as a poet’s dream. The Konchi-in gardens of the Nanzenji Temple, the Kodaiji Temple grounds, and a part of the old Awata Palace, all in Kyoto, may be named as beautiful monuments of his artistic genius. The first is said by the guide-books, through the arrangement of its important stones, to form the Chinese character or ideograph for ‘heart’ (心). Another, Mr. Conder tells us, is meant to suggest in miniature the Garden of Paradise; but each might be that.
While these temple and palace grounds are stately and rather formal, and of the highly finished style of composition, tea-gardens, which have most affected the artistic impulses of other gardens, have, as a rule, been kept wild, and more or less rough in character. Here is what the three greatest exponents of the art of landscape gardens and Tea Ceremonial have bequeathed to us as their ideals for a tea garden. Sen-no-Rikiu’s was: “The lovely precincts of a secluded mountain shrine, with the red leaves of autumn scattered around.” Enshiu’s was: “The sweet solitude of a landscape in clouded moonlight, with a half gloom between the trees.” Ogari Sotau’s was: “A grassy wilderness in autumn, with plenty of wild flowers.” All are different, but all are for Nature. Contrast these ideals (which are most assuredly put into practice by even modern garden makers in the Flowery Kingdom) with the gardens for tea that one sees in England—earwiggy places of toppling arbour and untidy formality, often enough: or with German, or German-American beer gardens or picnic grounds, with their noise, and plank tables, and smell of beer (and humanity): or even with the open-air cafés of France and Italy, with the pathos of their vines, and their struggling plants in pots or tubs!
So, from the end of the fourteenth century for two hundred years, the ‘Tea Garden’ Style—or what might be called the ‘Classical Japanese idea’ of gardens—reigned supreme; and although the modern, more ornate, more artificial modes were adopted later (so that the extravagance and luxury in garden adornment had to be curbed by Imperial Edict near the middle of the last century), yet we see in this style a sweet and poetic interpretation of Nature whch has grown into the bone and sinew of the art, and which is to this day the most persistent feature in their gardens. Just as Buddhism has grown into the very lives of the people, has mingled itself with their ancient Shinto religion,—so that, though you may be born a Shintoist, you must die a Buddhist,[1]—so these ‘back-to-nature’ ideas in gardening have grown into the innermost hearts of the people, rich and poor, wise and simple, and have become an expression of their character.
People are born poets and artists or they are not. In Japan generally they are; and even the mercenary and ‘progressive’ (save the mark!) spirit of this mechanical, boiler-hammering, railway-laying, factory-building age cannot wholly wrest from them their inheritance. From history to prophecy: if ever it should, then the day that Japan ceases to love her gentle-spirited gardens, and to rejoice in their peace and their healing restfulness to the soul, that day also will she lose her love for children and youth; she will lose her pity and her kindliness, her art and her poetry, and with them her wonderful patriotism, her fearless courage, her strength and power in war, her steadfast devotion and self-sacrifice. She will lose all, in a word, that makes her not only greatest in the Orient, but one of the greatest nations in the whole world; for these things are of the spirit, and when the spirit dies, the man, the nation, is doubly and eternally dead.
- ↑ The Buddhist ceremonial is almost invariably used for funerals, even among the most rigid Shintoists. Indeed, there is no Shinto funeral ceremony.