CHAPTER IX
LANDSCAPE GARDENS
“One says your little garden stands
Encompassed by trees.
I speak not loud but my heart replies:
My garden’s bounded by the skies,
All’s mine that my mind’s heart sees.”
Practically speaking, all gardens in Japan are landscape gardens, and one can almost turn the phrase inside out and declare that all landscapes in Japan are gardens. The gardens are reproductions, on a small scale, of the scenery of Japan, and the scenery of Japan is a large edition of its gardens. It is not a case, however, of the chicken and the egg, for the gardens do not claim to have appeared first, and to have set the fashion for the landscape. The art, as has been said before, originally came from China, but it was so breathed upon by the national genius, so enriched by the inborn poetic nature of its Japanese interpreters, that it became, in the truest sense, a Japanese institution.
I once got hold of a literal translation of old Omar’s Rubaiyát, with the Persian text in parallel columns. An Indian scholar, a high-caste Brahmin, was good enough to give me his views on delicate and elusive bits in the original which had escaped the translator, and he read aloud the sonorous, smooth-flowing rhymes in a voice which was itself poetry. FitzGerald’s so-called translations appeared only as foot-notes here and there, at which in the beginning I wondered—but not later. The literal renderings, in prose, seemed bare and mean (although in themselves remarkable enough, all things considered) compared with the rich and varied imagery, the depth of thought and of feeling which the Irish poet had read into them. The Persian sounded beautiful, it is quite true, but what is sound, in such a case, compared with the meaning of the words! As regards the great masters of music, the sound is more than words can express, and their continued and inexhaustible charm lies in the fact that they lead on the imagination to fields where words are useless. In poetry, the thought is the key that unlocks the door of the imagination, and the music of it is only an adornment.
So, in the Japanese translations of the Chinese art of garden making, as in FitzGerald’s Omar, there is more of thought, of beauty, of richness, and fulness of aim and scope, than ever was dreamed of by the originators.
Chinese gardens, of many sorts, are not unknown to me. Such survivals as exist of palace grounds I have written of elsewhere. Outdoor enclosures in their formal grandeur are so architectural in conception, and so combined with the involved details of buildings, of walls and of gates, that one thinks of the trees and the flowers as adjuncts of the builder’s art, and not as inmates of gardens. They are as Palms in handsome jars in a drawing-room, which we do not therefore call a conservatory. Of Chinese temple enclosures—those green-bowered places which almost alone have trees, on hill-sides or on plains (these because of their bareness being yearly scourged by droughts and devastating floods)—I have also spoken; as well as of the private gardens of rich men—high-walled, elaborate, magnificent, from which Nature, in her shyness and inconsequence, and sweet, coy innocence, her calm and restful peace, has been shut out.
Yes, it is true that China suggested the idea of gardens to Japan, and for this all honour to her; but let it also be conceded at the same time that wherever Japan adhered closely to the modes and expressions of that original idea, the main charm of her own compositions was gone.
The Chinese said: “Let us plant trees and flowering shrubs and sweet-smelling herbs near our houses, to add to them beauty, and for a pleasant place wherein to walk when the sun is hot and the heart is weary.” And the thought was a good one, and Japan adopted it, as she adopts to this day anything that strikes her as true, or useful, or excellent; and so long as she kept only to this, and let Nature inspire her,—or her own artists, whose guide was Nature, laid out and arranged these open spaces about her homes and high places,—all was well. But when she slavishly imitated the Chinese interpreters of her own idea, she lapsed. I firmly believe that if Japan had continued to copy even and only the gardens of China, and had gone her course in other ways, she would not be to-day one of the great nations of this earth. For I assert unfalteringly that, her gardens being an expression of the national spirit, the beautiful outward and visible sign of the country’s inward and spiritual grace, if they had not existed in their present state of evolution Japan would have become, like China, corrupt, artificial, mercenary, of few extraordinary private virtues, and of no civic and public ones. This is no exaggeration. I have tried through my entire book to show how Japanese gardens are the outcome of Japanese spirit, are typical of her advance, spiritual and moral as well as artistic. Their gardening is not so much an art as an evolution—the growth of character; and if they had not evolved in this direction in exactly the way they have, they would not now be the people they have become, and their gardens would speak a different language, their message would not be the same.
A quotation from Mr. W. G. Aston’s Japanese Literature will, perhaps, illustrate my meaning. He is speaking of the days of the Shogunate, when everything Chinese was admired and copied at the expense of all that was fresh and unspotted in literature, art, manners, and morals in Japan:—
“As time went on, the code of morals derived from the teachings of the philosophers of China, and expounded and applied by their Japanese followers, gained in precision and detail. But what had originally been a wholesome and vivifying influence became a burden to the nation. It fell most heavily on the samurai, all whose actions were governed by strict rules and punctilious etiquette, in a way that was fatal to any reasonable share of personal freedom. In short, the great fault of the later Shogunate was over-regulation in almost every department of life. I was one day walking with the late Count Terashima, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, in one of those beautiful creations of the landscape gardener’s art which abound in Tokio. He pointed to a grove of Fir trees, standing by an artificial lake, which had been trimmed and trained by generations of gardeners into quaint and not unpleasing, but stunted, shapes. ‘There,’ he said, ‘is an emblem of the Japanese nation under the Bakufu (Shogunate). That is what Chinese learning did for us.’ ”
But, luckily for the lover of Nature, as well as for the lover of this nation, these artificialities, these conventions, could not permanently hold the affection and respect of the people. As they threw off the yoke of the Regents, so they cast from them the slavish imitations of Chinese literary forms, arts, and crafts, and allowed the native genius to assert itself. From the beginning, we are told, in order to keep up the standard of landscape gardening, a bad design was considered unlucky, and the minds of sages, artists, and philosophers combined not only to prevent any decline in the science, but even to improve it and enlarge its scope.
I add another quotation, from a quaint and delightful book which has just come to me from the Kyoto Commercial Museum—the Official Guide:—
“ ‘The growth of the gardens shows the prosperity of Rakuyo, while their lack speaks of her decline,’ observed a Chinese writer in speaking of the relation that the art of gardening bore to Rakuyo, an ancient Chinese metropolis. ‘And Rakuyo is the best barometer registering the state of affairs in the country. Her rise means peace and happiness in the nation, while
BUDDHIST TEMPLE GARDEN, KOFU
her fall indicates the decline of the country.’ The statement brings out the truth that gardening is the product of peaceful and luxurious life.”
Where an effect of Nature was the first consideration always, even the degeneration into what the Chinese considered an effect of Nature could not permanently injure the art. It was, in this, as when in our day modern artists imitate the ‘Colourists,’ the ‘Impressionists,’ men who, whatever their faults, are thinking and working from their own ideas. So long as Monet and Manet, and half a dozen others, paint Nature as they see her, all is well. Even when the ‘little men’ paint Nature as they think Monet would see her, not much harm is done, for he who imitates can hardly himself become a prophet. Thus, all who are worthy go back to the original source. The decline would come if the imitation of imitation set in, when a vicious arithmetical progression to the debasement of art would ensue—an inconceivable state of affairs with the great Teacher, Nature, always before us! So also the landscape artist in Japan, whatever restrictions and classic formulæ he has had laid upon him, has first, and last, and all the time, the direct command to consult Nature. So obligatory is this rule, that, as I have frequently had occasion to say in these pages, very often, even to the initiated, man-made gardens seem merely the happy chance effect of wild Nature alone.
On my eventful first visit to Japan I had the lucky opportunity of witnessing the construction of a landscape garden. Everything except the ground itself was put there according to a well-thought-out plan—the rocks, the trees, the shrubs, and even the waterfall; and yet, when I left the place five months later, it was as if it had always been. A sloping hill-side had been chosen (the house, I regret to say, was one of the ugliest specimens of ‘foreign’—that is to say, our mid-Victorian—architecture ever built), and another part of the same grounds had already been completed before I arrived.
First of all, some of the hill was hollowed out to make an irregular valley, or rather gorge, and near the top of this a group of rough blocks of granite was firmly embedded. There is a builder’s rule which was observed by the Greeks, laying down the proportion of an upright column which should be underground; this was, to the best of my recollection, one-sixth of the total length. Those Japanese gardeners did better than that: two-thirds of these great stones were underground, and such close-growing evergreen shrubs and dwarf Azaleas were planted near that it would have taken more severe earthquakes than we had that summer to dislodge them. Then moss and lichens were fastened with damp earth into crevices, and carefully watered several times a day, so that the stones looked—as, of course, they were—ages old. As this was the part of the composition nearest the house, it was rather more ornate in character than that of the lower slopes, which fell away to a mass of Laurel and Maple trees at the edge of the grounds.
Now, of course, this garden, with the house on the top of the hill, broke from the outset the rules and customs with regard to garden making; therefore, if the people who constructed it had been unintelligent ants, only faithfully copying what the other ants who preceded them had done, there would have been no garden on that steep hillside at all, or rather, perhaps, no house at the top of it. They were original workers, and, while they adhered to the foundation principle of presenting a view of natural scenery, they could hardly stick to any of the classic injunctions as to how to attain this end. Everything had to be modified to fit the case, and a most charming hill garden, with the main interest at the top, was the result. Paths and stepping-stones led downward and upward, with clumps of flowering trees (at least, they would flower the following spring) placed irregularly in happily chosen spots. There was a little shrine (a shade too new and red, just then, at which the Azaleas spoke rudely, under their breath), and there were quaint, storm-driven Pines, set in calmly without any fuss, as if a Pine, after attaining a certain size, were not one of the hardest things in the world to transplant! Sir Francis Piggott tells me that in Tokio the shrubs and trees in the garden of a rented house, if set in by the tenant, belong to him, and he may and does remove them when he changes to another abode. One can easily believe this statement when one has seen these small, busy people take up a good-sized tree and replant it. It never seems to occur to them that it may not grow. The transplanted one accepts the changed conditions without shedding a leaf. So these Pines and Maples, Plum trees and Cherry trees, Camellias and Azaleas, like happy brides in new homes, settled down cheerfully in this garden of love.
The water (which was humbly piped in bamboo) trickled down over the mossy stones as if it had been born to that rocky bed; and under the thatched roof of the ‘Scene-viewing Place’ on the crest of the hill (with one’s back to the house), the satisfied visitor could gaze away, over Maples and Birches and the clustering roofs of the fishing village, to the ever-changing, changeless sea, content—content.
On the other side of the house was a more conventional garden,—or at least it was laid out according to the classic rules of Japanese art, and was more like the usual places one sees in that country,—if to Western eyes it seemed a spot by itself. There was a tiny pond with goldfish and flashing carp; a neatly cobbled beach, like the shores of a mountain lake, made firm ground on which the visitor could walk to the very brink, and there, from a convenient (and dry) rock, watch the play of those winged things of the water. On another bank, some Irises and Reeds ‘broke’ the clear edges of the lake, and lengthened themselves in cool green reflections. There was a well, with a quaint old well-sweep and bucket, and a moss-’broidered stone lantern crouching beneath a little Peach tree. A kind of pergola, already brave with Wistaria tendrils,—but until that should attain a fuller growth, delicately draped with Virginia Creeper,—led one with loitering feet to the Japanese quarters again. South and West this garden lay, and all day long the sun hung over it, and the flowers (for there were pots and pots of them of all sorts there) made liquid purple pools of shadows on the warm earth. At night the moon came there and picked out all the white blossoms for its own, and laid a long silver torch upon the pool, and called out new scents and fragrances from leaf and flower that even the sun had not evoked. My windows looked on this, and the Lady from California was led to demand more than once what I was owling out of the window again for,—if I had ever seen the flowers of her native state I should not be able to look at these poor makeshift blooms again. It is the only thing that has ever reconciled me to my sad lack in not having seen the splendid flora of California!
As I said at the beginning of this chapter, practically every garden in Japan is a landscape garden, but I have concluded that the description of one is as good as the mere naming of a hundred. Frankly, too, I do not care for those most strict and exalted classic models. I admire Lord Fuji, the ethereal vision (the Japanese make this sacred mountain masculine), too much to care to see him made petty and pretty out of a miniature mound of earth, decked out with dwarf trees. I have too great a respect for the Che Kiang (China Sea), on which I have tossed and suffered, to care to view it in miniature in a temple garden. I love Japan’s own beautiful scenery too dearly to want it served up to me like a decorated wedding-cake. Where its gardening rules are properly applied, China forgotten, the source of their inspiration (Nature) unpolluted, she has given us gardens incomparable, landscapes in little, but in truth.