Florence Du Cane

“ When the trees are in all their glory the flower-viewing parties wander through the grounds in silent admiration, down to the little ravine outside the temple grounds, where the snow-white blossom fills the little valley and clouds of petals fall into the brook below, to be carried away down the stream like drifts of foam. Here may be seen a poet of the old school rapt in thought composing an ode to the blossom and the nightingale. It is a pretty fancy much honoured in Japan, the plum blossom, the poet, and the nightingale making, they say, the world of beauty complete. ”

“ For the beauty of the lotus lies not only in its flowers; you will begin to see the beauty of the plant even when the tender young leaves peep out shyly upon the surface of a pond in early June; their colour is dark brown, and the Japanese call them zeniba from their resemblance to the shape of copper money. Then day by day the leaves will spread and float out as a spirit upon the water, gradually the stalks grow and they will get higher and higher, their broad curling surfaces losing the bronze colour and turning to every shade of soft green and deep emerald ”

“ From the terrace they gaze down upon the grove of cherry and maple trees in the valley below, and then away over the grey roofs of Kyoto and the plain beyond, to Osaka, hidden in the morning mists, or to Arashiyama, whose groves will assuredly be visited in due time by these untiring holiday-makers. At every turn a new beauty wipes out the remembrance of the last, and fills our soul with sadness, that nature will not stand still for awhile and give us leisure to enjoy what we know will be here to-day and gone to-morrow. ”

“ I asked a Japanese who, with his little gentle wife, was sitting in quiet contemplation and evident enjoyment of the scene, to tell me something of the flower as it appeals to the Japanese, and he said: “We live here in the choicest floral kingdom; and to our mind the flowers are beautiful, and we do not ask why or how, the sight of their beauty is far more real to us than any meaning which they may suggest. You will find no other nation like Japan, which loves Nature so truly in her varied forms and holds communion with all her aspects; we love the iris as a flower, but as nothing else. ”

“ How superior to the dusty, neglected back garden or court of a European house, too often only a piece of waste ground where the rubbish of the house accumulates, the space being condemned as too small for a garden. I can recall visions of many a tiny court no more than twenty feet square, within whose limits were compressed a liliputian pond, fed with clear water by the overflow of the water-basin; a dwarf pine, the soul of every Japanese garden, which in conjunction with a few small evergreen shrubs sheltered a moss-grown lantern. ”

“ Here the love of landscape gardening seems still alive, and though the gardens may not surround the palaces of the Daimyos, yet these humbler gardens which as often as not surround the house of a rich Osaka tradesman are none the less beautiful for that reason; and I was glad to think that riches had not, as is too often the case, brought with it a love for foreign life and stamped out the true Japanese, and that here at least are left many who are content to spend their hours of leisure in the contemplation and in the repose of a true landscape garden. ”

“ Many a little temple garden is quite transformed when the azalea bushes are in flower, their little miniature mountain sides are gay with the blossoms; though often the better the gardens are cared for, [166] the fewer the blossoms, as, in order to keep the bushes in their regular and prescribed shapes, the flowers have to be sacrificed. The little garden of Chishaku-in I can recall, as having the brilliant-coloured bushes in pleasing contrast to the subdued tones of the clipped box and juniper-trees, and the greyness of the lichen-covered lanterns and mossy stones. ”

“ The leaves of the kiri (pawlonia) tree are so responsive to the spirit of autumn, which advances steadily till we see no garden flowers, no wild flowers, and have no longer the song of the insects, and one cannot fail to be impressed with some touch of sorrow; but the Japanese take sheer delight in the sadness of autumn, for soon the white frosts will be thick upon the ground and will turn the leaves of the maples on the mountain-side into a blaze of scarlet and gold, and then the kiku or chrysanthemum flowers will open. ”

“ The plants were grouped in front of the family shrine, and to protect them from the autumn storms a light roofing of paper and bamboo had been erected; the little garden contained a few stepping-stones, a bronze water basin, a few lanterns, and to screen off any possible view of anything suggestive of fish was a delicate bamboo screen-fence. The blossoms seemed to represent every colour, shape, and size that it was possible for a chrysanthemum to assume, all perfectly grown plants. ”

“ CHERRY BLOSSOM Japan is often called “The Land of the Cherry Blossom,” and it is true that for centuries their Sakura-no-hana has been the favourite flower of the Japanese. The refinement and grace of its beauty appeals to them so intensely, that the month of April, the time of the cherry blossom, might almost be regarded as a national holiday throughout the country; and can one wonder that a whole nation should forget for a time their work and domestic worries in the innocent enjoyment of sitting under the flower-laden trees? ”

“ It well deserves its rank among the famous places. The Japanese are said to admire it most under snow. I have never seen it under those conditions; but I can imagine no more beautiful scene than meets the eye in the early morning of a scorching August day, when the sampan floats across to this pine-clad island, the light haze just clearing from the woods, the great temple looking as if it were floating on the water, and the noblest, simplest gateway ever devised, the great wooden torii, standing, as it were, knee-deep in the sea. ”

“ The garden of Hori-kiri must be of very ancient date, as the fine old pine-trees, dwarfed and gnarled maple and juniper bushes, are not the growth of this generation, or even the last. The garden is said to date from some three centuries, and to be handed down from father to son, always in the same family. Nothing could be more perfectly laid out for the proper display of its especial flower, the shaping of the beds, the placing of the bridges, [171] and even the colouring of the little summer-houses in which to entertain their host of guests—all has been thought out by this artistic family ”

“ Think of the pines at Uyeno or at Shiba; their merit is as great as the cherry-trees in the parks; to them and the cryptomeria belongs the task of guarding all the temples of the land. Every Tokugawa feudal castle had a moat bordered with pine-trees—how many have now been swept away and nothing left but a meaningless waste! The Imperial palace is chiefly shaded by the trees, their heavy foliage suggesting the depth of the forest. To-day every common house and garden has its guardian pine-tree at the gate. ”

“ The keynote of the garden seems to be the lilliputian mountain torrent, for does not that give a raison d’être for the stone or turf bridges which are flung across it to connect the mossy banks with the diminutive islands, on one of which stands a celebrated pine, twisted, and torn, and cut, so that it has lost all trace of what nature intended it to be, but surely not lost all charm. ”

“ The priest, too, who evidently loves his garden, has by now moved with tender care his chrysanthemum plants, whose pots have been kept from the sun’s fiercest rays, and never allowed to cry out for water, and placed them in one of those curiously fragile little structures which seem to exist only for the protection of chrysanthemums, with a roof more suggestive of a chess-board than anything else, and arranged them in front of his dwelling-room, so that he can sit and gaze at them, just as in old days Hideyoshi sat on the neighbouring platform to gaze at the moon. ”

“ Nerine or Lycoris japonica, or the spider lily—its name seems difficult to determine—made the land gay in the fading year, gorgeous splashes of colour against the ripening rice, its fringed heads rising leafless from the soil, sometimes in scattered tufts, and sometimes great banks closely covered with their flaunting heads. I felt Japan must indeed be rich in flower treasures for such a one to be overlooked and uncared for. ”

“ The cherry blossom is Spring, the iris and the wistaria; but, as each of these has its own season, the gods sent you to keep green our hope of Spring.
I do not say I love you, rather I fear you; you are too dignified; you blossom alone on the branches with no green leaves to bear you company. I do not call you beautiful; your scent is too keen, your petals too stiff. No one will ever sing or dance beneath your boughs. ”

“ To the foreigner wishing to enjoy the prospect of the cherry blossoms in peace, such boisterous feasting will seem out of harmony with the natural quiet beauty of the spot, and he will do well to turn his steps and to spend a few hours in undisturbed enjoyment of the more dignified setting of Uyeno Park, where the giant trees of single and drooping blossom stand out in splendid contrast to the pines and cryptomerias surrounding the tombs of the Shoguns. ”

“ I tried to learn something of their cultivation, hoping it might be of help to those who grow those poor specimens known in England as Iris Kaempferi. It is not the plants themselves, or the varieties, which are at fault, for many thousands of roots leave the Hori-kiri garden every year to be scattered throughout the world,—it would seem to be the soil and climate which they resent and stubbornly refuse to adopt; for a few years they linger and even bravely flower, and then they begin to pine and droop like some poor home-sick mortal pining for his native land. ”

“ WISTARIA AND PÆONY The last petals of the cherry blossoms have only just fallen, and Nature hastens to provide a new treasure for the flower kingdom, and the first blooms of the wistaria Fuji no hana will be opening at the base of the quickly growing racemes. Not the far-famed Wistaria multijuga, whose immense long sprays of delicate mauve flowers are so associated throughout the world with the name of Japan, but the early-flowering wistaria, Brachy botris, with its tufts of white blossoms completely covering the closely pruned branches before any trace of a leaf appears. ”

“ Tokyo may still retain the remains of some of her princely gardens, but I fear she has lost her love of gardening; the town is too large, too crowded; the rich who could afford to make new gardens, even if the old ones are swept away, prefer to live in foreign houses of impossible architectural design; the public gardens are no longer laid out in true Japanese style, but suggestive rather of foreign gardens of the worst form and taste, so if you would see the making of a new garden it is to Kyoto you must wend your way. ”

“ The landscape gardener in Japan is no gardener in the sense that we regard a gardener in the West—a cultivator of flowers: he is a garden artist; he leaves none of his effects to chance; so carefully are his plans made that before the first sod of the new garden has been turned, he knows exactly how the garden will look when completed. He will see in his mind’s eye the appointed place for every tree, every stone, which is to be used in its composition. ”

“ Temporary tea-houses are put up on every available space, hung with innumerable lanterns, and gaily-coloured curtains, most of these being painted with some representation of the cherry blossom. With the unerring taste of the Japanese all the colouring is in harmony with the blossoms, no false note will clash or take away from the beauty of the surroundings. ”

“ The balcony overhangs the rocky edge of the tidal lake; each rock has its history and its especial place; but the laws which have governed the making of such a garden are laws drawn up by great artists,—there is no false note, even the grouping of the reeds and irises by the water’s edge has been planned by a master hand, so the picture remains graven on one’s memory as that of an ideal pleasaunce for leisure and repose. ”