Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Volume II Part 1

Glimpses of an Unfamilar j.a.pan.

by Lafcadio Hearn.

Second Series.

Chapter One

In a j.a.panese Garden

Sec. 1

MY little two-story house by the Ohashigawa, although dainty as a bird- cage, proved much too small for comfort at the approach of the hot season--the rooms being scarcely higher than steamship cabins, and so narrow that an ordinary mosquito-net could not be suspended in them. I was sorry to lose the beautiful lake view, but I found it necessary to remove to the northern quarter of the city, into a very quiet Street behind the mouldering castle. My new home is a katchiu-yashiki, the ancient residence of some samurai of high rank. It is shut off from the street, or rather roadway, skirting the castle moat by a long, high wall coped with tiles. One ascends to the gateway, which is almost as large as that of a temple court, by a low broad flight of stone steps; and projecting from the wall, to the right of the gate, is a look-out window, heavily barred, like a big wooden cage. Thence, in feudal days, armed retainers kept keen watch on all who pa.s.sed by--invisible watch, for the bars are set so closely that a face behind them cannot be seen from the roadway. Inside the gate the approach to the dwelling is also walled in on both sides, so that the visitor, unless privileged, could see before him only the house entrance, always closed with white shoji.

Like all samurai homes, the residence itself is but one story high, but there are fourteen rooms within, and these are lofty, s.p.a.cious, and beautiful. There is, alas, no lake view nor any charming prospect. Part of the O-Shiroyama, with the castle on its summit, half concealed by a park of pines, may be seen above the coping of the front wall, but only a part; and scarcely a hundred yards behind the house rise densely wooded heights, cutting off not only the horizon, but a large slice of the sky as well. For this immurement, however, there exists fair compensation in the shape of a very pretty garden, or rather a series of garden s.p.a.ces, which surround the dwelling on three sides. Broad verandas overlook these, and from a certain veranda angle I can enjoy the sight of two gardens at once. Screens of bamboos and woven rushes, with wide gateless openings in their midst, mark the boundaries of the three divisions of the pleasure-grounds. But these structures are not intended to serve as true fences; they are ornamental, and only indicate where one style of landscape gardening ends and another begins.

Sec. 2

Now a few words upon j.a.panese gardens in general.

After having learned--merely by seeing, for the practical knowledge of the art requires years of study and experience, besides a natural, instinctive sense of beauty--something about the j.a.panese manner of arranging flowers, one can thereafter consider European ideas of floral decoration only as vulgarities. This observation is not the result of any hasty enthusiasm, but a conviction settled by long residence in the interior. I have come to understand the unspeakable loveliness of a solitary spray of blossoms arranged as only a j.a.panese expert knows how to arrange it--not by simply poking the spray into a vase, but by perhaps one whole hour's labour of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and posing and daintiest manipulation--and therefore I cannot think now of what we Occidentals call a 'bouquet' as anything but a vulgar murdering of flowers, an outrage upon the colour-sense, a brutality, an abomination. Somewhat in the same way, and for similar reasons, after having learned what an old j.a.panese garden is, I can remember our costliest gardens at home only as ignorant displays of what wealth can accomplish in the creation of incongruities that violate nature.

Now a j.a.panese garden is not a flower garden; neither is it made for the purpose of cultivating plants. In nine cases out of ten there is nothing in it resembling a flower-bed. Some gardens may contain scarcely a sprig of green; some have nothing green at all, and consist entirely of rocks and pebbles and sand, although these are exceptional. [1] As a rule, a j.a.panese garden is a landscape garden, yet its existence does not depend upon any fixed allowances of s.p.a.ce. It may cover one acre or many acres.

It may also be only ten feet square. It may, in extreme cases, be much less; for a certain kind of j.a.panese garden can be contrived small enough to put in a tokonoma. Such a garden, in a vessel no larger than a fruit-dish, is called koniwa or toko-niwa, and may occasionally be seen in the tokonoma of humble little dwellings so closely squeezed between other structures as to possess no ground in which to cultivate an outdoor garden. (I say 'an outdoor garden,' because there are indoor gardens, both upstairs and downstairs, in some large j.a.panese houses.) The toko-niwa is usually made in some curious bowl, or shallow carved box or quaintly shaped vessel impossible to describe by any English word. Therein are created minuscule hills with minuscule houses upon them, and microscopic ponds and rivulets spanned by tiny humped bridges; and queer wee plants do duty for trees, and curiously formed pebbles stand for rocks, and there are tiny toro perhaps a tiny torii as well-- in short, a charming and living model of a j.a.panese landscape.

Another fact of prime importance to remember is that, in order to comprehend the beauty of a j.a.panese garden, it is necessary to understand--or at least to learn to understand--the beauty of stones.

Not of stones quarried by the hand of man, but of stones shaped by nature only. Until you can feel, and keenly feel, that stones have character, that stones have tones and values, the whole artistic meaning of a j.a.panese garden cannot be revealed to you. In the foreigner, however aesthetic he may be, this feeling needs to be cultivated by study. It is inborn in the j.a.panese; the soul of the race comprehends Nature infinitely better than we do, at least in her visible forms. But although, being an Occidental, the true sense of the beauty of stones can be reached by you only through long familiarity with the j.a.panese use and choice of them, the characters of the lessons to be acquired exist everywhere about you, if your life be in the interior. You cannot walk through a street without observing tasks and problems in the aesthetics of stones for you to master. At the approaches to temples, by the side of roads, before holy groves, and in all parks and pleasure- grounds, as well as in all cemeteries, you will notice large, irregular, flat slabs of natural rock--mostly from the river-beds and water-worn-- sculptured with ideographs, but unhewn. These have been set up as votive tablets, as commemorative monuments, as tombstones, and are much more costly than the ordinary cut-stone columns and haka chiselled with the figures of divinities in relief. Again, you will see before most of the shrines, nay, even in the grounds of nearly all large homesteads, great irregular blocks of granite or other hard rock, worn by the action of torrents, and converted into water-basins (chodzubachi) by cutting a circular hollow in the top. Such are but common examples of the utilisation of stones even in the poorest villages; and if you have any natural artistic sentiment, you cannot fail to discover, sooner or later, how much more beautiful are these natural forms than any shapes from the hand of the stone-cutter. It is probable, too, that you will become so habituated at last to the sight of inscriptions cut upon rock surfaces, especially if you travel much through the country, that you will often find yourself involuntarily looking for texts or other chisellings where there are none, and could not possibly be, as if ideographs belonged by natural law to rock formation. And stones will begin, perhaps, to a.s.sume for you a certain individual or physiognomical aspect--to suggest moods and sensations, as they do to the j.a.panese.

Indeed, j.a.pan is particularly a land of suggestive shapes in stone, as high volcanic lands are apt to be; and such shapes doubtless addressed themselves to the imagination of the race at a time long prior to the date of that archaic text which tells of demons in Izumo 'who made rocks, and the roots of trees, and leaves, and the foam of the green waters to speak.

As might be expected in a country where the suggestiveness of natural forms is thus recognised, there are in j.a.pan many curious beliefs and superst.i.tions concerning stones. In almost every province there are famous stones supposed to be sacred or haunted, or to possess miraculous powers, such as the Women's Stone at the temple of Hachiman at Kamakura, and the Sessho-seki, or Death Stone of Nasu, and the Wealth-giving Stone at Enoshima, to which pilgrims pay reverence. There are even legends of stones having manifested sensibility, like the tradition of the Nodding Stones which bowed down before the monk Daita when he preached unto them the word of Buddha; or the ancient story from the Kojiki, that the Emperor O-Jin, being augustly intoxicated, 'smote with his august staff a great stone in the middle of the Ohosaka road, whereupon the stone ran away!' [2]

Now stones are valued for their beauty; and large stones selected for their shape may have an aesthetic worth of hundreds of dollars. And large stones form the skeleton, or framework, in the design of old j.a.panese gardens. Not only is every stone chosen with a view to its particular expressiveness of form, but every stone in the garden or about the premises has its separate and individual name, indicating its purpose or its decorative duty. But I can tell you only a little, a very little, of the folk-lore of a j.a.panese garden; and if you want to know more about stones and their names, and about the philosophy of gardens, read the unique essay of Mr. Conder on the Art of Landscape Gardening in j.a.pan, [3] and his beautiful book on the j.a.panese Art of Floral Decoration; and also the brief but charming chapter on Gardens, in Morse's j.a.panese Homes. [4]

Sec. 3

No effort to create an impossible or purely ideal landscape is made in the j.a.panese garden. Its artistic purpose is to copy faithfully the attractions of a veritable landscape, and to convey the real impression that a real landscape communicates. It is therefore at once a picture and a poem; perhaps even more a poem than a picture. For as nature's scenery, in its varying aspects, affects us with sensations of joy or of solemnity, of grimness or of sweetness, of force or of peace, so must the true reflection of it in the labour of the landscape gardener create not merely an impression of beauty, but a mood in the soul. The grand old landscape gardeners, those Buddhist monks who first introduced the art into j.a.pan, and subsequently developed it into an almost occult science, carried their theory yet farther than this. They held it possible to express moral lessons in the design of a garden, and abstract ideas, such as Chast.i.ty, Faith, Piety, Content, Calm, and Connubial Bliss. Therefore were gardens contrived according to the character of the owner, whether poet, warrior, philosopher, or priest.

In those ancient gardens (the art, alas, is pa.s.sing away under the withering influence of the utterly commonplace Western taste) there were expressed both a mood of nature and some rare Oriental conception of a mood of man.

I do not know what human sentiment the princ.i.p.al division of my garden was intended to reflect; and there is none to tell me. Those by whom it was made pa.s.sed away long generations ago, in the eternal transmigration of souls. But as a poem of nature it requires no interpreter. It occupies the front portion of the grounds, facing south; and it also extends west to the verge of the northern division of the garden, from which it is partly separated by a curious screen-fence structure. There are large rocks in it, heavily mossed; and divers fantastic basins of stone for holding water; and stone lamps green with years; and a shachihoko, such as one sees at the peaked angles of castle roofs--a great stone fish, an idealised porpoise, with its nose in the ground and its tail in the air. [5] There are miniature hills, with old trees upon them; and there are long slopes of green, shadowed by flowering shrubs, like river banks; and there are green knolls like islets. All these verdant elevations rise from s.p.a.ces of pale yellow sand, smooth as a surface of silk and miming the curves and meanderings of a river course.

These sanded s.p.a.ces are not to be trodden upon; they are much too beautiful for that. The least speck of dirt would mar their effect; and it requires the trained skill of an experienced native gardener--a delightful old man he is--to keep them in perfect form. But they are traversed in various directions by lines of flat unhewn rock slabs, placed at slightly irregular distances from one another, exactly like stepping-stones across a brook. The whole effect is that of the sh.o.r.es of a still stream in some lovely, lonesome, drowsy place.

There is nothing to break the illusion, so secluded the garden is. High walls and fences shut out streets and contiguous things; and the shrubs and the trees, heightening and thickening toward the boundaries, conceal from view even the roofs of the neighbouring katchiu-yashiki. Softly beautiful are the tremulous shadows of leaves on the sunned sand; and the scent of flowers comes thinly sweet with every waft of tepid air; and there is a humming of bees.

Sec. 4

By Buddhism all existences are divided into Hijo things without desire, such as stones and trees; and Ujo things having desire, such as men and animals. This division does not, so far as I know, find expression in the written philosophy of gardens; but it is a convenient one. The folk- lore of my little domain relates both to the inanimate and the animate.

In natural order, the Hijo may be considered first, beginning with a singular shrub near the entrance of the yashiki, and close to the gate of the first garden.

Within the front gateway of almost every old samurai house, and usually near the entrance of the dwelling itself, there is to be seen a small tree with large and peculiar leaves. The name of this tree in Izumo is tegashiwa, and there is one beside my door. What the scientific name of it is I do not know; nor am I quite sure of the etymology of the j.a.panese name. However, there is a word tegashi, meaning a bond for the hands; and the shape of the leaves of the tegashiwa somewhat resembles the shape of a hand.

Now, in old days, when the samurai retainer was obliged to leave his home in order to accompany his daimyo to Yedo, it was customary, just before his departure, to set before him a baked tai [6] served up on a tegashiwa leaf. After this farewell repast the leaf upon which the tai had been served was hung up above the door as a charm to bring the departed knight safely back again. This pretty superst.i.tion about the leaves of the tegashiwa had its origin not only in their shape but in their movement. Stirred by a wind they seemed to beckon--not indeed after our Occidental manner, but in the way that a j.a.panese signs to his friend to come, by gently waving his hand up and down with the palm towards the ground.

Another shrub to be found in most j.a.panese gardens is the nanten, [7]

about which a very curious belief exists. If you have an evil dream, a dream which bodes ill luck, you should whisper it to the nanten early in the morning, and then it will never come true. [8] There are two varieties of this graceful plant: one which bears red berries, and one which bears white. The latter is rare. Both kinds grow in my garden. The common variety is placed close to the veranda (perhaps for the convenience of dreamers); the other occupies a little flower-bed in the middle of the garden, together with a small citron-tree. This most dainty citron-tree is called 'Buddha's fingers,' [9] because of the wonderful shape of its fragrant fruits. Near it stands a kind of laurel, with lanciform leaves glossy as bronze; it is called by the j.a.panese yuzuri-ha, [10] and is almost as common in the gardens of old samurai homes as the tegashiwa itself. It is held to be a tree of good omen, because no one of its old leaves ever falls off before a new one, growing behind it, has well developed. For thus the yuzuri-ha symbolises hope that the father will not pa.s.s away before his son has become a vigorous man, well able to succeed him as the head of the family.

Therefore, on every New Year's Day, the leaves of the yuzuriha, mingled with fronds of fern, are attached to the shimenawa which is then suspended before every Izumo home.

Sec. 5

The trees, like the shrubs, have their curious poetry and legends. Like the stones, each tree has its special landscape name according to its position and purpose in the composition. Just as rocks and stones form the skeleton of the ground-plan of a garden, so pines form the framework of its foliage design. They give body to the whole. In this garden there are five pines,--not pines tormented into fantasticalities, but pines made wondrously picturesque by long and tireless care and judicious tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. The object of the gardener has been to develop to the utmost possible degree their natural tendency to rugged line and ma.s.sings of foliage--that spiny sombre-green foliage which j.a.panese art is never weary of imitating in metal inlay or golden lacquer. The pine is a symbolic tree in this land of symbolism. Ever green, it is at once the emblem of unflinching purpose and of vigorous old age; and its needle- shaped leaves are credited with the power of driving demons away.

There are two sakuranoki, [11] j.a.panese cherry-trees--those trees whose blossoms, as Professor Chamberlain so justly observes, are 'beyond comparison more lovely than anything Europe has to show.' Many varieties are cultivated and loved; those in my garden bear blossoms of the most ethereal pink, a flushed white. When, in spring, the trees flower, it is as though fleeciest ma.s.ses of cloud faintly tinged by sunset had floated down from the highest sky to fold themselves about the branches. This comparison is no poetical exaggeration; neither is it original: it is an ancient j.a.panese description of the most marvellous floral exhibition which nature is capable of making. The reader who has never seen a cherry-tree blossoming in j.a.pan cannot possibly imagine the delight of the spectacle. There are no green leaves; these come later: there is only one glorious burst of blossoms, veiling every twig and bough in their delicate mist; and the soil beneath each tree is covered deep out of sight by fallen petals as by a drift of pink snow.

But these are cultivated cherry-trees. There are others which put forth their leaves before their blossoms, such as the yamazakura, or mountain cherry. [12] This, too, however, has its poetry of beauty and of symbolism. Sang the great Shinto writer and poet, Motowori:

Shikishima no Yamato-gokoro wo Hito-towaba, Asa-hi ni niou Yamazakura bana. [13]

Whether cultivated or uncultivated, the j.a.panese cherry-trees are emblems. Those planted in old samurai gardens were not cherished for their loveliness alone. Their spotless blossoms were regarded as symbolising that delicacy of sentiment and blamelessness of life belonging to high courtesy and true knightliness. 'As the cherry flower is first among flowers,' says an old proverb, 'so should the warrior be first among men'.

Shadowing the western end of this garden, and projecting its smooth dark limbs above the awning of the veranda, is a superb umenoki, j.a.panese plum-tree, very old, and originally planted here, no doubt, as in other gardens, for the sake of the sight of its blossoming. The flowering of the umenoki, [14] in the earliest spring, is scarcely less astonishing than that of the cherry-tree, which does not bloom for a full month later; and the blossoming of both is celebrated by popular holidays. Nor are these, although the most famed, the only flowers thus loved. The wistaria, the convolvulus, the peony, each in its season, form displays of efflorescence lovely enough to draw whole populations out of the cities into the country to see them.. In Izumo, the blossoming of the peony is especially marvellous. The most famous place for this spectacle is the little island of Daikonshima, in the grand Naka-umi lagoon, about an hour's sail from Matsue. In May the whole island flames crimson with peonies; and even the boys and girls of the public schools are given a holiday, in order that they may enjoy the sight.

Though the plum flower is certainly a rival in beauty of the sakura-no- hana, the j.a.panese compare woman's beauty--physical beauty--to the cherry flower, never to the plum flower. But womanly virtue and sweetness, on the other hand, are compared to the ume-no-hana, never to the cherry blossom. It is a great mistake to affirm, as some writers have done, that the j.a.panese never think of comparing a woman to trees and flowers. For grace, a maiden is likened to a slender willow; [15]

for youthful charm, to the cherry-tree in flower; for sweetness of heart, to the blossoming plum-tree. Nay, the old j.a.panese poets have compared woman to all beautiful things. They have even sought similes from flowers for her various poses, for her movements, as in the verse,

Tateba skakuyaku; [16]

Suwareba botan; Aruku sugatawa Himeyuri [17] no hana. [18]

Why, even the names of the humblest country girls are often those of beautiful trees or flowers prefixed by the honorific O: [19] O-Matsu (Pine), O-Take (Bamboo), O-Ume (Plum), O-Hana (Blossom), O-ine (Ear-of- Young-Rice), not to speak of the professional flower-names of dancing- girls and of joro. It has been argued with considerable force that the origin of certain tree-names borne by girls must be sought in the folk- conception of the tree as an emblem of longevity, or happiness, or good fortune, rather than in any popular idea of the beauty of the tree in itself. But however this may be, proverb, poem, song, and popular speech to-day yield ample proof that the j.a.panese comparisons of women to trees and flowers are in no-wise inferior to our own in aesthetic sentiment.

Sec. 6

That trees, at least j.a.panese trees, have souls, cannot seem an unnatural fancy to one who has seen the blossoming of the umenoki and the sakuranoki. This is a popular belief in Izumo and elsewhere. It is not in accord with Buddhist philosophy, and yet in a certain sense it strikes one as being much closer to cosmic truth than the old Western orthodox notion of trees as 'things created for the use of man.'

Furthermore, there exist several odd superst.i.tions about particular trees, not unlike certain West Indian beliefs which have had a good influence in checking the destruction of valuable timber. j.a.pan, like the tropical world, has its goblin trees. Of these, the enoki (Celtis Willdenowiana) and the yanagi (drooping willow) are deemed especially ghostly, and are rarely now to be found in old j.a.panese gardens. Both are believed to have the power of haunting. 'Enoki ga bakeru,' the izumo saying is. You will find in a j.a.panese dictionary the word 'bakeru'

translated by such terms as 'to be transformed,' 'to be metamorphosed,'

'to be changed,' etc.; but the belief about these trees is very singular, and cannot be explained by any such rendering of the verb 'bakeru.' The tree itself does not change form or place, but a spectre called Ki-no o-bake disengages itself from the tree and walks about in various guises.' [20] Most often the shape a.s.sumed by the phantom is that of a beautiful woman. The tree spectre seldom speaks, and seldom ventures to go very far away from its tree. If approached, it immediately shrinks back into the trunk or the foliage. It is said that if either an old yanagi or a young enoki be cut blood will flow from the gash. When such trees are very young it is not believed that they have supernatural habits, but they become more dangerous the older they grow.

There is a rather pretty legend--recalling the old Greek dream of dryads--about a willow-tree which grew in the garden of a samurai of Kyoto. Owing to its weird reputation, the tenant of the homestead desired to cut it down; but another samurai dissuaded him, saying: 'Rather sell it to me, that I may plant it in my garden. That tree has a soul; it were cruel to destroy its life.' Thus purchased and transplanted, the yanagi flourished well in its new home, and its spirit, out of grat.i.tude, took the form of a beautiful woman, and became the wife of the samurai who had befriended it. A charming boy was the result of this union. A few years later, the daimyo to whom the ground belonged gave orders that the tree should be cut down. Then the wife wept bitterly, and for the first time revealed to her husband the whole story. 'And now,' she added, 'I know that I must die; but our child will live, and you will always love him. This thought is my only solace.'

Vainly the astonished and terrified husband sought to retain her.

Bidding him farewell for ever, she vanished into the tree. Needless to say that the samurai did everything in his power to persuade the daimyo to forgo his purpose. The prince wanted the tree for the reparation of a great Buddhist temple, the San-jiu-san-gen-do. [21]' The tree was felled, but, having fallen, it suddenly became so heavy that three hundred men could not move it. Then the child, taking a branch in his little hand, said, 'Come,' and the tree followed him, gliding along the ground to the court of the temple.

Although said to be a bakemono-ki, the enoki sometimes receives highest religious honours; for the spirit of the G.o.d Kojin, to whom old dolls are dedicated, is supposed to dwell within certain very ancient enoki trees, and before these are placed shrines whereat people make prayers.

Sec. 7

The second garden, on the north side, is my favourite, It contains no large growths. It is paved with blue pebbles, and its centre is occupied by a pondlet--a miniature lake fringed with rare plants, and containing a tiny island, with tiny mountains and dwarf peach-trees and pines and azaleas, some of which are perhaps more than a century old, though scarcely more than a foot high. Nevertheless, this work, seen as it was intended to be seen, does not appear to the eye in miniature at all.

From a certain angle of the guest-room looking out upon it, the appearance is that of a real lake sh.o.r.e with a real island beyond it, a stone's throw away. So cunning the art of the ancient gardener who contrived all this, and who has been sleeping for a hundred years under the cedars of Gesshoji, that the illusion can be detected only from the zashiki by the presence of an ishidoro or stone lamp, upon the island.

The size of the ishidoro betrays the false perspective, and I do not think it was placed there when the garden was made.

Here and there at the edge of the pond, and almost level with the water, are placed large flat stones, on which one may either stand or squat, to watch the lacustrine population or to tend the water-plants. There are beautiful water-lilies, whose bright green leaf-disks float oilily upon the surface (Nuphar j.a.ponica), and many lotus plants of two kinds, those which bear pink and those which bear pure white flowers. There are iris plants growing along the bank, whose blossoms are prismatic violet, and there are various ornamental gra.s.ses and ferns and mosses. But the pond is essentially a lotus pond; the lotus plants make its greatest charm.

It is a delight to watch every phase of their marvellous growth, from the first unrolling of the leaf to the fall of the last flower. On rainy days, especially, the lotus plants are worth observing. Their great cup- shaped leaves, swaying high above the pond, catch the rain and hold it a while; but always after the water in the leaf reaches a certain level the stem bends, and empties the leaf with a loud plash, and then straightens again. Rain-water upon a lotus-leaf is a favourite subject with j.a.panese metal-workers, and metalwork only can reproduce the effect, for the motion and colour of water moving upon the green oleaginous surface are exactly those of quicksilver.

Sec. 8