Japanese Gardens/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
GARDENING PRINCIPLES
“Oh! Adamant Art! The Garden Artist says:
Thus may you plant, and thus and thus may move.
You love your garden, set in such strict ways?
My sweetheart’s small, but limits not my love.”
An art whose only limits are those set by Nature herself is not a restricted one; and, although a little study of the involved considerations of the Japanese landscape artist makes one suppose that it is too much hedged about by classic formalism to have any spontaneity or freshness left in it, a deeper scrutiny convinces one that the boundaries of this science are only those of Nature’s own making. She is the fountain-head, the great teacher; hers is the infallible pronouncement.
Put simply, landscape gardening in Japan is a reproduction, more or less reduced in scale, of the scenery of the surrounding country. This is its material foundation; but, just as every scene from Nature, of whatever composition of rock and river and hedgerow, has its effect on the feelings and the imagination, so the Japanese garden has, beneath the beautiful body that meets the eye, the æsthetic sentiment that is perceived only by the mind, the heart, the soul. This is the primary aim of a garden, not simply to tickle the eye, to display the owner’s wealth, or to give a background to a garden fête, but definitely to suggest tranquillity or awe, homely pleasure and the simplicity of open country, or the exhilaration and inspiration of rugged and wild Nature.
And when so many people—Mr. Basil Hall Chamberlain among them—declare that they see nothing more in Japanese gardens than a certain charm of quaintness,—hardly more beauty than that of strangeness,—they simply announce that they see with the eyes only, and not with the true insight of the soul. I do not complain of them any more than I do of those unhappy mortals who are unable to find anything in the pictures of the old masters, who are bored by what is not called popular music, who cannot read those poets whose alchemy has changed the drab lead of life into the gold and iridescence of a dream.
Even Mr. Josiah Conder, who, by his great knowledge of the science of Japanese landscape gardening, has made himself almost its prophet, thinks that these gardens could not be transferred to another land and clime lest they might appear affected ‘examples of a quaint conceit.’ And yet I venture to say that if the most rigid principles of the art were applied to the making of such gardens in Europe or America, omitting only the typical architectural adjuncts,—which are not essentials,—no one, although instantly struck by their quiet appeal to the heart, would consider them the product of a different and alien art and land. Unluckily, it is just those needless features which are reproduced, and the true principles of the science are disregarded—not even so much as the letter, much less the spirit being put there. But if a presentation informed by the real intentions of Japanese landscape gardening were offered, it would be a different thing. Such gardens would not be found unusual, except for beauty, and the sense of repose and tranquillity they might give. They would, after all, never appear as exotic as do the beautiful Japanese Lilies, golden-barred, and crimson-and-brown-freckled, and red, whose bulbs, imported in such large quantities by us, have now become a recognized feature in English gardens. They would soon be regarded like the many beautiful flowering trees and shrubs we cultivate nowadays, which only bear, or suggest, the description ‘japonica’ to the expert. Dwarf trees, except in flower-pots, cannot be considered typical of their gardens, as, if they are planted in the ground, they cannot be stunted. Trees twisted and bent into the curious, weird shapes that the Japanese gardener alone seems to know how to get, look as though the hand of Nature, not of man, had wrought them into such strange lines of beauty. Of course these shapes are sometimes exaggerated, as who can say that Nature could thus often be at once so perverse and so kind—could, by the effect of age, and almost of deformity, give so many trees these lines of rugged strength, and such curves, or rather angles, of beauty?
If their art did not conceal its methods—if the eye could detect the craftsman in the artist—it would not pass muster as an art at all. Probably in our transplanted garden only the pounded-down, purple-brown earth, or the use of pebbles or drifted sand in place of green grass, would strike one as unusual, or as ‘quaint and fanciful in conceit.’
In the case of Mr. Chamberlain, I simply do not believe that he does not see. He is too deeply imbued with the very spirit of Japan not to see. He pokes mild ridicule at Japanese poetry, and even dissects it coldly, but he belies all this on the next page by a charming and sympathetic interpretation of those nearly untranslatable things, Japanese poems. So I believe his other strictures on their arts, which he always damns with faint praise, or dismisses finally as puerile; his dictum that their gardens may do well enough to please these pleasant children, but are hardly worth the grown-up consideration of the foreigner—are only the insistence of the Briton that whatever is British is best, even when a little inward voice tells him plainly not to be too sure of that. I like this fine British scorn for any art that, even if it has not arisen on its island soil (and what art did?) has not the sanction at least of long use there. It has taken thirty years for Whistler,—an American by birth and the acrid strength of him, though claimed by France for his art methods, and by England for his long residence there,—with his great power with the brush, and his stinging wit, to open the British eyes to the wonderful suggestion and beauty that lie in Japanese methods of painting; and it will surely take more than another thirty years (unless such another prophet shall arise) before any writer or painter can do the same for Japanese gardens.
Already in America our great landscape artists—whether directly influenced by the Japanese or no I cannot pretend to say—have gone to the same authority—Nature—for inspiration. Central and Morningside Parks in New York, the Fens in Boston, as well as the Fells, a little farther away towards Maiden, and a dozen other garden spaces in and about that city. Riverside Park in Philadelphia, and many others in the Western Cities, could be named as having bits of them arranged according to such ideals, even if their designers were not directly influenced by the study of Japanese garden principles. I say it steadily, and with a fairly wide acquaintance with parks, public gardens, and pleasaunces all over the world, that the parks in the United States are the most beautiful to be found anywhere, because, like Japanese gardens, they base the science of their art on Nature. I do not include Japanese public parks, with the single exception of Ueno, and the remains of one or two others done in the old style, in Tokio, because, whenever they have laid out public grounds according to so-called modern Western methods, they are so vilely ugly that I prefer not to speak of them at all. As a matter of fact, wherever their landscape art has been affected by our ideas they have degenerated, and wherever our gardens have been inspired by the same fundamental ideas as their classical models it has been to their betterment. But, while I have not one word of praise for the mid-Victorian hideousness of their new official grounds and buildings, I feel serenely confident that such an artistic people must in time return to their own old ideals of the gardener’s art. The feeling for the poetry of Nature, the sympathetic response to the appeal of natural beauty, is so great in the whole people, from Emperor to rickshaw coolie, that no amount of national pride—which thinks it ranks itself with the great nations of the West in assuming their bad taste—can for long be so misguided. Some of the delicate attention to detail will have gone with the replacing of hand and heart labour by machine-made articles, but, in the stead of it, may come a breadth and bigness of effect and of outlook that is not, perhaps, now a distinguishing feature of their artistic expression. But we must return from the realms of prophecy as to the future of landscape gardening in Japan, and explain some of its guiding principles.
The one infallible and inexorable rule is that everything must be to scale, and that one part must never violate the laws of classic proportion by overweighting any other part. For instance, a small house, if it has not always a small garden, will admit no objects such as trees, lanterns, or any architectural features near it so much out of proportion as to send it out of its true place in the plan. Also, no greater finish is allowed in one part of the scheme than in another; the three grades of finish—rough, intermediate, and highly wrought—are always adhered to throughout. All ornaments, buildings, fences, stones, lake borders, even the shapes of trees and shrubs, must harmonize in this respect. As a consequence, even the detractors of Japanese gardens have to confess that in no others is there a more assured sense of unity and of harmony of purpose.
The garden is planned from all points of view, and the scene from Nature from which it is a reduced but never literal transcript has been sketched and mapped and forgotten before it can be revived again. It may be that a small-sized copy of some famous scene has been chosen,—for the landscape artist loves to hitch his wagon to a star,—just as we might, if imitating some one else, pick on a great man, or a very noble and charming woman. The only difference would be that we should probably hit on some angularity of character, some extravagance that seemed to make for individuality,—for how often are bad manners copied because they are the unhappy endowment of a famous politician, or of a duchess, or a well-known beauty!—instead of eliminating the ugly details, as the Japanese does in his landscape picture, using only those salient features that will at once adorn the place and yet carry on the real spirit of the model.
All this having been done, the pattern is fitted to the cloth, and carefully cut, having had its design already modified, according to the size and character of the ground, and—though this is of less importance—due consideration having been given to such stones and lanterns and existing trees as the owner may have on hand, and may wish to use. Of course, this has all been studied out beforehand, and the artist has taken as his leitmotiv the best thing—whether lake, or waterfall, or rocky hill—he finds there. If the place commands a view (only it seldom does, except in miniature, as they build in valleys mostly, and leave the hill-tops for temples), then the garden is made the foreground, as it were, so as to seem to take possession of the whole thing.[1] Perhaps the ground is flat, and a scene including hills, a tumbling cascade, or a lake is desired—for the ideal landscape includes water scenery in combination with land and trees. If hills are wanted, they and the hollows for valleys are first made, and then the lake bed, or the pebbly trough for the brook, is dug. Fujiyama’s cone, sometimes a mere doll’s plaything, is included in the representation of this favourite scene. The scale of comparative size diminishes from a goodly sized Fuji, two hundred feet high, to the little porcelain ones used in the tea-plate garden.
Exposure, or what comes to more than that, for it includes the idea of moral influences from different quarters (the Fung Shui of the Chinese), is a most important point to be considered. It is unlucky, literally as well as superstitiously, to face North, because of evil spirits, and evil, biting winds. The West is also taboo, unless, as sometimes happens, Fuji or some other well-loved mountain can be seen from that side, for the summer sun from that quarter burns and parches. The Southern exposure, as in most other places in the Northern Hemisphere, is the most desired, as it provides the warm sun in winter, the cool breeze in summer,
A HILLSIDE GARDEN AT KYOTO
and the kind and pleasant influences that come with it. Next after that the East is considered lucky, for its sun in the mornings in winter is the warmest, and in the summer the least trying. Water, too, must come from these directions. I thought it only a coincidence at first that the little streams which irrigate and adorn more than half the gardens of Japan did this, until I saw a lusty brook being diverted and coaxed, apparently uphill, in order to have it run from South to North, so that it might not bring into the place the goblins and adverse influences of the North!
The gardens are almost always at the back of the house, for seclusion, and the best rooms face upon them. As the garden is a sanctuary, the private chapel, the religious retreat of the family, as well as its place of pleasure and relaxation, it can readily be seen that the adornment of the street, at which the altruistic American ‘front yard’ aims, is not considered.
One of the constantly repeated fallacies about the Japanese is that they have no idea of perspective. While it cannot be claimed that in drawing with pen or brush they always respect its laws, no landscape artists in the world lay more stress upon it in the making of their outdoor pictures, their gardens. There are two well-known schools of perspective which are employed. One sets the big trees and ornaments, such as lanterns, pagodas, bridges, etc., in the foreground (that is, near the house), putting smaller ones farther off so that they appear to be getting smaller as they recede into the distance. This might be called the scientific school, and its method was employed by the famous master of the ‘Tea-Drinking Ceremony’ (Cha-no-ya) and of landscape gardening (Sen-no-Rikiu). It is very successful, especially in small gardens, where big trees at the back of the premises would make its boundaries more pronounced, and would seem to shut the place in. In this plan distant hills are smaller than near ones, but the artificial water, because it is flat, and lowers the look of the land about it, is higher in the background, so as to send this farther off. This is called the ‘Distance-lowering Style.’
The opposite, which might be considered the natural Perspective School, is called the ‘Distance-raising Style’; it places its small things in the front, and lets distance and Nature herself lower the size and create the perspective for the larger objects and big trees on the horizon line. Even in a small garden there is something to be said for this plan; the eye is carried on and up, so that it gives a sense of more beyond. It is, however, best suited to large grounds, where big scenic effects are aimed at. Furuba Oribe was the prophet of this method. In either style the paths would turn and twist, the stepping-stones be laid at delightful angles in attractive groups; for even the tyro knows that a curved road seems—and is—longer than a straight one.
As so much of the foundation of this art is to get the effect of natural scenery, it is essential to work always towards the object of making the garden appear larger than it really is; for most gardens are small, and even the big ones want to look bigger, and to suggest stretches of scenery. To attain this, other rules of art enter: horizontal objects are placed in front of standing ones—as a ‘Recumbent Stone’ beside a ‘Statue Rock,’ or a Standard lantern; a smooth stretch of turf (if it is used) set off by a group of trees; or a lake nestling beneath a rocky hill.
Japanese artists declare that it is far easier to design a big than a small garden; and one can see that the balance of value in the microscopic garden becomes so delicate that apothecary’s scale would, figuratively, have to be used. The large garden can afford big open spaces, the relief of plainness to the eye tired by a complexity of objects of interest, but small ones must, by infinite detail, give the effect of size; just as a little woman in a dress with a big floral pattern upon it seems fatter and larger, while a big woman in a plain dark colour seems to reduce her dimensions, so the least scrap of a garden, by a multiplicity of points of interest, carrying attention from one spot to another, appears to gain in breadth and size. Again, as lengthwise stripes give height, so plantations of slender trees carry the eyes of the mind up, and by their columns, one behind the other onwards, give distance and, that best thing of all, mystery.
But with all this attention to detail, to a complex and intricate appeal to the sight, and in spite of the national passion for the look of age, no litter or untidiness is ever permitted. Lichens and weather stains, which a Japanese gardener will take any amount of pains to get, must not imply disorder; the natural decay of wood, which is so beautiful, must not go so far as rottenness, or imperil the safety of the object for which it is used; velvety mosses must not suggest uncleanliness or neglect. Just as in houses everything is scrupulously clean and well cared for, so in gardens no slovenliness is permitted. Although water is so freely used, and the hardly pounded earth, that takes the place of our grass, is always kept cool and damp with constant sprinkling, no puddles are allowed, no mud may exist for more than an hour or two.
Coolness is a great desideratum, and shady Wistaria-covered arbours and rustic pavilions are often seen, while trees are trimmed to afford shade as much as for beauty. But shadows and coolness, however much desired, are not obtained by overcrowding. The relief of open spaces must always be given, no matter how small the trees have to be kept to ensure this.
I remember a lovely garden at Karuizawa, where the British Ambassador’s wife spent a summer, which, to the Japanese idea, was ruined because of neglect in this point. The plan had doubtless been all right in the beginning, but, as the place was let to foreigners, less pains were taken to keep its values right, and the trees grew too big, and open spaces were crowded. Even to our ideas the trees and shrubbery were too close to the house, stifling it, keeping out the breeze, and harbouring insects in their damp shadows. All these errors brought it strikingly home to one who battled with mosquitoes at tea on the lawn how right Japanese gardening principles are, even from their and our different view-points.
One idea of theirs, with regard to trees, might be adopted by the foreigner who wishes to have it appear that he owns more country than is really his. If vegetation of a distinct and characteristic sort is seen beyond a man’s limits, he at once plants other trees of the same sort on his ground, so that it looks as if all were part of his own domain. And if one rare tree were found at a distance from the house, another would be planted near, to give a ‘family’ look to it. But this does not cause a cheapening of effect by too much repetition. It is exactly a parallel of the method of a painter who repeats a striking note of colour in diminuendo in the distance, so as to heighten its telling qualities in the foreground. The Japanese says, just as our painters do, that the important parts are the back- and fore-grounds, and that the middle distances can take care of themselves.
But, however rigid garden rules may appear, there is always in them a delightful elasticity in their application, a really wonderful individuality in the carrying out of them. Faces have each a nose, a pair of eyes, and a mouth, hair, ears, teeth, but who shall say that their only difference occurs in the loss of one of these features? Let no man chafe at the laws, then, for without laws there is licence, ugliness, death, instead of re-birth in decay. Nature, who seems so lawless, so untrammelled, is the most relentless mistress man can have. But if she is severe, she is tender; if cruel, she is altogether lovely, and so, in their bending to her rules, are Japanese gardens.
Maurice Hewlett makes one of his characters say somewhere that “Horticulture is, next to music, the most sensitive of the fine arts. Properly allied to Architecture, garden making is as near as a man may get to the Divine functions.”
And the Japanese are very near!
- ↑ The accompanying picture of Mr. Blow’s garden on a hill-side in Kyoto is an example of this. Even the Yasaka Pagoda seems a part of the same domain.