And the recollection that counts for me of dusty, noisy, Western-imitating Shimonoseki is not of its bold and painted nésans[1] at the hotel; not of its rough and boisterous boys; not of its noise and rush and business; not of our perilous passage across the straits, when we thought our little steam-launch would be carried out to sea, stone lantern and all, by the tremendous tide, and that we were about to be engulfed in the boiling tide-rips; but of the quiet poet before his Rose.
For a garden in Japan may be only one flower in a pot, if its message, which is from God, is heard and understood by the god which is the divine spark in each human soul.
Japanese gardens have not only the fair external beauty of a pretty woman, of a rosy, dimpled child: they have the inner grace which makes its appeal to the heart long after colour has faded and the lustre and freshness of youth are past. They have the potential interest of the child, all youth’s wondering, iridescent possibilities, added to the deep heart, the sympathetic power of the woman, and the strength, the virility, the tonic force of the fine and large-souled man.
If you find no more in a Japanese garden than the look, or the lack, of a pretty face, you have never learned its magic, you have not got at the true spirit of its conception.
- ↑ Literally “miss daughters,” i.e. serving maids.
