The secret in a Japanese garden is that they do not attempt too much. That reserve and sense of propriety which characterize this people in all their decorative and other artistic work are here seen to perfection. Furthermore, in the midst of so much that is evanescent they see the necessity of providing enduring points of interest in the way of little ponds and bridges, odd-shaped stone lanterns and inscribed rocks, summer-houses and rustic fences, quaint paths of stone and pebble, and always a number of evergreen trees and shrubs. We, indeed, have feebly groped that way with our cement vases, jigsaw pavilions green with poisonous compound, and cast-iron fountains of such design that one no longer wonders at the increase of insanity in our midst. One of every hundred of the fountains that our people dote upon is in the form of two little cast-iron children standing in a cast-iron basin, holding over their heads a sheet-iron umbrella, from the point of which squirts a stream of water,—a perennial shower for them alone, while the grass and all about may be sear and yellow with the summer's drought!
The Japanese have brought their garden arts to such perfection that a plot of ground ten feet square is capable of being exquisitely beautified by their methods. Plots of ground that in this country are too often encumbered with coal-ashes, tea-grounds, tin cans, and the garbage-barrel, in Japan are rendered charming to the eye by the simplest means. With cleanliness, simplicity, a few little evergreen shrubs, one or two little clusters of flowers, a rustic fence projecting from the side of the house, a quaintly shaped flower-pot or two, containing a few choice plants,—the simplest form of garden is attained. So much do the Japanese admire gardens, and garden effects, that their smallest strips of ground are utilized for this purpose. In the crowded city, among the poorest houses, one often sees, in the corner of a little earth-area that comes between the sill and [pg 275] the raised floor, a miniature garden made in some shallow box, or even on the ground itself. In gardens of any pretensions, a little pond or sheet of water of irregular outline is an indispensable feature. If a brook can be turned to run through the garden, one of the great charms is attained; and a diminutive water-fall gives all that can be desired. With the aid of fragments of rock and rounded boulders, the picturesque features of a brook can be brought out; little rustic bridges of stone and wood span it, and even the smallest pond will have a bridge of some kind thrown across. A few small hummocks and a little mountain six or eight feet high, over or about which the path runs, are nearly always present.
In gardens of larger size these little mountains are sometimes twenty, thirty, and even forty feet in height, and are built up from the level ground with great labor and expense. On top of these a little rustic lookout with thatched roof is made, from which if a view of Fuji can be got the acme is indeed reached. In still larger gardens,—that is, gardens measuring several hundred feet each way,—the ponds and bridges, small hills and meandering paths, with shrubs trimmed in round balls of various sizes, and grotesquely-shaped pines with long tortuous branches running near the ground, are all combined in such a way by the skilful landscape gardener that the area seems, without exaggeration of statement, ten times as vast.
Fig. 263.—Garden tablet.
Irregularly and grotesquely shaped stones and huge slabs of rock form an important feature of all gardens; indeed, it is as difficult to imagine a Japanese garden without a number of picturesque and oddly-shaped stones as it is to imagine an American garden without flowers. In Tokio, for example, there being near the city no proper rocks of this kind for garden decoration, rocks and stones are often transported forty or fifty [pg 276] miles for this purpose alone. There are stone-yards in which one may see and purchase rocks such as one might use in building a rough cellar-wall at home, and also sea-worn rocks of various shapes and colors,—among them red-colored stones, that fetch a hundred dollars and more, brought from Sado, an island on the northwest coast of Japan. So much do the Japanese admire stones and rocks for garden decoration, that in their various works on the subject of garden-making the proper arrangement of stones is described and figured with painstaking minuteness. In the figures to be given of Japanese gardens, reproduced from a work entitled “Chikusan Teizoden,” written in the early part of the last century, the arrangement of rocks in the various garden designs will be observed.
Tablets of rock, not unlike a certain type of gravestone, and showing the rough cleavage of the rock from the parent ledge, are often erected in gardens. Upon the face of the rock some appropriate inscription is engraved. The accompanying sketch ([fig. 263]) is a tablet of this sort, from a famous tea-garden at Omori, celebrated for its plum-blossoms. The legend, freely translated, runs as follows: “The sight of the plum-blossom causes the ink to flow in the writing-room,”—meaning that one is inspired to compose poetry under the influence of these surroundings. This tablet was raised on a slight mound, with steps leading to it and quaint pines and shrubs surrounding it. The sketch gives only a suggestion of its appearance.
