Fig. 269.—Stone foot-bridge.
Fig. 270.—Garden brook and foot-bridge.
The summer-houses are simple and picturesque; sometimes they have a seat and a do-ma, or earth floor; others will have a board or a matted floor. These houses are generally open, the square thatched roof being supported on four corner-posts; others again will have two sides closed by permanent partitions, [pg 280] in one of which an ornamental opening or window occurs. We cannot understand what so intelligent an observer as Rein means when he makes the statement that the Japanese garden contains no summer-house,—for it is rare to see a garden of any magnitude without one, and impossible to refer to any Japanese book on the subject in which these little rustic shelters and resting-places are not figured.
The training of vines and trees about the summer-house window is often delightfully conceived. We recall the circular window of one that presented a most beautiful appearance. Three sides of the summer-house were closed by permanent plaster partitions, tinted a rich brown color, with a very broad-eaved thatched roof throwing its dark shade on the matted floor. In the partition opposite the open side was a perfectly circular window five feet in diameter. There was no frame or moulding to this opening, simply the plastering finished squarely at the border; dark-brown bamboos of various thicknesses, secured across this opening horizontally, formed the frame-work; running vertically, and secured to the bamboo, was a close grating of brown rush. Over and around this window—it being on the sunny side—there had been carefully trained outside a vine with rich green leaves, so that the window was more or less shaded by it. The effect of the sunlight falling upon the vine was exquisite beyond description. When two or three leaves interposed between the sun's rays, the color was a rich dark green; where here and there, over the whole mass, a single leaf only interrupted the light, there were bright green flashes, like emerald gems; at points the dazzling sunlight glinted like sparks. In a few places the vine and leaves had been coaxed through the grating of rushes, and these were consequently in deep shadow. I did not attempt to sketch it, as no drawing could possibly convey an idea of the exceeding richness and charm of the effect, with the cool and shaded room within, the [pg 281] dark-brown lattice of bamboo and rush, the capacious round opening, and, above all, the effect of the various rich greens,—which was greatly heightened as the wind tremulously shifted the leafy screens without, and thus changed the arrangement of the emerald colors within.
My attention was first attracted to it by noticing a number of Japanese peering at it through an open fence, and admiring in rapt delight this charming conception. Such a room and window might easily be arranged in our gardens, as we have a number of vines with light, translucent leaves capable of being utilized in this way.
Fig. 271.—Summer-house in private garden, Tokio.