One thing that strikes us about Japanese gardens that we do not find in England is the wonderful economy displayed in their schemes. Suburbia often makes the excuse that their pocket-handkerchief of a garden is much too small to be made beautiful. Too small to be made beautiful? Why, the Japanese can make a wonderful little garden in a space no bigger than a soup-plate! Necessity is the mother of invention, and if we only loved Nature more we should soon find the means to make our smallest gardens attractive. The great Japanese designer of gardens, Kobori-Enshiu, said that an ideal garden should be like "the sweet solitude of a landscape clouded by moonlight, with a half-gloom between the trees."
Miss Florence Du Cane has much to say concerning Japanese rocks and stones. What poetry is suggested in the names of some of these garden stones—for example, "The Stone of Easy Rest." Then, among the lake stones we have one called "Wild Wave Stone," that at once suggests Matsushima, with its waves breaking against innumerable rocks.
The stone or wooden lamps are very important ornaments in a Japanese garden. The idea was borrowed from Korea, and they are still sometimes known as "Korean towers." They are seldom lit, except in temple gardens, but they need no jewel of light to make them beautiful. They are rich in amber and green moss, and in the winter they catch the snow and make ghost lanterns of exquisite beauty. Another feature of a Japanese garden is the Torii, a simple arch of wood shaped like a huge Chinese character. Shintō in origin, no one has as yet discovered what they were originally intended to represent, though there have been many diverse opinions on the subject. These gates to nowhere are extremely fascinating, and to look at them with the sea about their feet is to dream of a far-away fairy tale of childhood.
The lakes, cascades, tiny bridges, the stepping-stones over the winding ways of silver sand, form a place of retreat indeed. And then the colour of the Japanese garden! Every month has some fresh colour scene as the plum and cherry and peach-trees come into bloom. Trailing over the ground among the pine-needles or looking into the clear blue lake, one may see the azaleas. If there were ever a flower that personified colour then it is surely the azalea. It is the rainbow of flowers, and there seems scarcely a shade of colour not to be found in its blossoms. To look at the azaleas is to look into the very paint-box of Nature herself. Then at another season of the year we get the iris in purple and lavender, yellow and white, or the beautiful rose-coloured lotus that opens with a little explosion on the placid waters, as if to herald its coming to perfection. The last colour glory of the year is the splendour of the maple-trees. We have a fine crimson effect in our English blackberry leaves, but they lie hidden in the wet autumn hedges. In Japan the maples do not hide. They seem everywhere alive in a splendid flame. In the autumn it appears as if the maple-trees had conjured with the sunset, for at that time Japan is not the Land of the Rising Sun, but the land of the sun going down in a great pageant of red leaves. And is that the end of Nature's work for the year? No, indeed. Last of all comes the snow, and the beauty of its effect lies not so much in the soft flakes themselves, but in the way they are caught and held upon the beautiful little houses and temples and lanterns. See a Japanese garden then, and you see the white seal of Nature's approval upon it all. The snow scene is perhaps Nature's supreme touch in Japan, after all; and it is a scene dear to the hearts of the Japanese. In midsummer a Japanese emperor once had the miniature mountains in his gardens covered with white silk to suggest snow, and, no doubt, to give an imaginary coolness to the scene. A slight acquaintance with Japanese art will reveal the fact that snow affords a favourite theme for the artist's brush.
Nature in Miniature
The Japanese, for the most part, are little in stature, and have a love of things in miniature. Lafcadio Hearn tells a charming story of a Japanese nun who used to play with children and give them rice-cakes no bigger than peas and tea in very minute cups. Her love of very small things came as the result of a great sorrow, but we see in this Japanese love of little objects something pathetic in the nation as a whole. Their love of dwarf trees, hundreds of years old, seems to say: "Be honourably pleased never to grow big. We are a little people, and so we love little things." The ancient pine, often less than a foot in height, does not render its age oppressive, and is not a thing to fear just because it is so very small. Westerners have been inclined to describe the dwarf Japanese tree as unnatural. It is no more unnatural than the Japanese smile, and reveals that the nation, like the Greeks of old, is still closely in touch with Nature.
The Pine-tree
The pine-tree is the emblem of good fortune and longevity. That is why we see this tree at almost every garden gate; and it must be admitted that a pine-tree is a more graceful talisman than a rusty old horse-shoe. In a certain Japanese play we find the following: "The emblem of unchangeableness—exalted is their fame to the end of time—the fame of the two pine-trees that have grown old together." This refers to the famous pines of Takasago. Mr. Conder tells us that at wedding feasts "a branch of the male pine is placed in one vessel and a branch of the female pine in the other. The general form of each design would be similar, but the branch of the female pine facing the opposite vase should stretch a little beneath the corresponding branch of the male pine." In other words, it shows that Woman's Suffrage exists not in Japan, and that the Japanese wife is subject to her lord and master, which is a very pretty way of suggesting, what is in England a very dangerous subject. The design referred to above typifies "eternal union." The pine-tree really symbolises the comradeship of love, the Darby and Joan stage of old married people in Japan.