To show that great men have turned their attention to these little toy gardens, no less an artist than the celebrated Hiroshige, whose colour-prints of the fifty-three stages of the journey on the old Tokaido road, along which the Shoguns, in days gone by, travelled with all the pomp and state due to their rank, from Kyoto to Yedo, are well known and prized by all lovers of these prints, evidently considered these scenes so suited for the making of toy gardens, that he designed a special book in which the fifty-three views appear as Hachi-niwa. The book is now, unfortunately, scarce and difficult to obtain, but I had the delight of seeing the whole set of views in real life, each in its little dish. My teacher told me that the first Exhibition of Hachi-niwa ever held in Kyoto would take place at the Kyoto Club, where the various competitors would exhibit different views, and a prize would be awarded, from votes by ballot, to the best in the collection. Needless to say, as soon as the doors, or rather the sliding shoji, of the club were thrown open to the public, I hastened to study these perfect little works of art. Round three white-matted rooms they stood, each dish on a low black wood stand a few inches high, raised on a dais only another few inches from the ground, so that to view them properly it was necessary to kneel in adoration before them. I was asked to vote for the three I liked best, and never did I have a greater difficulty in deciding. At first a view of Kodzu attracted my attention, with its pine-clad cliffs, deep-indented coast line, stony beach with a moored junk, and stretching away in the distance an expanse of pale blue sea, in the offing being a fleet of fishing-boats with sails not more than half an inch in size bellying in the breeze. This seemed to me perfection; every ripple on the water was marked in the sand, the crests of the waves white, the shadows a deep blue, and the reflection of the junk in perfect outline—a marvel of neatness and ingenuity. But to the Japanese this did not appeal; they condemned it for its very perfection; any one, they said, could make such a scene who had sufficient patience and neat fingers; whereas the view of Kanaya appealed to them as having something grand and yet simple in its conception. A river of white sand threaded its way through the mossy plain, and in the distance stood the little mountain village nestling at the foot of a range of mountains carved in stone. This was awarded the prize, and, I was glad to think, had been made by my teacher. Such an exhibition I had expected would be principally visited by women and children, as I had heard that the making of Hachi-niwa was a favourite occupation for the ladies of Tokyo, but here in Kyoto they found interest in the eyes of “grave and reverend seigneurs” who gathered in groups about the rooms. I saw all the members of the club, politicians, writers, poets, the greatest in the land, engrossed in discussing the merits or demerits of toy gardens, and I could not help thinking that here was a country indeed where “small things amuse great minds.”
CHAPTER V
TEMPLE GARDENS
Of all the gardens in Japan, and surely in no other country are there so many different forms of gardening, the temple garden, or often the garden surrounding some mouldering Buddhist monastery, remains a peaceful, secluded spot, recalling the Old Japan and days gone by. Unluckily many of them are fast falling into decay, like the buildings they surround; but perhaps it is better so, as they would surely suffer at the hands of the restorer, just as many of the temples have suffered; and though little may remain of the original gardens, the stones, beautified possibly by time, are still the same; the trees may have grown old and gnarled, but the form of the garden remains unchanged.
It has been said that every good garden should be a “modulation from pure nature to pure art,” and no one seems to have understood the saying better
AT KITANO TENJIN
than the makers of these old temple gardens: they are always a setting for the building they surround, adding to its grandeur, never dwarfing it; the placing of every stone, the curve of every walk, the shape of the pond, all seem to have been duly weighed and considered, and the result is an harmonious whole.
The grand Nikko temples, the shrines in Uyeno or Shiba, have been left in their natural surroundings; the tall grey masts of the cryptomerias stand like sentries to guard their precious treasure, the avenues broken only by long vistas of enormous steps or the uprights of a colossal granite torii. Nothing could be more imposing, and the effect of the bronze green of the cryptomerias against the splendid colour of the temple gives the crowning touch to a picture which in itself alone is worth travelling many thousand miles to see.