Then we come to perhaps the prettiest of all, the boat-shaped vessels, which are suspended by a cord or chain. The simplest of these are bamboo tubes splayed off at the ends, hollowed out, and hung horizontally. These, one would have thought, were probably their original form as conceived by Yoshimasa whilst observing children sailing toy boats filled with flowers; but the more elaborate bronze vases in exact imitation of ships and junks came first, and the simpler ones are of later origin. Some attribute the first use of boat vases to the fact that the celebrated philosopher Soami, to please his patron Yoshimasa, took a bronze vessel of accidental resemblance to a boat, and by his arrangement of the flowers suggested the idea of a sailing vessel. The regent was so pleased with this novel flower arrangement that Soami devoted his attention to drawing up certain rules with regard to boat arrangements.
Bamboo rafts formed of bamboos of different lengths tied together to hang horizontally, either supporting a basket of flowers, or with one of the tubes hollowed so as to hold the stems of the branches, show yet another way in which the bamboo is used. Such a raft laden with cherry blossoms is arranged to suggest the mountain scenery of Arashiyama and the flower-laden craft in the season of cherry blossoms. The correct use of the branches of bamboo as a decoration would appear to be no less complicated than the choice of the vessels. A portion of the round stem or tube is selected and only a few leaf-clad twigs are permitted to remain, and, according to the occasion for which the arrangement is being made, the tube must be splayed or cut horizontally. For instance, for wedding feasts the cut must be concealed by leaves, as the sight of it would be considered unlucky and suggestive of severed friendship. Regulations also exist as to the number of twigs or leaves which are to be left on the stems,—three or five as a rule; and yet further rules as to the number of leaves to be left on these same twigs. Three combinations are approved, known as the Fish tail, Goldfish tail, and Flying Geese shape, which consists of three sloping leaves suggestive of the outline of a wild goose in flight. Probably the best known combination is that of the pine, bamboo, and plum, as it is specially employed at the New Year, when almost every house in Japan will have such a combination arranged on the tokonoma. Enough has been said to show the bewildering number of laws and regulations that surround this especial art, and it is not to be wondered at that Mr. Conder is probably the only foreigner who has ever mastered the subject, as indeed it requires years of study before a flower arrangement completed by the hand of one who is not a Japanese could hope to pass muster before the critical eye of the professor.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PINE-TREE
The pine-trees—Matsu-no-ki—of Japan are so closely and inseparably associated with the country, in the beauty of the landscape, the national customs and the national art, that it seems impossible when describing the floral year to omit the pine-trees, surely the grandest and noblest decoration of the land. They seem to welcome you to Japan, for as your ship glides up the Inland Sea the pine-trees will greet you on every side, the mountains will be clad with their eternal green, every island will have some venerable trees twisted and bent by storms and age. To the Japanese the pine is the king of trees, full of poetical suggestion and perfectly incomparable; and certainly it would be impossible to imagine Japan without her pine-trees. The impressive grandeur of every Shinto temple, every Buddhist shrine, is deepened by the grey-green trees standing in their silent gardens; they seem a necessity to such august places. Think of the pines at Uyeno or at Shiba; their merit is as great as the cherry-trees in the parks; to them and the cryptomeria belongs the task of guarding all the temples of the land. Every Tokugawa feudal castle had a moat bordered with pine-trees—how many have now been swept away and nothing left but a meaningless waste! The Imperial palace is chiefly shaded by the trees, their heavy foliage suggesting the depth of the forest. To-day every common house and garden has its guardian pine-tree at the gate.
The Japanese are very fond of visiting special meisho or “famous places,” and how many of these places have been made famous by the beauty of their pine-trees, for where is the spot of natural beauty in all the country which has no pines? The three most “famous places” owe their beauty to water and the pines, nothing else. The great hokku poet Basho found himself quite unable to sing his “seventeen syllables” at Matsushima, the land of the pine-clad islands; he was a wandering poet who left a line or two wherever he went, but here he considered his silence was the greatest song of praise for the place, which he said was the best in Japan. He wrote in his diary: “One isle stands pointing up to the sky; another bows crawling over the waves; one parts at the left, another joins again at the right. The green beauty of the pine-trees is superb; the branches and leaves are bent quite naturally by the wind and tide.” Indeed I do not wonder that he found himself unable to describe this land of fairy isles within the limits of seventeen syllables, for given unlimited space and an unlimited number of syllables it is hard to convey any idea of the beauty of the scene. Eight and its compounds are favourite round numbers with the Japanese, so they assured me that there were 808 in all of these tiny islands; and surely no one would dispute it. Each great winter storm sweeping in from the Pacific makes one or more of these toy islands crumble and disappear; but the sea makes rapid inroads and hollows out fresh archways or fresh tunnels, so very quickly a promontory breaks off and forms a new island, to be given a new fancy name, thus keeping up the traditional number. In every available nook stands one of the storm-bent trees which have given name and fame to the locality, whose praises have been sung by
PINE-TREE AT MATSUSHIMA
PINE-TREE AT MATSUSHIMA