Rare days in Japan

by George Trumbull Ladd

To speak of the show of flowers, the entertainment, and the friends we met on this occasion would savour more of gossip about garden parties than of description of the art of landscape-gardening. But a word about the flowers. I am of the impression that while we raise in this country as fine, or finer, individual chrysanthemums, the Japanese excel us in the culture and development of the whole plant. For example, some of the specimens shown at this Imperial garden party had as many as 985 flowers on a single stock, making a plant fourteen feet in circumference; and others had no fewer than fifty-five varieties growing from one stock. The more properly artistic character of the show, however, was maintained by the elegant and simple arrangement of the single flowers as to colour and other kindred effects.

Among the private gardens in Japan which have combined the excellences of the native art with certain modifications introduced from abroad, may be mentioned those of Count Okuma and Marquis Nabeshima. The former seems to me to have been more influenced by English examples; it has a remarkable collection of Japanese maples,—more than one hundred varieties in all. The Count is also quite justly proud of his chrysanthemums, which are as fine as any in Japan. On the other hand the Marquis’ garden has the appearance of having been under the influence of Italian examples,—not, indeed, of the older and more artificial style, but of the sort surrounding the more beautiful of the modern villas.

I have already referred to the fondness of the Japanese for exceedingly minute representations of large natural objects, or even of extensive natural scenes. Hence those single specimens or collections of Bonsai, on which certain wealthy æsthetes have spent thousands of yen, and which may render their possessors as much the objects of friendly or envious rivalry as were the rival cultivators of rare species of tulips, in Holland some decades of years ago. Some of these aforesaid Bonsai are tiny pines or other trees, only a few inches in heighth, but of years mounting up to a half century or more. Such specimens require more tender and intelligent cultural care than the majority of human beings are wont to receive. One of the most delightful and benevolent and widely useful of Japanese ladies never travels from home even for a single night without taking along her choice collection of bonsai, which she cares for daily with her own hands. This same lady presented to my wife one of the products of this art, which consisted of scores of tiny pines growing out of the sand and so arranged that the eye could look through the grove as though upon the distant sea,—a fairly complete picture in miniature of a celebrated view in Kiushiu, along the seashore near Fukuoka.

In Japan every national festival and, indeed, almost every form of social gathering or species of entertainment partakes more or less of the character of a garden party. At the remotest and meanest tea-house in the mountains or by the sea, if the weather permits, you take your cup of tea where you can look upon a scene which nature or man has made into a work of art. If you call upon a native friend, you must enjoy the refreshment which is always offered, either in the garden or in a room or on a verandah, which looks out upon a garden. At every dinner party, when the season is favourable, either before the meal, or afterward in the moonlight, the guests are expected to wander over the grounds of the host or of the tea-house where the entertainment is given, enjoying its natural beauties. Of the various forms of excursioning, the pleasure of which implies an appreciation of nature,—such as mushroom-gathering, snow-viewing, etc., I have already spoken.

Garden parties are not infrequently given by the more wealthy Japanese at an expense of thousands of yen. The programme of one of the most elaborate of those given in Tokyo in the Autumn of 1906, included not only the inspection of the gardens and extensive museum of the host, music and refreshments, but the exhibition of Japanese histrionic performances and dances, in which actors and scenic apparatus were as good as could be seen in the very highest-class theatres. The most elaborate of these histrionic performances bore the title of “Urashima,” the Japanese Rip Van Winkle, and employed a dramatis personæ and orchestra of twenty-one persons. The description in the programme of the First Scene reads as follows: “In the depths of the broad expanse of the Ocean, stands Ryūgū, the seagod’s palace, bathed in serene moonlight which shines bright upon the corals and emeralds. Young fishes swimming about the palace add to the charm of the scene. The graceful movement of the sea-bream, the lively evolutions of the lobster, the brisk flouncing of the flounder, etc., are comically represented in the Joruri.” Thus ran the description of the printed programme. The ill condition of the weather,—for it had been raining steadily all day, and the out-of-door part of the entertainment had to be much curtailed,—did not prevent the several thousands of invited guests from attending, or the feast from being spread in the large refreshment tent, which was so arranged that its open side gave a view of a fountain surrounded by chrysanthemums and a beautiful bit of the garden beyond.

About the same time, another wealthy Japanese celebrated an important birthday for which the out-of-door preparations were more elaborate and unusual, if not so æsthetically refined. Mr. A—— had reached his sixty-first year, a time when Heaven should be thanked for prolonging one’s life beyond the customary span, and one’s friends should be summoned to render fitting congratulations. This time, also, the weather was most unpropitious; but the continued downpour, the soaked grass, and liquid mud, did not deter several thousands of guests from assembling. The entire wall surrounding the extensive grounds was solidly covered with ground-pine and diamond-shaped medallions of flowers set in at intervals,—the whole outlined with the national colours, red and white. Boards raised and spread with matting furnished dry paths from place to place inside the garden, where numerous booths of bamboo and ground-pine were cleverly distributed, from which the guests were served with tea and many kinds of cakes, with fruit, and with tobacco and beer. Hundreds of little maids in the gay dresses and with the painted faces of the professional waitress, were running about everywhere, ready to bring the various foods and drinks. In two large tents “continuous performances” of fencing or of a theatrical and other sort, were going on; and at the entrances of each stood scores of boys with Japanese paper umbrellas, employed in escorting the rain-bedrizzled crowd from one booth or tent to another. Several bands were stationed here and there, some playing foreign music and others performing on native instruments.

But the most astonishing attempt at the extraordinary by way of entertainment took the shape of a miniature Fuji, which was more than seventy-five feet in heighth, and which could be climbed by a spiral path from the inside. In a clear day, a fine view of Tokyo and its immediate and remoter surroundings, including the real Fuji, could have been seen from the platform at the top. All the rooms of the house on the garden side had been thrown into one, in which, on tables and rows of steps were arranged the store of presents from the guests. The greater number consisted of “katsebushi,” or fancy wooden boxes filled with dried fish. But besides, there were many rolls of white and red silk, for underwear, or for wadding kimonos in the cold weather; numerous screens decorated with the appropriate emblems of pine, bamboo and plum branches, or with cranes to signify wishes for long life, and made of a variety of materials from candy cake to bronze; a pair of rather more than ordinarily well-modelled bronze camels, designed to decorate the grounds and presented by four different banks in which the host was a director.

In each of the large tents a camp fire of charcoal was kept burning, which softened somewhat the damp air; and if one was especially honoured with a hibachi full of live coals at the back, one could sit to see through a play with a fair amount of comfort. Of these histrionic performances, the most interesting to me was one especially designed to typify congratulations and wishes for long life, and regularly performed at the period of the New Year’s festivities. In it a priest figured as the guardian of a mystical bridge which led up to Paradise; and over the crossing of which a hermit from the mountains contended with two devils, one with hoary locks and one with long and tangled hair of brilliant red, who gnashed their tusks and danced and stamped the ground with fury.

A very different garden party was that given, on a similar occasion, by the Marquis and Marchioness Nabeshima. Although the date was so much later, the fifth of December, the weather was all that could be desired. The engraved and embossed card of invitation, literally interpreted, asked us to do the host the honour of attending a “sixty-first birthday wine-drinking party.” The Marquis was born under that one of the twelve signs of the Japanese zodiac which is called “the sign of the Horse!” It should be explained that the coincidence of the Japanese reckoning of the periods of life by twelves with the Chinese system of reckoning by periods of ten, affords a reason for the pleasant fiction that, at sixty-one, a man begins life over again by becoming a child as it were. It is therefore proper to give him presents adapted to the improvement and pleasure and employment of children. The guests who gathered on this occasion were the élite of Tokyo; and the Emperor and Empress had signalised the occasion by sending congratulatory presents. Some of the presents, sent by the various friends, were simple offerings in wooden boxes, of food, or of crape; but others were beautiful and expensive dishes of silver, or bags of money resting underneath effigies of the “god of luck.” From an edge of the garden, which overhangs a valley, Fujiyama was to be seen in the distance. Returning to the house, we found that the stage in the ball-room was being used for an exhibition by two famous dancers of the old-fashioned kind (the older man said to be the most famous in Japan), who were dancing to the music made by six or seven samisen players and singers, seated above a chorus of four or five others who were drumming and “yowling” after the fashion of performers in the “Nō.” At a delightful collation which followed, the speech of congratulation to the host was made in English by Prince Ito, who had just returned to his own country, for a brief stay, from his work as Resident-General in Korea. This garden party became the more memorable, because it was while walking in the grounds that I was summoned to meet the Prince, and receive the first intimation of an intention, which culminated in the invitation to visit Korea as his guest and “unofficial adviser,” the following Spring. And now, alas! this great statesman has—to quote the words of a native paper—“died for the Koreans at the hands of a Korean.”

It has been for several years the custom of Count Okuma to throw open his beautiful grounds to garden parties, not only in the interest of entertaining his many personal and political friends, but also in the favour of an endless variety of good causes. Here rare roses, and wonderful chrysanthemums, and various native exhibitions of athletic, or musical, or histrionic skill, may be seen; here, also, problems of state and plans of beneficence may be discussed.