We visited a charming exposition of pigmy trees in Shiba. Many gentlemen of Tokyo had sent their tiny plants and miniature vases, hibachi, lacquers, books and jades to decorate the doll-house rooms. These playthings are in many cases of great antiquity and value, and lovely in quality and colour; as much pains and taste are required to arrange these little expositions as to decorate the large rooms of a palace. On account of our visit the gardener had taken particular trouble, and he showed us all the fairy articles with loving hands and words. There were microscopic trees an inch high and landscapes two inches long, which were a real delight, so exquisite were they. Such trees are really works of art, and some of them indeed as valuable as gems. About us, in pots of beautiful form and colour, were the dwarf trees of fantastic shape—stunted plum in fragrant bloom, white and pink, and gnarled trees hundreds of years old with blossoming branches springing out of seemingly dead trunks.
The Arsenal Gardens in Tokyo are said to have been formerly the most wonderful in the country. Koraku-en, their Japanese name—literally translated, "past pleasant recalling,"—probably means "full of pleasant remembrances." They were designed some three hundred years ago with the object of reproducing in miniature many of the most renowned scenes in the Island Empire. In front of the pavilion, however, is a lake which is copied from a noted one in China called Soi-ko. Beyond the lake rises a wooded hill, on which stands a small, beautifully carved replica of the famous temple Kiyomisu at Kyoto. Lower down the hill is a little stream spanned by an accurate copy of the well-known bridge at Nikko; further on is the shrine of Haky-i and Shiky-sei, the loyal brothers of Chinese legend. An arched stone bridge leads to still another shrine, and from this a path through a thicket of creepers conducts to a lake covered with lotus and fed by a stream which forms a lovely cascade. Another path crosses little mountains through thick foliage of bamboo and pine, passes the artificial sea with its treasure island in the centre, and leads over bridges, by waterfalls and around temples.
In these gardens the Japanese most perfectly realized their desire to transfer the features of a natural landscape to their immediate surroundings; here were magnificent trees of great size, lakes and streams and mountains in miniature, and a wide jungle of grass and bamboo. Through the noise and dust and dilapidation due to the encroachments of the Arsenal workshops, one can still catch a glimpse of the underlying plan and imagine the ancient beauties of Koraku-en.
CHAPTER XV
THE ARTIST'S JAPAN
"The great characteristic of Japanese art is its intense and extraordinary vitality, in the sense that it is no mere exotic cultivation of the skilful, no mere graceful luxury of the rich, but a part of the daily lives of the people themselves."
Mortimer Menpes.
AT every turn of the head the artist in Japan discerns a picture that delights his eye—a quaint little figure dressed in bright colours standing by a twisted tree, a fantastic gateway through which he sees a miniature garden, or the curving roof of a temple, half hidden among the trees.