In “Chashitsu” any thing in the way of display is banished and the utmost refinement of taste is the object aimed at. Every thing was so simplified and rusticated that Mr. Eastlake would look with amazement. There is nothing more simple than to use natural object just as it is; the post at the “Tokonoma” is almost invariably a natural form of wood the bark only being removed. The small rafters which are visible from outside of “Chashitsu” are simply round sticks about an inch in diameter placed every foot. Sometimes the post of “Chashitsu” are so peculiarly finished that the marks of an adze may be noticeable. The face of walls are of sand of beautiful natural tint of bluish green, gray or reddish brown. The furniture and utensile of Cha-no-yu are the simplest things imaginable. This spirit of simplicity and rustication is well exemplified in the so called refined parlor of a modern Japanese house. There is no doubt that Shoin type and Chashitsu construction have given much influence to the modern Japanese houses.
The Greece borrowed the motives of art from Egypt, Assyria, and Phoenicia and composed them so splendidly that it seemed as if they were quite original to the Greeks. Greeks are no doubt an artistic people, they formed an artistic idea from an inartistic source, giving grace of form to a disfigured object and perfect harmony to an inharmonious color; and their architecture unconditionally stands beyond criticism. Romans may perhaps have been more artistic and at the same time more practical than Greeks, but we must acknowledge that without Greeks Roman art could not have existed. Japan, no doubt, acquired her artistic idea from China and Corea, but it is a question whether she was a Greek or a Roman at the Far East. If quietude, reserve, tranquility are the characteristics of Greek art we find them likewise in our domestic architecture, the “Chashitsu” and still more in the art of landscape gardening.
I gave Chashitsu and Cha-no-yu as an example of Japanese artistic conception shown everywhere. Here I will give another example of this kind which necessarily associates with them; that is the art of landscape gardening. This also has its origin with certain Corean who invented the art at the time of Suiko, the emperor of the sixth century. But there is not any evidence that such an art had existed in Corea, and it seems to me that the art of miniature landscape gardening is an outcome of the scenic nature of the country. The abundance of hills and waters, rocks and trees gave naturally the rise to the unique scenery in inland as well as the sea coast. The tasteful imitation of this scenery is an involving idea of this accessory art, and at the later period of Tokugawa Shōgun it had taken a systematic form of an art, and peculiarly connected with the Chashitsu architecture, for it has unique, odd, picturesque conception in common with both. Manifold formulas, traditions, and classifications made it so difficult for one to attempt the art that he cannot place even a single stepping stone without knowing the name given, and the meaning accorded to it. It is true that one cannot manage the garden so as to make it look picturesque without knowing how to arrange appropriate objects in appropriate places and the nomenclatures of them, for instance “the moon shade stone”, “the three body stone”, “the twilight woods” etc., make it more interesting and poetical. The idea is quite oriental. A well, a stone basin, a stone post lantern, a flat-top stone, all these necessary elements of Japanese miniature landscape gardening have poetical nomenclature referring to history, religion and tradition. To the bystanders it may merely seem quite an odd, unsymmetrical, picturesque and artful imitation of natural scenery, but profound spiritual meaning which only educated Japanese can understand permeate each of the elements of a garden. It is altogether too practical as European landscape gardening is too scientific. Here I show just one type of gardens which is said to correspond to the Roman type of lettering ([Plate 18]); Roman, Gothic, Italic etc. are classification of lettering, so Japanese classify the work of landscape gardening according to the style of treatment in referring to the style of lettering.
Plate 18
Plate 19
