To Soothe, To Comfort, To Bless
Cover. Shisen-do [Hall of Immortal Poets], Kyoto, Japan [1641]. Landscape Architect: Ishikawa Jōzan [1583–1672]. Photographer: John Einarsen.
Preface
This text is replicated from Japanese Gardens [1912] by Harriet Osgood Taylor and Walter Tyndale [or Mrs. Basil Taylor].
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Chapter One
On Japanese Gardens in General
While the gardens of the Japanese have much of material charm, of rich and plentiful vegetation, of rare and splendid as well as exquisite though less striking flowers, of gracious bodily attraction [if I may so name it], it is to the inner sense, to the mind and the heart, that they make their chiefest appeal. In its most real meaning a garden, to them, must be a place of repose, of contemplation, of spiritual communion with Nature. There can a man loaf, and invite his soul ; and, though that soul may be shrivelled and shrunk to the dimensions of a withered Jerusalem Rose [a type of moss native to desert regions where water is scarce], it will swell and grow and blossom in the atmosphere of the place.
The very shopkeeper who may have done you an ill turn in business [just as a child with a stick hits you joyously and without malice] will retire to the tiny scrap of a place behind his premises, and, as if whirled away on the wonderful carpet of the Arabian Nights, he is another man, in another world, instantly ; and, with all that is kindly and beautiful and poetic uppermost, he will contemplate his frail little Morning Glory [Ipomoea tricolor] in its pot, or tenderly lift his butterfly-winged babies up to watch the pretty, swift flashings of the goldfish in the basin.
He no longer represents the somewhat sordid new Japan, which makes money by selling silk to foreigners ; which so often models itself on the bad, not on the good side of their business methods. He is no longer the harassed innkeeper, the big mill-owner, the busy, important Government official ; he has turned back the years, as one might the red petals of a Lotus [Nymphaea rubra] - back to the golden heart of old Japan. He is the brave follower of the samurai, whose whole creed is keeping faith ; or he is the samurai himself, a poet, though a soldier ; or the great daimyo, who is an artist, though a courtier.
In the old days every common thing to a Japanese was hedged about with divinity. A god guarded each humblest tool, lived in every stone or stump, inspired the simplest act. A spirit was invoked of peace and joy by a man's putting himself in the attitude to receive it. He walked into his garden, and, as if he had rubbed his magic ring, the Djin* of the garden appeared to soothe, to comfort, to bless.
* djinn: an invisible spirit mentioned in the Koran and believed by Muslims to inhabit the earth and influence mankind by appearing in the form of humans or animals.
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'In its most real meaning a garden, to them, must be a place of repose, of contemplation, of spiritual communion with Nature. There can a man loaf, and invite his soul; and, though that soul may be shrivelled and shrunk to the dimensions of a withered Jerusalem Rose, it will swell and grow and blossom in the atmosphere of the place. '
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I once heard Bishop Brent, that most practical of spiritual men, in speaking to a congregation of sailors say that to put themselves en rapport [close and harmonious relationship] with God and goodness was as easy as to turn a cock that let in the Pacific Ocean. So a Japanese enters into the peace that passeth understanding when he takes his weary body and tired mind, but open soul, into that place dedicated to peace. It is the survival of the Japanese garden, and all that the love of it still implies, which has saved Japan from being brutalised by improvement, from being crushed beneath the responsibility of transformation into a great Power, that has redeemed her from the curse that money-making brings. In the overturning of old ideals, while love of beauty and living things remains, Japan, thank God, can never grow into one of the sordid countries that the West knows so well.
But not only does the average Japanese bring with him the temperament to realise these delicate delights : the inspiration, the impulse to enjoy with the soul, as it were, is there before him. The artist who designed the grounds has already deliberately put it there, and, in these days, when mental suggestion has become almost a commonplace, it would be foolish to deny the possibility of such a sentiment persisting in a garden.
I dare say the reader may fancy this a far-fetched idea - both my interpretation and the Japanese original notion, into which I am trying to put a mystical sense of poetry - but it is very literally true. The artist plans the grounds, after a study of the owner's personality and temperament, as well as of a very complete review of the capabilities of the place and of the material at hand to assist in the work. After this he decides - probably with the owner's help and largely biased by his wishes - on the style of garden that is to be evolved. Shall it be great and grand, a wonderful and striking artist's picture of some big and famous landscape, modified and altered, so that it is not merely a bald and otherwise unconvincing copy but an illuminating interpretation ? Or shall it represent instead the last word in finished and elegant grounds with clipped trees and stone lanterns, and yet still, in its artificiality and careful finish, seeming only to suggest a richer phase of Nature ? Or is it to be one of the many thousands of small gardens whose plot of ground, scarcely bigger than a tablecloth, has still the space to present one of the intimate, serene, and sweet little glimpses of water and stones and flowering tree that bring gladness into many of what would otherwise be such drab, colourless backyards, such grey and dingy lives ?
I hope it is to be one of the last, for of all the many lovely things in Japan - high courage and patriotism, kindness and courtesy to the old and to the stranger, eternal cheerfulness and eternal industry,gentleness to children and tobirds and to all timid wild things - I think that one of the loveliest is their love of beauty, their insistence on it as one of the primary needs of life, and their belief in it as a moral and spiritual uplifter.
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'[Shall it] be one of the many thousands of small gardens whose plot of ground, scarcely bigger than a tablecloth, has still the space to present one of the intimate, serene, and sweet little glimpses of water and stones and flowering tree that bring gladness into many of what would otherwise be such drab, colourless backyards, such grey and dingy lives ?'
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I remember a poor little dwarf, whose tiny house on the shores of Lake Hakone stood in front of, but did not conceal, such a scrap of a garden for the worship of Nature. How she [nature?] had cursed him one knew, not only from his physical affliction, but by his wretched little half-witted child, a cretin, whose dull, hopeless eyes were so often seen at the cracks of the shoji.* But no, he was not even half-witted, this poor little creature, for he could not move about as other young animals can, nor make an intelligible sound. Nevertheless, his father, who might have been working all day in the hotel garden - the poor back, with its short legs, pitifully near the ground he was weeding - would, with his snatches of song, attract the child's attention before he reached his home, and would hold up the flowers he had brought for him, causing even those poor dull eyes to brighten a little.
* shoji: a paper screen serving as a wall, partition, or sliding door in traditional Japanese architecture.
Never was that minute plot of earth less than well cared for ; the little Azalea [flowering shrubs in the genus Rhododendron] bushes were clipped, the stepping-stones were bright, the poor little shrine in a niche was tidy and well tended ; and yet, handicapped by Nature, ugly and revolting to look at, poor, of a poverty we cannot guess, this man had a poet's heart.
The nation is great whieh even in the souls of the eommon people shews sueh gentle and beautiful ideas.