199 - 



Siiiko. Among the Corean immigrants there was a man named 

 Roshiko, whose face and body were profusely covered with un- 

 pleasing freckles. So unbecoming was his as]iect that he was 

 ordered to be deported and would have been had he not made a 

 special appeal to the Empress, stating : " Though hideous I may 

 be to look at, I possess a humble talent for composing landscape 

 gardens. If her August Majesty will retain the faithful new 

 subject it will benefit her domain." The Empress Suiko granted 

 his request and caused him to set up a landscape garden in the 

 southern enclosure of the palace. Roshiko's name soon became 

 famous and a few years later he made another garden for Soga- 

 no-Umako, near the Asuka River in the Yamato Province, where 

 he employed a running streamlet. This garden had a small lake 

 with an island in it, and the peo])le called the owner of the garden 

 Shima-no-Ouii, or Great Minister of the Island. The word 

 Shima (Island) came to Ije applied for a garden in ancient Japan. 

 As in calligraphy, painting, flower arrangement, and other 

 branches of Japanese art, various elaborate formulae for a]:)plica- 

 tion in gardening liave been developed and their different aspects 

 of treatment will be explained later. In a general way, Japanese 

 gardens may be classified in four main styles : Palace Garden, 

 Shinto and Buddhist Temple Gardens, and Cha-no-yu or Tea Cult 

 Garden. One of the interesting aspects of this garden in Brook- 

 lyn is that it embraces some features of all of these four garden 

 types. 



The Entrance and the Water Pavilion 



The entrance to the Botanic Garden at the North AVashington 

 Avenue gate leads to the roofed l)oard fence, with gateway enclos- 

 ing the Japanese Garden on the east, and gives visitors a sensation 

 of approaching a Ja])anese tea house, for the style here represents 

 Cha-)io-yt(, or Tea Cult. 



The timbers employed for making the fence and gate are the 

 white cedar (CJiamaccy parts thy aides), a common tree along the 

 Atlantic Coast in New Jersey. It is the practice of the Japanese 

 gardener to char the surface of the wood to a certain degree and 

 then polish with a dry brush made of rice straw in order to pro- 

 duce an attractive natural grain of the timber in low relief, and 

 at the same time to preserve against exposure to the weather. 



