PRACTICAL BOOK OF GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 



the .representation of natural features in a garden 

 model has come to be a highly conventional expres- 

 sion, like all Japanese art; and the Japanese garden 

 bears somewhat the same relation to an actual land- 

 scape that a painting of a view of Fuji-yama by the 

 wonderful Hokusai does to the actual scene it is a 

 representation based upon actual and natural forms, 

 but so modified to accord with accepted canons of 

 Japanese art, so full of mysterious symbolism only 

 to be understood by the initiated, so expressed, in a 

 word, in terms of the national artistic convention, 

 that it costs the western mind long study to learn 

 to appreciate its full beauty and significance. Sup- 

 pose, to take a specific example, that in the actual 

 landscape upon which the Japanese gardener chose 

 to model his design a pine tree grew upon the side 

 of a hill. Upon the side of a corresponding artificial 

 hill in his garden he would therefore plant a pine, 

 but he would not clip and trim its branches to imitate 

 the shape of the original, but rather, satisfied that by 

 so placing it he had gone far enough toward the 

 imitation of nature, he would clip his garden pine 

 to make it correspond as closely as circumstances 

 might permit to a conventional ideal pine-tree shape, 

 as though buffeted and gnarled by the fierce winds 

 of centuries. 



These native craftsmen also will assure the 



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