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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



JAPANESE HORTICULTURE. 

 By X. Hayashi. 



Xecture given on May 9. 1905/ 



Befoee going into technical detaHs, I shall venture to give an outline 

 of the history of the subject of the lecture. As is weU known, although 

 my nation is one of the oldest now in existence, 2,566 years having passed 

 since the first Emperor's accession to the throne, yet the fact of her 

 complete isolation from the Western world prevented her from profiting 

 by the advance in civilisation of that part of the earth, and thus she was 

 compeUed to continue to look to China as her teacher, and Chinese 

 civilisation as her model, until the revolution and subsequent opening 

 of the country to Western influences and civilisation some fifty years ago. 

 In such circumstances, horticulture also was developed on Chinese prin- 

 ciples and bound by Chinese conventional rules. The progress of horti- 

 culture, however, depended on the tranquillity of the country ; and indeed, 

 until Shogun Tokugawa, the great feudal ruler, had brought about 

 universal peace by the construction of a powerful government in a.d. 1595, 

 the art of horticulture did not make any marked development. From 

 this time, down to the end of the eighteenth century, the warriors as 

 weU as commoners began to devote themselves to peaceful arts and 

 naturally to turn their eyes to gardening. The result was that we, even 

 at the present time, regard the Tokugawa dynasty as the golden age of 

 Japanese horticulture. But there came another civil war, or, more 

 correctly speaking, a revolution, about forty years ago. The object of 

 the revolutionists, who were not revolutionists in a bad sense, but re- 

 formers, was to effect a complete change in the old customs which 

 appeared to them to be impediments in the path of obtaining Western 

 civilisation. Thus the beautiful gardens attached to the town houses of 

 feudal lords and Shogun's knights in Y'edo (now Tokyo), the then seat 

 of the defeated Shogun, were remorselessly destroyed ; trees and bushes 

 were cut down and converted into fuel for the people's furnace, and 

 ornamental stones were dug up to pave the streets. In these circum- 

 stances it is no great wonder that the art of horticulture was for a while 

 entirely suppressed. 



The time has not yet come, however, for the nation's undisturbed 

 devotion to such a peaceful art to the extent that we desire. The civil 

 war, fortunately enough, ended in a comparatively short time, and perfect 

 peace was restored. But by that time Japan had started a new life, and 

 the whole of the people, fully realising the vital necessity, were bent on 

 making their country the equal in civilisation, and in powers of defence 

 and offence, of any European nation : education, law-making, military 

 organisation, and hundreds of other necessary alterations due to the sudden 

 change to Western civilisation urgently required attention. Consequently, 

 though the cultivation of utilitarian fruits and vegetables has been more 

 or less encouraged by the Government, the cultivation of garden plants 



