The Garden Magazine, July, 1923 
313 
Japanese gardens. Even where water was not to be obtained, 
water scenery was expressed in the form of dried up streams 
or cascades, or even the bed of a lake. Frequently where the 
lake was real, the waterfall would be imitated with stones. 
It was held that if there were two falls, the upper or male one 
should be narrow or high; while the female one should be low and 
broad. 
In the gardens of the Buddhist temples the priests frequently 
imitated Himalayan landscapes, while a waterfall and mountain 
in the south of China were a favorite subject to be copied in 
miniature in the gardens of the nobles. 
The bridges were often a single stone, flat or arched, but in 
less pretentious spots were wood or even of wattle work. The 
arched bridge was probably of Chinese origin, and was highly 
considered because its reflection in the water below completed a 
circle. 
In the general arrangement of vegetation, one Japanese school 
headed by Senno-Rikiu employed higher trees in the foreground 
than in the background in order to enhance the distance; while 
Feruta Oribe placed the taller trees at the greatest distance to 
furnish a background. Clipping and artificial shaping of trees 
and shrubs were commonly practised usually for the purpose of 
imitating a form which the tree might itself assume under cer¬ 
tain natural conditions. A favorite of the gardener, for example, 
was the old weather-beaten Pine distorted into grotesque shapes 
bv the tempests, and it was considered a high art to be able to 
train such a tree artificially. Low shrubs, on the other hand, were 
often clipped into semi-spherical forms. 
R OCKS were a characteristic feature of the Japanese garden. 
1 n a large garden these might number over a hundred, each 
with its own proper name and purpose: the chief boulders 
represented mountains and hills; other very important ones 
being given the names of the Buddhist saints, or even abstract 
religious qualities. The guardian stone, stone of worship, and 
IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
WHITE MAGIC IN THE GARDEN 
Creating the illusion of a brook by the clever use of sand in the gar¬ 
den of the Eastern Hongwarifi, a monastery in Kioto, 19th century 
A garden of Myako, 1799, by Sakouma Nishimoura showing 
the teahouse, the curved bridge, stone lantern, stepping-stones 
and other characteristic features of Japanese landscape art 
that of the two deities were never omitted in even 
small gardens. Fancy even went so far as to assign 
sex to rocks of different forms. 
The five basic shapes demanded for garden stones 
were: tall vertical, low vertical, bent and recumbent. 
All of these had their special names, and were sym¬ 
bolic in significance. 
Besides these were stepping-stones—no doubt orig¬ 
inally due to the fact that grass was little used in an¬ 
cient Japanese gardens. The earth was simply swept 
clean, or was covered with sand raked or otherwise 
formed into various patterns. In order to avoid the 
mud, or cutting up the soil with the clogged shoes of 
that day, pathways were laid down with stepping- 
stones. These did not form a walk as we know it, 
but were kept separate, and laid irregularly. In the 
ancient period, the rule was that the stepping-stones 
were to be about six inches high in the emperor’s gar¬ 
den, four inches in a daimio’s, three inches in a sa¬ 
murai’s, and one and a half inches in an ordinary 
garden. The smaller stones were interspersed at in¬ 
tervals with larger ones on which both feet could be 
rested, all being carefully arranged to avoid any ap¬ 
pearance of regularity. 
A rchitectural features of a Japanese 
. garden included arbors, pagodas, stone lanterns, 
and water basins. The arbors might be anything 
from an elaborate but small villa to a simple open 
shed. The pagodas were probably introduced from 
China through Korea, as they were known to the 
