Famous Gardens of Japan 
difference between his 
point of view and ours: 
that in Japan a garden 
is not thought of as a 
piece of ground where¬ 
on to grow things, or 
a place to take exer¬ 
cise, but a beautiful 
scene on which to rest 
the eyes and quiet the 
mind — that eager, 
mobile Japanese mind, 
always struggling after 
the stoical impassive¬ 
ness ot Chinese philos¬ 
ophy. So a favorite 
name tor princes’ gar¬ 
dens is Korakuen, 
“ place ot atter-rest,” perhaps from war or 
the cares of state, or perhaps to suggest 
the coveted inkyo , retirement from active 
life, which a man might indulge in as soon 
as he has a son able to take up his re¬ 
sponsibilities. Indeed one of the earliest 
and most famous gardens belonged to a 
monastery near Kyoto, planned and built 
by one of the Shoguns or Mayors of the 
Palace when he became inkyo. It is known 
as the Ginkakuji or Silver Pavilion of Ashi- 
kaga Yoshimasa. Here, while the country 
drifted deeper and deeper into lawlessness 
under a child ruler, the ex-Shogun and his 
court amused themselves with poetry parties 
PICTURESQUE TEA-HOUSES AT OKAYAMA 
THE MITO YASHIKI-TOKYO 
and elaborate tea-ceremonies, among clipped 
trees and picturesque stones and mounds 
having fanciful names; as idle and worthless 
a crew as ever turned good art to base uses. 
Nevertheless the Ginkakuji has a fantastic 
beauty of its own ; and it has undoubtedly 
been the model for hundreds of lesser gar¬ 
dens ever since. 
'The Buddhist monks, too, were past mas¬ 
ters at landscape making, and some of the 
choicest specimens belong to their monas¬ 
teries, such as the picturesque little gardens 
near the great temple at Nikko. Both the 
monks and the later masters of tea-ceremony 
gave great attention to the symbolic side of 
their art, such and such combi¬ 
nations meaning this or that 
moral quality; the warrior’s gar¬ 
den was to differ from the con¬ 
templative scholar’s, and his again 
from that of the man of affairs, 
by the forms and kinds of the 
trees, the shape and placing of 
stones,and other refinements past 
the wit of aliens to comprehend. 
In truth, we foreigners miss a very 
essential part of the scheme, what 
one may call the intellectual side 
of it, in not being able to recog¬ 
nize the famous places repre¬ 
sented ; as if one should listen 
to a song sung in an unknown 
tongue, hearing but not under¬ 
standing the words. For to Jap¬ 
anese eyes these little landscapes 
78 
