House 
VoL. XIV 
and Garden 
JULY, 1908 No. I 
Landscape Gardening in Japan 
By EDMUND BUCKLEY, Ph. D. 
T LIE Russo-Japanese war opened the eyes of the 
Y orld to the astonishing fact that the Japanese 
were peers, in point of culture, with any people 
of the West. Open-minded observers had known this 
long before, but general experience was against the 
new judgment and it prevailed. Since the opening 
of Japan to foreign intercourse in 1856, the Western 
attitude has passed through various stages: the 
curious, the derisive, the instructing, the quizzical, 
the patronizing, and now finally stands at the fairly 
judicial, where it should always have been. The 
German military expert. Colonel Gaedke, has pro¬ 
nounced the Japanese infantry to be the best on earth; 
the English grant Japanese a rank second to them¬ 
selves as seamen, and Lord Rosebery has recently 
urged his countrymen to seek that efficiency which 
characterizes the Japanese in every operation. Art¬ 
ists enjoy the distinction of having first discovered 
this efficiency, when in the decade 1857-67 enthusiasm 
for the new Japanese art swept over the Paris ateliers, 
and present-day artists will not be slow to credit fur¬ 
ther details of its excellence in the realm of garden¬ 
ing, a Japanese art as yet little known outside Japan, 
only because examples of it cannot be exported. 
The Japanese garden must be classed with the 
naturalistic type of the West, for it is undoubtedly 
meant to be a representation of the country. But, 
in this case as elsewhere, words are mere counters 
and no coins, so that one must revert to the real 
things they represent, if he would not be deceived. 
What is the “country” in Japan, and how do the 
Japanese “represent”.? Japan has been called the 
land of contradictions, that is of our own facts and 
methods, of course; and certain it is that in gardening 
as in numerous other respects, the conditions of 
nature and the procedures of man in Japan differ 
widely from ours. When Japanese “go into the 
country” (to use our phrasing for a summer trip), 
they do nothing of the kind, but go into the moun¬ 
tains; the country, that is the lowlands, being utilized 
to the last foot in agriculture, intensive to such a de¬ 
gree that rice, the staple cereal, is transplanted by 
hand one blade at a time! Moreover much of the 
time these rice fields are submerged with liquid ma¬ 
nure and are traversed only by footpaths. I'hese 
conditions impelled the recourse to hills and moun¬ 
tains, which fortunately are everywhere at hand, 
equally for temples, palaces and summer residences 
or hotels, Japan being none other than a volcanic 
chain of mountains, only the crevices and rim of 
which are cultivable by man. Since streams neces¬ 
sarily abound on these mountains and are refresh¬ 
ingly cool during the summer, they also are eagerly 
sought for; and accordingly the Japanese idea of 
rusticity is expressed by the term sansui or “moun¬ 
tain and w-ater;” and in 'consequence his gardens 
are fashioned after this type. The ethnologist will 
recognize this case as one more example of the prin¬ 
ciple that environment coordinates with heredity in 
the formation of any human culture. The reactions 
between Adam and Eden, to use the mythical He¬ 
brew terms, have been constant from the first. Pre¬ 
cisely as the Japanese hot springs, which perhaps 
equal in numbers all others in the world put together, 
taught the Japanese alone of all mankind to bathe 
daily in hot Y-ater; and precisely as the sag of the 
primitive bamboo roof taught the Mongol to curve 
his tile and bronze roofs concavely; so his hilly re¬ 
sorts taught the Japanese to fashion gardens, often 
even Ydien they Y-ere located on level and dry ground 
on the sansui plan. 
This consideration throws a flood of light through 
what must otheiYuse have remained an opaque fact, 
namely, that rocks—the invariable accompaniment 
of Japanese hills—positively determine the composi¬ 
tion of the Japanese garden whereas turf is scanty 
and flowers few. I'hese fixed rocks, together Yuth 
transported boulders, slabs and stones, as well as 
constructed lanterns and water basins—both in 
stone—impart to our eyes somewhat the aspect of a 
formal garden; but geometrically shaped parterres 
are conspicuously absent and the simple flower-beds, 
properly placed only near the YYunen’s apartments, 
are more in the nature of a flower show than an 
integral part of the garden. Certainly there is no 
other Japanese garden than the landscape garden; it 
always has distance in it, considers this element 
chief, constructs the background first, and, failing 
actual construction, indicates it. Nature’s arrange¬ 
ments are constantly studied by Japanese gardeners. 
Copyright, 1908, hy The John C. ^Vinston Co. 
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