Landscape Gardening in Japan 
pine tree has been observed to group its bsculated 
leaves into arched masses and is often trimmed in to 
this shape where it woidd grow less regularly. Also 
the favorite type of pine is not the commonplace 
member of a grove, hut the solitary member con¬ 
torted by stress of storm into heroic shape. Mr. Jo- 
siah Conder and Captain F. Brinkley agree that this 
accenting has sometimes led to an exaggeration on 
the verge of the grotesque; and the latter authority 
Landscape gardening in Japan has been partly de¬ 
termined by other considerations than the artistic; 
and, in consecjiience, before the latter can he fairly 
appreciated, the religious, scientific, ethical, and 
other external influences should be briefly disposed of, 
with the premise, however, that these have mostly run 
parallel with the artistic, a result which will surprise 
no one ac(|uainted with John Ruskin’s views on art. 
1 he whole account will contribute to the refutation 
Stones—I, Guardian Stone; 2, Worshiping Stone; 3, Stone of Evening Sun; 4, Stone of the Two Gods. A, Snow-scene 
Lantern; B, Water Basin; C, Garden Gate; D, Well Frame. 
notices also that “by the elaboration of his terminol¬ 
ogy and the minuteness of his codes the Japanese 
seems to have lost himself in profusion while striving 
after selection,” as where he distinguishes one hun¬ 
dred and thirty-eight principal stones in a complete 
garden. Such mannerisms make on the Western 
mind an impression of fantastic unreality, while con¬ 
versely our creations seem to the Japanese mind 
weak and insipid. It must never be overlooked, 
however, that these are the infirmities of an art-sense 
noble and cultivated to a degree not pervasively en¬ 
joyed by any other people, and that they can readily 
be restrained in future practice. 
of those wiseacres that have charged the Japanese 
with lack of imagination and of ideals, an error inev¬ 
itable to foreigners who demanded that Japanese 
ideals should coincide with their own; as where, for 
example, both Shintoism, the native faith, and Bud¬ 
dhism, the imported one, were declared not to he 
religions at all. Both these faiths contributed their 
quota to gardening from the earliest times, and the 
first gardens were those before the palace of the 
divinely descended Mikado and the monastery of the 
divinely ascending monks. While rocks form the 
structural basis of a garden, the chief and the indis¬ 
pensable of all rocks is the so-called guardian stone, 
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