Glimpses of Unfamilar Japan
Second Series
by Lafcadio Hearn
CONTENTS
1 IN A JAPANESE GARDEN
2 THE HOUSEHOLD SHRINE
3 OF WOMEN'S HAIR
4 FROM THE DIARY OF AN ENGLISH TEACHER
5 TWO STRANGE FESTIVALS
6 BY THE JAPANESE SEA
7 OF A DANCING-GIRL
8 FROM HOKI TO OKI
9 OF SOULS
10 OF GHOSTS AND GOBLINS
11 THE JAPANESE SMILE
12 SAYONARA!
Chapter One
In a Japanese Garden
1
MY little two-story house by the Ohashigawa, although dainty as a bird-
cage, proved much too small for comfort at the approach of the hot
season - the rooms being scarcely higher than steamship cabins, and so
narrow that an ordinary mosquito-net could not be suspended in them. I
was sorry to lose the beautiful lake view, but I found it necessary to
remove to the northern quarter of the city, into a very quiet Street
behind the mouldering castle. My new home is a katchiu-yashiki, the
ancient residence of some samurai of high rank. It is shut off from the
street, or rather roadway, skirting the castle moat by a long, high wall
coped with tiles. One ascends to the gateway, which is almost as large
as that of a temple court, by a low broad flight of stone steps; and
projecting from the wall, to the right of the gate, is a look-out
window, heavily barred, like a big wooden cage. Thence, in feudal days,
armed retainers kept keen watch on all who passed by - invisible watch,
for the bars are set so closely that a face behind them cannot be seen
from the roadway. Inside the gate the approach to the dwelling is also
walled in on both sides, so that the visitor, unless privileged, could
see before him only the house entrance, always closed with white shoji.
Like all samurai homes, the residence itself is but one story high, but
there are fourteen rooms within, and these are lofty, spacious, and
beautiful. There is, alas, no lake view nor any charming prospect. Part
of the O-Shiroyama, with the castle on its summit, half concealed by a
park of pines, may be seen above the coping of the front wall, but only
a part; and scarcely a hundred yards behind the house rise densely
wooded heights, cutting off not only the horizon, but a large slice of
the sky as well. For this immurement, however, there exists fair
compensation in the shape of a very pretty garden, or rather a series of
garden spaces, which surround the dwelling on three sides. Broad
verandas overlook these, and from a certain veranda angle I can enjoy
the sight of two gardens at once. Screens of bamboos and woven rushes,
with wide gateless openings in their midst, mark the boundaries of the
three divisions of the pleasure-grounds. But these structures are not
intended to serve as true fences; they are ornamental, and only indicate
where one style of landscape gardening ends and another begins.
2
Now a few words upon Japanese gardens in general.
After having learned - merely by seeing, for the practical knowledge of
the art requires years of study and experience, besides a natural,
instinctive sense of beauty - something about the Japanese manner of
arranging flowers, one can thereafter consider European ideas of floral
decoration only as vulgarities. This observation is not the result of
any hasty enthusiasm, but a conviction settled by long residence in the
interior. I have come to understand the unspeakable loveliness of a
solitary spray of blossoms arranged as only a Japanese expert knows how
to arrange it - not by simply poking the spray into a vase, but by
perhaps one whole hour's labour of trimming and posing and daintiest
manipulation - and therefore I cannot think now of what we Occidentals
call a 'bouquet' as anything but a vulgar murdering of flowers, an
outrage upon the colour-sense, a brutality, an abomination. Somewhat in
the same way, and for similar reasons, after having learned what an old
Japanese garden is, I can remember our costliest gardens at home only as
ignorant displays of what wealth can accomplish in the creation of
incongruities that violate nature.
Now a Japanese garden is not a flower garden; neither is it made for the
purpose of cultivating plants. In nine cases out of ten there is nothing
in it resembling a flower-bed. Some gardens may contain scarcely a sprig
of green; some have nothing green at all, and consist entirely of rocks
and pebbles and sand, although these are exceptional. [1] As a rule, a
Japanese garden is a landscape garden, yet its existence does not depend
upon any fixed allowances of space. It may cover one acre or many acres.
It may also be only ten feet square. It may, in extreme cases, be much
less; for a certain kind of Japanese garden can be contrived small
enough to put in a tokonoma. Such a garden, in a vessel no larger than a
fruit-dish, is called koniwa or toko-niwa, and may occasionally be seen
in the tokonoma of humble little dwellings so closely squeezed between
other structures as to possess no ground in which to cultivate an
outdoor garden. (I say 'an outdoor garden,' because there are indoor
gardens, both upstairs and downstairs, in some large Japanese houses.)
The toko-niwa is usually made in some curious bowl, or shallow carved
box or quaintly shaped vessel impossible to describe by any English
word. Therein are created minuscule hills with minuscule houses upon
them, and microscopic ponds and rivulets spanned by tiny humped bridges;
and queer wee plants do duty for trees, and curiously formed pebbles
stand for rocks, and there are tiny toro perhaps a tiny torii as well -
in short, a charming and living model of a Japanese landscape.
Another fact of prime importance to remember is that, in order to
comprehend the beauty of a Japanese garden, it is necessary to
understand - or at least to learn to understand - the beauty of stones.
Not of stones quarried by the hand of man, but of stones shaped by
nature only. Until you can feel, and keenly feel, that stones have
character, that stones have tones and values, the whole artistic meaning
of a Japanese garden cannot be revealed to you. In the foreigner,
however aesthetic he may be, this feeling needs to be cultivated by
study. It is inborn in the Japanese; the soul of the race comprehends
Nature infinitely better than we do, at least in her visible forms. But
although, being an Occidental, the true sense of the beauty of stones
can be reached by you only through long familiarity with the Japanese
use and choice of them, the characters of the lessons to be acquired
exist everywhere about you, if your life be in the interior. You cannot
walk through a street without observing tasks and problems in the
aesthetics of stones for you to master. At the approaches to temples, by
the side of roads, before holy groves, and in all parks and pleasure-
grounds, as well as in all cemeteries, you will notice large, irregular,
flat slabs of natural rock - mostly from the river-beds and water-worn -
sculptured with ideographs, but unhewn. These have been set up as votive
tablets, as commemorative monuments, as tombstones, and are much more
costly than the ordinary cut-stone columns and haka chiselled with the
figures of divinities in relief. Again, you will see before most of the
shrines, nay, even in the grounds of nearly all large homesteads, great
irregular blocks of granite or other hard rock, worn by the action of
torrents, and converted into water-basins (chodzubachi) by cutting a
circular hollow in the top. Such are but common examples of the
utilisation of stones even in the poorest villages; and if you have any
natural artistic sentiment, you cannot fail to discover, sooner or
later, how much more beautiful are these natural forms than any shapes
from the hand of the stone-cutter. It is probable, too, that you will
become so habituated at last to the sight of inscriptions cut upon rock
surfaces, especially if you travel much through the country, that you
will often find yourself involuntarily looking for texts or other
chisellings where there are none, and could not possibly be, as if
ideographs belonged by natural law to rock formation. And stones will
begin, perhaps, to assume for you a certain individual or physiognomical
aspect - to suggest moods and sensations, as they do to the Japanese.
Indeed, Japan is particularly a land of suggestive shapes in stone, as
high volcanic lands are apt to be; and such shapes doubtless addressed
themselves to the imagination of the race at a time long prior to the
date of that archaic text which tells of demons in Izumo 'who made
rocks, and the roots of trees, and leaves, and the foam of the green
waters to speak.
As might be expected in a country where the suggestiveness of natural
forms is thus recognised, there are in Japan many curious beliefs and
superstitions concerning stones. In almost every province there are
famous stones supposed to be sacred or haunted, or to possess miraculous
powers, such as the Women's Stone at the temple of Hachiman at Kamakura,
and the Sessho-seki, or Death Stone of Nasu, and the Wealth-giving Stone
at Enoshima, to which pilgrims pay reverence. There are even legends of
stones having manifested sensibility, like the tradition of the Nodding
Stones which bowed down before the monk Daita when he preached unto them
the word of Buddha; or the ancient story from the Kojiki, that the
Emperor O-Jin, being augustly intoxicated, 'smote with his august staff
a great stone in the middle of the Ohosaka road, whereupon the stone ran
away!' [2]
Now stones are valued for their beauty; and large stones selected for
their shape may have an aesthetic worth of hundreds of dollars. And
large stones form the skeleton, or framework, in the design of old
Japanese gardens. Not only is every stone chosen with a view to its
particular expressiveness of form, but every stone in the garden or
about the premises has its separate and individual name, indicating its
purpose or its decorative duty. But I can tell you only a little, a very
little, of the folk-lore of a Japanese garden; and if you want to know
more about stones and their names, and about the philosophy of gardens,
read the unique essay of Mr. Conder on the Art of Landscape Gardening in
Japan, [3] and his beautiful book on the Japanese Art of Floral
Decoration; and also the brief but charming chapter on Gardens, in
Morse's Japanese Homes. [4]
3
No effort to create an impossible or purely ideal landscape is made in
the Japanese garden. Its artistic purpose is to copy faithfully the
attractions of a veritable landscape, and to convey the real impression
that a real landscape communicates. It is therefore at once a picture
and a poem; perhaps even more a poem than a picture. For as nature's
scenery, in its varying aspects, affects us with sensations of joy or of
solemnity, of grimness or of sweetness, of force or of peace, so must
the true reflection of it in the labour of the landscape gardener create
not merely an impression of beauty, but a mood in the soul. The grand
old landscape gardeners, those Buddhist monks who first introduced the
art into Japan, and subsequently developed it into an almost occult
science, carried their theory yet farther than this. They held it
possible to express moral lessons in the design of a garden, and
abstract ideas, such as Chastity, Faith, Piety, Content, Calm, and
Connubial Bliss. Therefore were gardens contrived according to the
character of the owner, whether poet, warrior, philosopher, or priest.
In those ancient gardens (the art, alas, is passing away under the
withering influence of the utterly commonplace Western taste) there were
expressed both a mood of nature and some rare Oriental conception of a
mood of man.
I do not know what human sentiment the principal division of my garden
was intended to reflect; and there is none to tell me. Those by whom it
was made passed away long generations ago, in the eternal transmigration
of souls. But as a poem of nature it requires no interpreter. It
occupies the front portion of the grounds, facing south; and it also
extends west to the verge of the northern division of the garden, from
which it is partly separated by a curious screen-fence structure. There
are large rocks in it, heavily mossed; and divers fantastic basins of
stone for holding water; and stone lamps green with years; and a
shachihoko, such as one sees at the peaked angles of castle roofs - a
great stone fish, an idealised porpoise, with its nose in the ground and
its tail in the air. [5] There are miniature hills, with old trees upon
them; and there are long slopes of green, shadowed by flowering shrubs,
like river banks; and there are green knolls like islets. All these
verdant elevations rise from spaces of pale yellow sand, smooth as a
surface of silk and miming the curves and meanderings of a river course.
These sanded spaces are not to be trodden upon; they are much too
beautiful for that. The least speck of dirt would mar their effect; and
it requires the trained skill of an experienced native gardener - a
delightful old man he is - to keep them in perfect form. But they are
traversed in various directions by lines of flat unhewn rock slabs,
placed at slightly irregular distances from one another, exactly like
stepping-stones across a brook. The whole effect is that of the shores
of a still stream in some lovely, lonesome, drowsy place.
There is nothing to break the illusion, so secluded the garden is. High
walls and fences shut out streets and contiguous things; and the shrubs
and the trees, heightening and thickening toward the boundaries, conceal
from view even the roofs of the neighbouring katchiu-yashiki. Softly
beautiful are the tremulous shadows of leaves on the sunned sand; and
the scent of flowers comes thinly sweet with every waft of tepid air;
and there is a humming of bees.
4
By Buddhism all existences are divided into Hijo things without desire,
such as stones and trees; and Ujo things having desire, such as men and
animals. This division does not, so far as I know, find expression in
the written philosophy of gardens; but it is a convenient one. The folk-
lore of my little domain relates both to the inanimate and the animate.
In natural order, the Hijo may be considered first, beginning with a
singular shrub near the entrance of the yashiki, and close to the gate
of the first garden.
Within the front gateway of almost every old samurai house, and usually
near the entrance of the dwelling itself, there is to be seen a small
tree with large and peculiar leaves. The name of this tree in Izumo is
tegashiwa, and there is one beside my door. What the scientific name of
it is I do not know; nor am I quite sure of the etymology of the
Japanese name. However, there is a word tegashi, meaning a bond for the
hands; and the shape of the leaves of the tegashiwa somewhat resembles
the shape of a hand.
Now, in old days, when the samurai retainer was obliged to leave his
home in order to accompany his daimyo to Yedo, it was customary, just
before his departure, to set before him a baked tai [6] served up on a
tegashiwa leaf. After this farewell repast the leaf upon which the tai
had been served was hung up above the door as a charm to bring the
departed knight safely back again. This pretty superstition about the
leaves of the tegashiwa had its origin not only in their shape but in
their movement. Stirred by a wind they seemed to beckon - not indeed
after our Occidental manner, but in the way that a Japanese signs to his
friend to come, by gently waving his hand up and down with the palm
towards the ground.
Another shrub to be found in most Japanese gardens is the nanten, [7]
about which a very curious belief exists. If you have an evil dream, a
dream which bodes ill luck, you should whisper it to the nanten early in
the morning, and then it will never come true. [8] There are two
varieties of this graceful plant: one which bears red berries, and one
which bears white. The latter is rare. Both kinds grow in my garden. The
common variety is placed close to the veranda (perhaps for the
convenience of dreamers); the other occupies a little flower-bed in the
middle of the garden, together with a small citron-tree. This most
dainty citron-tree is called 'Buddha's fingers,' [9] because of the
wonderful shape of its fragrant fruits. Near it stands a kind of laurel,
with lanciform leaves glossy as bronze; it is called by the Japanese
yuzuri-ha, [10] and is almost as common in the gardens of old samurai
homes as the tegashiwa itself. It is held to be a tree of good omen,
because no one of its old leaves ever falls off before a new one,
growing behind it, has well developed. For thus the yuzuri-ha symbolises
hope that the father will not pass away before his son has become a
vigorous man, well able to succeed him as the head of the family.
Therefore, on every New Year's Day, the leaves of the yuzuriha, mingled
with fronds of fern, are attached to the shimenawa which is then
suspended before every Izumo home.
5
The trees, like the shrubs, have their curious poetry and legends. Like
the stones, each tree has its special landscape name according to its
position and purpose in the composition. Just as rocks and stones form
the skeleton of the ground-plan of a garden, so pines form the framework
of its foliage design. They give body to the whole. In this garden there
are five pines, - not pines tormented into fantasticalities, but pines
made wondrously picturesque by long and tireless care and judicious
trimming. The object of the gardener has been to develop to the utmost
possible degree their natural tendency to rugged line and massings of
foliage - that spiny sombre-green foliage which Japanese art is never
weary of imitating in metal inlay or golden lacquer. The pine is a
symbolic tree in this land of symbolism. Ever green, it is at once the
emblem of unflinching purpose and of vigorous old age; and its needle-
shaped leaves are credited with the power of driving demons away.
There are two sakuranoki, [11] Japanese cherry-trees - those trees whose
blossoms, as Professor Chamberlain so justly observes, are 'beyond
comparison more lovely than anything Europe has to show.' Many varieties
are cultivated and loved; those in my garden bear blossoms of the most
ethereal pink, a flushed white. When, in spring, the trees flower, it is
as though fleeciest masses of cloud faintly tinged by sunset had floated
down from the highest sky to fold themselves about the branches. This
comparison is no poetical exaggeration; neither is it original: it is an
ancient Japanese description of the most marvellous floral exhibition
which nature is capable of making. The reader who has never seen a
cherry-tree blossoming in Japan cannot possibly imagine the delight of
the spectacle. There are no green leaves; these come later: there is
only one glorious burst of blossoms, veiling every twig and bough in
their delicate mist; and the soil beneath each tree is covered deep out
of sight by fallen petals as by a drift of pink snow.
But these are cultivated cherry-trees. There are others which put forth
their leaves before their blossoms, such as the yamazakura, or mountain
cherry. [12] This, too, however, has its poetry of beauty and of
symbolism. Sang the great Shinto writer and poet, Motowori:
Shikishima no
Yamato-gokoro wo
Hito-towaba,
Asa-hi ni niou
Yamazakura bana. [13]
Whether cultivated or uncultivated, the Japanese cherry-trees are
emblems. Those planted in old samurai gardens were not cherished for
their loveliness alone. Their spotless blossoms were regarded as
symbolising that delicacy of sentiment and blamelessness of life
belonging to high courtesy and true knightliness. 'As the cherry flower
is first among flowers,' says an old proverb, 'so should the warrior be
first among men'.
Shadowing the western end of this garden, and projecting its smooth dark
limbs above the awning of the veranda, is a superb umenoki, Japanese
plum-tree, very old, and originally planted here, no doubt, as in other
gardens, for the sake of the sight of its blossoming. The flowering of
the umenoki, [14] in the earliest spring, is scarcely less astonishing
than that of the cherry-tree, which does not bloom for a full month
later; and the blossoming of both is celebrated by popular holidays. Nor
are these, although the most famed, the only flowers thus loved. The
wistaria, the convolvulus, the peony, each in its season, form displays
of efflorescence lovely enough to draw whole populations out of the
cities into the country to see them.. In Izumo, the blossoming of the
peony is especially marvellous. The most famous place for this spectacle
is the little island of Daikonshima, in the grand Naka-umi lagoon, about
an hour's sail from Matsue. In May the whole island flames crimson with
peonies; and even the boys and girls of the public schools are given a
holiday, in order that they may enjoy the sight.
Though the plum flower is certainly a rival in beauty of the sakura-no-
hana, the Japanese compare woman's beauty - physical beauty - to the
cherry flower, never to the plum flower. But womanly virtue and
sweetness, on the other hand, are compared to the ume-no-hana, never to
the cherry blossom. It is a great mistake to affirm, as some writers
have done, that the Japanese never think of comparing a woman to trees
and flowers. For grace, a maiden is likened to a slender willow; [15]
for youthful charm, to the cherry-tree in flower; for sweetness of
heart, to the blossoming plum-tree. Nay, the old Japanese poets have
compared woman to all beautiful things. They have even sought similes
from flowers for her various poses, for her movements, as in the verse,
Tateba skakuyaku; [16]
Suwareba botan;
Aruku sugatawa
Himeyuri [17] no hana. [18]
Why, even the names of the humblest country girls are often those of
beautiful trees or flowers prefixed by the honorific O: [19] O-Matsu
(Pine), O-Take (Bamboo), O-Ume (Plum), O-Hana (Blossom), O-ine (Ear-of-
Young-Rice), not to speak of the professional flower-names of dancing-
girls and of joro. It has been argued with considerable force that the
origin of certain tree-names borne by girls must be sought in the folk-
conception of the tree as an emblem of longevity, or happiness, or good
fortune, rather than in any popular idea of the beauty of the tree in
itself. But however this may be, proverb, poem, song, and popular speech
to-day yield ample proof that the Japanese comparisons of women to trees
and flowers are in no-wise inferior to our own in aesthetic sentiment.
6
That trees, at least Japanese trees, have souls, cannot seem an
unnatural fancy to one who has seen the blossoming of the umenoki and
the sakuranoki. This is a popular belief in Izumo and elsewhere. It is
not in accord with Buddhist philosophy, and yet in a certain sense it
strikes one as being much closer to cosmic truth than the old Western
orthodox notion of trees as 'things created for the use of man.'
Furthermore, there exist several odd superstitions about particular
trees, not unlike certain West Indian beliefs which have had a good
influence in checking the destruction of valuable timber. Japan, like
the tropical world, has its goblin trees. Of these, the enoki (Celtis
Willdenowiana) and the yanagi (drooping willow) are deemed especially
ghostly, and are rarely now to be found in old Japanese gardens. Both
are believed to have the power of haunting. 'Enoki ga bakeru,' the izumo
saying is. You will find in a Japanese dictionary the word 'bakeru'
translated by such terms as 'to be transformed,' 'to be metamorphosed,'
'to be changed,' etc.; but the belief about these trees is very
singular, and cannot be explained by any such rendering of the verb
'bakeru.' The tree itself does not change form or place, but a spectre
called Ki-no o-bake disengages itself from the tree and walks about in
various guises.' [20] Most often the shape assumed by the phantom is
that of a beautiful woman. The tree spectre seldom speaks, and seldom
ventures to go very far away from its tree. If approached, it
immediately shrinks back into the trunk or the foliage. It is said that
if either an old yanagi or a young enoki be cut blood will flow from the
gash. When such trees are very young it is not believed that they have
supernatural habits, but they become more dangerous the older they grow.
There is a rather pretty legend - recalling the old Greek dream of
dryads - about a willow-tree which grew in the garden of a samurai of
Kyoto. Owing to its weird reputation, the tenant of the homestead
desired to cut it down; but another samurai dissuaded him, saying:
'Rather sell it to me, that I may plant it in my garden. That tree has a