Japanese Gardens/Chapter 17

by Harriet Osgood Taylor

CHAPTER XVII

FLOWER FESTIVALS

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.”—Emerson.

“ ’Tis not the gift which marks the festival,
Nor lights nor garlands make the holiday,
The happy mind in working is at play;
Spring’s herald-bird brings summer on its wing;
The heart’s the happy day’s best madrigal.”

No country on earth has more poetic reasons for its holidays and fêtes than has Japan. If they are not deliberate rejoicings over the perfection of some flower—as in the case of the festivals of the Cherry, the Chrysanthemum, the Maple—they are so adorned by, and inextricably mixed with, the blooms of the day they celebrate that we can hardly distinguish between the offerings on the altar and the decorations there.

When Japan ceased to hold to her ancient calendar, and reckoned time no longer as China does, but as Western nations do, part of the meaning of these holidays disappeared. But, as the perfume of the blooms tells the poet that he is once more at his old home, although in the darkness he cannot see the ancient Plum tree’s shape beside the door,^[1] so with infinite art and patience the prescribed flowers are forced for the earlier dates, and the fragrance of the old loved blossoms converts the new time into the familiar season.

The festival of the New Year in Japan really begins before the end of the old year. According to the new calendar, this celebration falls on December 13th, as the New Year is now celebrated, like that of the Western nations, on the first of January. Koto Hajime means ‘The Beginning of Things,’ but it ought to mean ‘getting ready for the beginning of things,’ unless the New Year is not the ‘beginning,’ but the thing accomplished, finished. It is like American College ‘Commencements,’—it is the end of school, but the beginning of all that for which education has been fitting the student. If there is a pother over the preparation for the closing of the schools in America and England, there is fuss enough over the preparation for the New Year in Japan. Such a pounding, all in time, as there is of rice for cakes—for the Oriental does his whipping of eggs for his omelette, his mashing of vegetables, and his beating of batter for pudding in a rhythmic cadence, as regular as that of castanettes or negro ‘bones’—a kind of ‘devil’s tattoo.’ It is almost as stimulating to the mind as the fragrant scents from the kitchen are to the nostrils at a later stage of the proceedings. And how they scour and scrub and brush! A New England housekeeper at her house-cleaning orgies in the spring and autumn in Massachusetts can hardly be so thorough. For, to begin with, Japanese houses are so bare of adornments—lacking furniture, carpets, curtains, antimacassars, lamp mats, and what-nots—that the bed-rock business of cleaning must receive more attention even than in the mansion in Vermont. Then, when everything has been pounded or dusted or washed and set in the sun, and when, from soft-toned walls to new pale-hued mats (the fleas in the straw padding of the latter, however, I have reason to believe, after a refreshing beating only change quarters and hibernate in their soft nest to bide their time till spring), when inside and out all is fleckless and spotless—unless it be for glints of dull gilding on the sliding panels of the doors,—then the decorating begins.^[2]

And so shall you find that on New Year’s Eve all is ready for the great day. Around the pillars of the gateway a straw rope (shimenawa) will gracefully sway—god-evoking gohei on it. Besides the Pine tree, there already, more cut Pine branches will be put, to bring health and strength and years to those who dwell inside; and golden oranges and ruddy ‘mandarins’ to ensure them wealth and prosperity; and perhaps a lobster, to signify the desire for old age (‘crabbed age,’ as Himself says) because of its crooked back. Other decorations there are, too, Bamboo sprays, Ferns perhaps, and Laurel leaves, sometimes vivid orange-coloured Marigolds (though this is rather a South China custom, where the flowers are more easily to be had at that time of year), and, last of all, dried fruits and nuts, persimmons and chestnuts, to ensure plenty and contentment for the year to come.

The two Pines at the gate are the most important, and after them the first week of the New Year is named the Kodo Matsu (‘Gate Pines’), or Matsu no Uchi (or ‘Within the Pines’). How they are placed, the male Pine on the side of honour, the left; the more light and delicate female Pine on the right, has been told in the chapter on Flower Arrangement, as also the custom of putting Pine boughs and Plum blossoms—or perhaps I had better say buds—on the takenomos at the New Year. Indeed, the Plum is as important as the Pine, and the two together might well signify youth and old age.

During many long months have careful gardeners been training and cultivating these miniature Plum trees, snipping, pruning, giving or withholding light and water, so that they may

FISHING FOR GOLD FISH AT A
WINTER FETE, ATAMI

come to perfection at the allotted hour, and all over the land the pretty, tender-blossomed miniature trees or larger branches are bought, to be sent or carried home as a token of the love and goodwill of the season. I have many fond associations with the thorny-leaved Holly, scarlet-berried; with the bronze branches of Mistletoe, with their milk-white fruit; but I like these fragile Plum blossoms almost better, with their sentiment of renewal of life out of the death of the Old Year; for that is what, in its essence, the New Year means in Japan—the lapse of winter, the first sighing breath (almost the agony of birth) of the spring.

The accompanying picture shows girls casting for gold-fish, which are caught only to be put back again uninjured—the game being to see who can get the most. It is a favourite sport at Atami at the season of the New Year.

Seven days after the festivities of the New Year are ended—which, by the old way of reckoning, had a meaning that is now almost lost—occurs the festival of the ‘Seven Herbs,’ the Nana Kusa, also called the Setsubun, ‘The Eve of the First Day of Spring.’

Red beans are an invariable accompaniment of all ceremonial feasting in Japan, and, cooked in many delicious ways, they make a dish at which the most carnivorous-minded man need not sneer. At the Koto Hajime also a stew of them is made, mixed with potatoes, sliced fish, mushrooms, and a kind of tasty root called Konuyaku; but at the Setsubun the very demons are scared out of the house by the scattering of beans (full of virtue!) about. Each member of the household, from the master down to the scullery-maid, and not omitting the baby, must get rid of the foul fiends that possess them, by eating beans to a number at least greater than the years of their age.

On the third of March is one of the prettiest festivals of the year—that of the Dolls, the Little Girls, and the Peach Blossoms. It is called the Jomi no Sekku (‘Little Girls’ Fête’), or Hina Matsuri (‘Dolls’ Festival’). The Peach blossoms are not mentioned in the title, but the festival would lose half its charm if they were not to be had for its celebration, and due provision is made by the gardeners—if the season is stingy or backward—to ensure blooms at that time. On every takenomo, Momo branches are put in the ceremonial vase, and the great family of dolls, which makes its collected appearance on that day alone of the year, are set out in the special alcove on five shelves covered with strips of rich scarlet brocade. Such joy of colour there is—the flaming blossoms of the Peach, the gorgeous Venetian-rivalling brocade, the indescribable beauty and richness of the costumes of the dolls! They are not the everyday kind, with broken noses and entrails of hair, or streaming gore of sawdust protruding from a torn side that we loved so in our youth; nor yet the sort, blue-eyed and prim, in pale silk frock and bronze shoes which we kept in a cupboard, pretending we loved it so much that we wished to keep it from harm; nor are they even of the sort we buy our own little daughters in Yokohama, with a stiff bowl-shaped fringe of black hair, and dainty little kimono and obi of gaudy silk. No, these are not common dolls—even the little Marquise from Paris is hardly exalted enough in rank to appear with the dolls of a Japanese girl on her National Birthday. These are Emperors, and eminent ancient Royalties, magnificently clothed princesses in the ceremonial costumes of old days. Jimmo Tenno, the first real Emperor, may be there, and Jingo, the Empress who was so great that she is put on the shelf with men monarchs, and not in the lesser place that is devoted to her own sex. Famous generals you may see: Hideyoshi, builder of palaces and of a nation; court officials in flowing robes; princesses with long loose hair; samurai, with two swords; and, last of all, obsequious servants to wait on the whole company. Then there may be the five court musicians with their quaint, perfectly made instruments; and even kagos for carrying common folk, horses for samurai, and lacquer carts, drawn by bullocks, for Royalty to ride in.

Such a court of dolls I was shown in Kyoto—a miniature pageant, the most wonderful collection.^[3] As valuable heirlooms they are handed down for generations in a family, and sometimes, when a girl marries, she takes her own set to pass on to her little girl when she gets one. They are never broken or damaged, it would appear, for the Japanese show few signs of that wilful love of smashing things with which all the rest of the world seems cursed. Even flimsy, jerry-built toys, made for the foreign market, if possessed by a Japanese child are taken care of and guarded heedfully.

Of course all little girls do not own such grand and impressive dolls as those I have described; these would be only for higher-class maidens, who, by means of the puppets, are taught the involved and elaborate ceremonial of the Court. No disrespect is permitted towards the doll dignitaries; they are as if endowed with life. A little girl who did not behave as she ought in the Imperial presence would be in danger of being turned into a lizard, or perhaps a horrid writhing snake! Court-table manners are also taught them, with those dainty, almost priceless, little dishes of gold lacquer, old silver, or fragile porcelain. The small maiden owner receives grown-up as well as younger guests on that day, and gives them tea—the thick, horrid ceremonial sort usually—and minute cakes, with pink sugar Peach blossoms on top.

Every little girl in the land, even if her parents are too poor to provide dolls for her on this festival, has a Peach blossom to sniff at and to set up in the takenomo—a real one usually, but at least a paper one, and that so perfectly made that it would deceive any but the elect. Another pink bloom adorns the glossy black hair, and probably the dainty kimono shows the flowers all through its graceful folds of crêpe, or its glowing colour in lining or in obi. So the day may as well be called the ‘Peach Festival’ as the ‘Little Girls’ Birthday’ or the ‘Dolls’ Fête.’

March the 17th and the next six days following are the Buddhist equinoctial festival of Higan, most important to all those who love gardens. On the day of the equinox the sun is supposed to whirl round and round at sunset. Perhaps it does, but, as the Japanese sky is usually dark with rain at that time, one cannot say for certain.

April the 8th is Buddha’s birthday, and this, like the Koto Hajime, is celebrated as if its scene were New England, by cleaning houses and systems of the supposed-to-have-been-pent-up poisons and impurities of winter—a kind of purification of the soul by means of the cleansing of the body and of all places where both are housed. In temple grounds, in the streets, in private shrines, little images of the infant Buddha are set up, as, in Catholic countries, the figure of the Christ-Child is seen at Christmas. But then comes the odd part: liquorice tea in an open jar is set beside these images, and from time to time is poured over the figure with a ladle. This tea is bought by all and taken home to drink,—to ‘kill worms,’ they say,—and is set at the corners of the house to prevent ants and other insects from coming in. Sometimes favourite trees in the garden get a dose of this germicide, less to make them holy than to ward off the creepy, crawly things that love them not more wisely, but as well as the owners.

In April the many feasts of Cherry-viewing begin. Some time about the middle or third week in the month, when the Cherry blossoms are at the height of their beauty in Tokio, the Emperor’s far-famed garden-party to view the flowers is held.^[4] This is the show affair of the year. All the Court are there, the Emperor and royal princes dignified in spite of their foreign frock-coats or uniforms aglitter with gold lace, which assort so ill with the freshness of the Cherry trees in bloom.

Yes, they are imposing, it is true, for dignity is the stuff that is in a man, not on him; but as much cannot be said for many of the Japanese nobility and gentry, who are forced, by Imperial Edict if not by inclination, to ape the foreigner in the most hideous garb known to civilized man (I do not even exclude that of the Korean)—the silk hat, frock-coat, and striped tubular trousers of the Western world—in place of the beautiful, low-toned, heavy silks, of the graceful, yet imposing, ceremonial garb of their own land; while on feet accustomed to the foot-freedom of spotless white tabi, and geta of the most exquisitely wrought bamboo, are forced stiff, ugly, and unyielding patent leather boots.

And the ladies—the dear, demure little ladies—are cheapened, vulgarized almost beyond recognition, by the adoption of stays, of frilled and furbelowed dresses from Vienna or Paris, instead of the subdued richness of their own graciously revealing lines of kimono and obi! Big hats and feathers conceal the glossy black hair and pretty coiffure of the old days, and the whole outrageous garb turns them from sweet and charming Japanese ladies into objects of only slightly superior Eurasian aspect. Japanese men often look extremely well in foreign dress, but the women almost never do.

All this, at the most poetic of outdoor fêtes, is truly heart-rending. Trousers and ham sandwiches take away all the poetry of the poetically inspired festival; wooden fences keep the hoi polloi from the enclosure of Royalty; champagne and claret cup are served in place of the prescribed saké; and, instead of writing verses to hang on the grey, rose-clouded branches, a crowd of tired, blasé foreigners, “who have not spent a year in Japan,” and of Japanese—yearning for the comfort of kimonos—wander dejectedly about, wondering if it will be over in time to catch the five o’clock train back to Yokohama.

How different if the Feast of the Cherry-viewing is confined to their own people, done in their own way!—the whole nation out for the day (and no ‘benk ’olidi’ sort, either) and en fête, the flowers divinely beautiful. Then all Japan is half child and half poet, as always at heart—only on this day they let themselves go. Wherever the trees are (and where are they not?) there are crowds of happy, but not boisterously happy, people in holiday attire, walking about and gazing at the blossoming trees,—for in this land there are no warnings to ‘keep off the grass.’ There is but little grass, to be sure, but it is not that that makes the difference. There are brightly draped little booths, erected near all the finest view-places, where tea and saké and little cakes, stamped or iced in the image of the festal bloom, can be had; and there are sprays of the blooms for sale—real ones that seem artificial, they are so perfect, and artificial ones that seem real, for the same reason; and toys, and little lanterns, all reminiscent of the Cherry flower. And still are verses in praise of the blossoms hung on the boughs in the old-time way, written by anyone—the man in the street, perhaps.

The Boys’ Festival, on the fifth of May (the Fifth Day of the Fifth Moon, as they put it), might be called, although somewhat erroneously, the Iris Festival, for they are plants sacred to that day and the boy. The Shobu (Acorus spurius, or Sweet Flag) is so often confused with the Kakitsubata (Iris lævigata), that even well-informed people think them the same plant. The Iris is a water plant, the Sweet Flag, or Shobu, a land one, but they seem to appear near each other wherever they grow. Both plants have long, pointed leaves, which suggest the blade of a sword, the boys’ chosen weapon, and is the insignia of these would-be samurai. The Iris, however, can hardly be called fragrant, while the Sweet Flag is, I believe, the source of Orris root, and is as delicately sweet as Violets. On that day, as I have told in the chapter on Folk-Lore and Legends, Shobu are put in all the baths, are steeped and drunk in tea and saké, and are tied in sheaves from the roofs of houses. In old days the boys wore wreaths of Shobu stems, where now the German military cap is seen. They made ropes of the twisted, long, tough-fibred leaves, and used them to skip and dance with; and wove them into flags, to beat the ground with, to scare away goblins and demons and all prowling evil spirits from their festival.

The fish is also the boys’ emblem, and what glorious fish they are!—great painted cloth or waxed paper things, streaming out from the tops of high bamboo poles. I shall never forget Nagasaki, with its waving forest of brilliant fish flags plunging and bellying in the breeze, and the boys marching like soldiers, with all their martial spirit aroused, and all their play-soldier games and decorations brought out. I love boys anywhere,—unless they are too good, and this they certainly are not in Japan,—scamps and rascals all, bright-eyed and impudent, yet polite, eager, impetuous, warlike, and surely the carp which can fight its way upstream is a fit symbol for them.

There are several festivals connected with Rice,—at its planting, at various stages of its growth, and at the time of its harvest,—and these are celebrated every year by the peasant and farmer people all over Japan. Never before the year 1910 has any one of these occasions been observed outside Japan, but at the Anglo-Japanese Exhibition at Shepherd’s Bush, on the 28th August of that year, the festival of the Rice Harvest was celebrated, and offerings to the goddess Annomozi-Inazi were made.^[5]

The festival of the Bon, or ‘Feast of Lanterns,’ which occurs from the 13th to 16th of August, is the ‘All Souls’ Day’ of Japan. To this the Pæony, though it is not then in bloom,—so that one might consider it as but the ghost of a Pæony,—is dedicated. It is curious that this lusty, buxom, flaunting flower should, on every lantern, every lighted float and illuminated shrine, be the one chosen to typify the dead, or the returned soul of the dead. Of course the Lotus also is there, for this is a Buddhist as well as a Shinto Holy Day, and the spirit food is set out in Buddhist fashion on Lotus leaves. Models of spirit horses and oxen are also supplied—images made of straw, or perhaps of vegetables. A cucumber with four pegs stuck in it simulates a horse; an eggplant, with wooden or bamboo legs, is the usual type of an ox. White lanterns are lit at the grave itself, coloured ones at the gateways of houses, to illuminate the coming and going of the visiting dead. A ghost can find its way back to its own home and haunts by means of the Pæony which decorates the lantern set out to welcome its return.

I have seen the festival of the Bon a number of times, but never in so perfect a way as I did a year ago at Hakone. We had travelled from Yokohama in burning heat on the 16th of August, and had had an interminable ride, on rough-gaited Japanese horses, up the pass from Yumoto, past Miyanoshita, to our village beside the lake. We had been on the go all day, and I was so tired that I could hardly sit up in the saddle; while the poor horses, after ten or twelve miles of rough, uphill work, stumbled along dully. It was pitch dark at the top of the mountain pass when we began to descend, and just then—when we first caught sight of the lake—a fairy pageant passed before our eyes. A fleet of tiny, sparkling lights—for it seemed as if each one sent out the prescribed number of a hundred and eight welcoming fires—set in spirit ships (shoryobune) swept in a long line across the lake. Faintly, weirdly floated upwards the sound of music—wild and curious music, a march of the dead—from a lighted boat that followed. In an unbroken line the ships of souls, launched to return the ancestor spirits to the under world, glided out across the dark water, lay still, and then, one by one, the lights went out. Of all the hundreds, three, bravely burning, alone were left; and

VIEWING CHRYSANTHEMUMS, MUKOJIMA
TOKIO

then the clouds swept across the desolate sky, the mists fell, and we were left scrambling stupidly among the rocks again, and in a land of shadows. The vision was gone.

There are other festivals, of which I have not space to speak—that of the Autumn Equinox; that of the Seamstresses on the Seventh Night of the Seventh Moon, when the Bamboo is the votive plant, and the star Vega is adored and invoked by all, down to the babies; that of the Housewives, later on in October; and, in November, several Shinto festivals, or matsuri. In that month also comes the Fête of Chrysanthemums (Kiku-no-Sekku, the ‘Ninth Day of the Ninth Moon’), when the Emperor gives a garden-party, like in all ways to that of the Cherry Blossoms, to view the pots of autumn flowers. I have never had the good fortune to see it, but my parents and sister told me that, bar the interest attending a foreign party and an unfamiliar crowd of people, the flowers were no better than, if as good as, those at Chrysanthemum shows at home.

Last of all the year, and best of all in some ways, is the Maple-viewing, the feast of the Maple leaves.^[6] Then all the world makes holiday outdoors again for the last time; up and down the mountain slopes the people go in swarms, climb rugged hill paths, descend rocky valleys, to admire, near and afar off, the glory of the dying Maples. Hot saké warms their blood, and the blazing leaves their hearts. Our artist told me that he nearly froze to death while painting the Maples, but I can scarce believe it when I see the glowing pictures; it seems as though one could almost warm one’s stiff and aching fingers at the open fire of the trees.

This is, after all, but a bald statement of the festivals of Japan, because the day hardly passes in which is not celebrated somewhere or in some way the gracious gifts of Nature, or in which the invisible and benign gods, who exist for the Japanese in every manifestation of life, are not invoked by rites of sacrifice, or worshipped in some outward act of rejoicing. These people have been taught since the earliest recorded era to hold constant communion with the unseen forces of Nature. Ideas which are strange and novel to us are commonplaces—if such things can ever be that—to them. Everything visible and material has its unseen spirit; no humblest tool, no agricultural pursuit, no trade, no profession, but is sanctified by the thought of a guardian deity being a part of it. No house or temple is built, according to their strict laws, without prayers and a calling down of a ghostly blessing upon every part of it, to the very beams and the plaster. The mason’s trowel, the carpenter’s saw, the artist’s brushes, the writer’s pens—and above all his unblemished paper—are dedicated. Nothing is too humble, too lowly in its own sphere of usefulness, to be without its patron saint. The broom, by this, becomes a symbol; the very cooking utensils are altar vessels; and the glowing coals of the hibachi, sacred fire.

Lafcadio Hearn tells us in regard to customs of old days—still observed in the remoter country places—that

 

“Gardens, too, were holy, and there were rules to be observed in their management, lest offence be given to the gods of trees and flowers. … The trees were haunted and holy; even the rocks were endowed with conscious life.”

 

With this constant, almost daily, ceremonial and rejoicing over the outward forms of Nature to its inmost spirits, it may easily be seen that the fêtes and matsuri I have mentioned but brush the fringe of the subject.

Attention, too, in Japan, is paid to the national holidays of other countries, more especially in the Treaty Ports. I never saw more beautiful fireworks or street decoration in the United States than in Yokohama on the several Fourths of July I have spent there. Nor was it done by the foreigners in the Settlement alone, by any means. The street of native shops—Benten Dori—was decorated from end to end with exquisitely made vines of paper Wistaria, which, in their delicate waving grace and colours, quite put to shame the garish flags and gaudy streamers of the foreign quarter.

But there the secret of the whole thing lies. The festival is not all in noise and dangerous play and fire-crackers. I, an American, think that the Japanese celebrate our Independence Day better than we ourselves do, for theirs is a manifestation of the spirit—a kindliness and courtesy that sympathizes with us in a patriotic sentiment. I cannot help thinking that ours would be more real if it too came from the heart, and did not at every street corner encroach on the rights of others, their feelings, and their claims to safety.

But we can all learn something. England’s Bank Holidays and Eastern ‘Race Weeks,’ Europe’s ante-Lenten Carnivals and New Year’s festivities, as well as America’s ‘Terrible Fourth’ and Labour Day, can take from the Japanese, if their movers will, points on the simple joy of celebration; from days spent, not in boisterous picnicking, in tedious street parades, gambling, or unhealthy gaiety, but in intimate communion with that which is cleanest and most serene, sanest and sweetest in the world—Nature.

1. An idea from a well-known tanka.
2. At the Koto Hajime presents of money are given the servants—who are invariably in the beautiful patriarchal way of Japan an integral part of the family.
3. It should be added that, while children of the nobility and samurai class were allowed these wonderful collections of dolls, which have been handed down to the present day, according to the sumptuary laws established in the year A.D. 681, by the Emperor Temmu, the number and value of even the dolls a little girl might receive on her birthday were strictly regulated. For instance, a farmer assessed at 10 koku of rice (which would imply an income of £9 or £10 a year) could give his daughter only “one paper doll or one ‘mud doll’ a year,” and a boy only one toy spear.
4. This festival was inaugurated in the ninth century (of our era) by the Emperor Sago. It still occurs annually—of late years in the garden of the old summer palace of the Shoguns, Shiva Kikyu.
5. There is a goddess also of the Rice Pot—O-Kama-Sama—worshipped in the kitchen. It should be remarked that the local gods are those usually invoked in these Shinto rites, and that they differ in name and character in different places. Lafcadio Hearn, in Japan, an Interpretation, says: “It is not to the Buddhas that the farmer prays for bountiful harvests, or for rain in time of drought; it is not to the Buddhas that thanks are rendered for a plentiful rice-crop; but to the local god.”
6. See Frontispiece.