Japanese Gardens/Chapter 6
TEMPLE FENCE AND GATE, HIGASHI OTANI
KYOTO
CHAPTER VI
GARDEN FENCES AND HEDGES
“Over the garden fence my Plum tree blooms,
Inviting in the weary passers-by;
I may not close the gates now, if I would:
The world may love my flowers as well as I.”
This poem is not only a pleasant fancy, but a literal fact in Japan, where the owner of a garden which boasts a flowering tree does not selfishly shut it out with a high fence and well-locked gates, limiting the joy of his possession to himself and his intimates. No, he has the fence, and one high enough for privacy, although not too high for air and light, and he has the gates; but when the bloom is on the bough the passer-by may enter and enjoy and worship, just as he might, in a Roman Catholic country, enter a church, pray, and pass on again. Nor do these people take an unfair advantage of the privilege, for I firmly believe that, if there were tramps and rogues in Japan (which there are not), they would be dowered with a moral as well as an æsthetic sense, and that not even the most hardened of them would steal so much as a flower.
The Japanese, in their fences, garden walls, and hedges, have arrived at a happy medium between the methods employed in America and England. The British idea of a private possession, into which no man may even look without an invitation, is perhaps a little selfish. The American notion that a man’s lawn and front garden should be as much for the adornment of the street on which he lives as for his own use and pleasure is, although so altruistic, to my way of thinking a mistaken one, for it is only in its privacy that one can enjoy a garden or grass and trees. But the Japanese combine the merits of both systems. The fence, or wall, or hedge, as the case may be, is in itself so attractive that one need hardly turn to the blooming trees that overhang it; to the branch of Bamboo, or flowering Pomegranate, or Cherry, half caught through its moon-shaped opening, or peeping over the corner; to the Pine tree that guards its gates, to lend it interest and grace, and decorate the street on which it faces. But when, added to this, is the fact that the flower-loving stranger may enter unasked,—I do not say he would, but he might, and he would be treated with courtesy, and as if by his appreciation he conferred a favour on his willy-nilly host,—it would appear as though the real millennium of garden-owning had arrived.
In towns or crowded districts, very high bamboo fences are to be seen, sometimes reaching up fifteen or even twenty feet. This, for the owner of the little garden, is a veritable house wall, and is only employed to ensure great privacy; so good taste dictates (as well as kindness towards the people who would have to pass, or to look at it from the other side) that this dull, blank surface should be broken and beautified by working the bamboo in patterns and by the introduction of round or square openings, like little latticed windows, part of the way up. When these are left open, as is occasionally done, a flowering tree, a Bamboo, or perhaps a Pine of just the right shape, is trained to act as the picture behind the frame, or maybe to thrust a graceful arm through, as if to wave its hand to those beyond the pale. More often, however, the opening is filled in, wholly or in part, with a delicately patterned fretwork of bamboo. This gives an almost Indian look to the spot, although no buildings in Japan have the air of permanent stability that those in India have. Even when these lunettes are elaborated with open-work traceries in this way, behind them still may be seen, through the little openings, the well-trained trees of the garden inside. These are more common in Kyoto and the central part of Japan than they are farther North, in Tokio and Yokohama, but it is only in crowded districts that they are to be seen even there.
But the ideal Japanese garden fence is not nearly so high as this, six feet being considered a good height. It may be made of wood, of bamboo (for the two are not classed together by the Japanese, who fully appreciate that the latter is a grass), or of plaster set in wood. Also stone walls are sometimes seen, although these are fairly modern. I know some nice ones in the neighbourhood of Nagasaki, with a hedge above them. Their walls are invariably a delight, for in this handicraft, as in others, their discerning eyes and obedient and nimble hands excel. Unless it be because of their many earthquakes, I do not know why stone is so little used for building in their country, for they are past masters in its employment for retaining walls of roads, for the dykes of their mad torrents of rivers and mountain streams, for foundations, and for the construction of bridges. Besides this, Japan is almost all rock and boulder, and no people ever prized the beauty of stones more. Of course it is equally true that they are master craftsmen in the arts of wood working, carving, fine carpentering work, and cabinet-making, and also in the manipulation of bamboo. Again, it can be urged that no country in the world has a greater variety of forest trees whose wood is suitable for working, and nowhere are there so many bamboos available for that work. So if they, in the embarrassment of their riches, choose to work wood instead of stone for their houses, temples, and fences, they do it so beautifully that we cannot complain.
Walls made of strong and heavy wood, such as is used in the construction of temples, are employed rather more often than stone for surrounding important parks and gardens whose owners are people of distinction. The timber is generally used as a framework, and the walls are filled in with tiles and clay, and are stoutly plastered. The top has a graceful roof of handsome tiles, and, with the great covered gateways with ornamental roofs, they are very suggestive of Chinese pleasure palace walls, from which they were doubtless copied. Of this sort many are to be seen in Tokio and Kyoto, in and around palace and temple grounds.
Others, more modest, but of the same general construction, are built for places less grand and also less important, and, descending in scale, we finally see the same sort of wall, lower, not roofed even with shingles, but simply encased in slabs of wood at the top, around very humble places in central Japan. Miyajima has many, the walls washed white or a warm delicious yellow, which, somehow, always suggested Italy. One very un-Japanese note was, perhaps, accountable for this—the woodwork was painted, and instead of the soft silvery greys and warm purple-browns of old, time-beautified wood, a neat coat of reddish brown colour had been applied. I confess I liked it, for there, with its warm Italian colouring in sky and sea and merry brown-faced children, it all seemed to harmonize. In other parts of Japan solid wooden fences are often used, and slabbed ones, or heavy rustic ones of unhewn trees, but seldom have I seen paint on any others.
Perhaps it is wrong of me to perpetuate its memory by writing of it, but I know of two or three fences in Hakone Machi and Moto Hakone which have been painted by their owners in what they fondly believe to be ‘foreign style.’
One of my friends had taken a house for the summer at the former place, which had possessed, during the three previous seasons of her occupancy, a beautiful old fence, stained by the fingers of time the most lovely silver grey, with mauve shadows and bronzy markings. What was her horror, on returning last year, to find it changed by that awful alchemy of progress, the paint-pot, into a terror in bright blue! It swore audibly and viciously at all around, the particular victim of its rage being a great clump of crimson (I dare not describe them in their true colour, as magenta) phlox, with which it had been sweetly in love the year before. The poor garden, once so perfect in its own stately way, with clipped trees and old dwarfed shrubs, seemed suddenly to have shrunk together, and put its poor hands before its face to exclude the dreadful sight of the indignity that had been offered it. My horrified friend, artistic to the marrow, was speechless with grief and rage; but the ‘O Kama San,’ proud and pleased (although I know, from the way she arranged flowers, that she must have secretly hated it), displayed it to every ‘Igen San’ who passed, as a proof of her breadth of mind and progress.
I remember another painted fence, in the little fishing village where Commodore Perry first landed, Kurihama; but that was not so bad. Some sailor, perhaps from one of the foreign ships docked at Uraga, had given the pot of paint—yellow ochre, it was. Luckily there had not been enough of it to paint properly the tall fence of palings, and the artist had therefore thinned it down with oil or turpentine, or something of the sort, so that, except in places, due to inexperience in mixing, it was little more than a stain. Its warm, golden, wood colour was rather charming, and the village folk loved it as a natural curiosity which they hardly pretended to understand.
But let us return to fences in general, and leave particular ones and their styles of decoration until a little later. Walls of mud and tiles, of plaster and of wood, are of very ancient usage, but open work and ornamental fences appear to date only from about the Kamakura Period, while Mr. Conder tells us that “When the ‘Tea Ceremonies’ came into vogue, in the time of the Ashikaga Shoguns, there are said to have been twenty-five different kinds invented.” But with the many slight differences there are, and the many possible combinations, one can bring the number up to a figure enormously greater. Of these wooden fences, except in the rare case of those very highly decorated ones, ornés de dragons bleus et de bizarres fleurs, for temple grounds, the wood is always left unpainted. In a land which can boast a hundred and eighty-six varieties of forest trees alone, there is naturally a wonderful choice of material. While those with the most beautiful grain, and best marked, are certainly not used for fences, one who pauses to examine them wonders if they can be less than the finest, so satin-smooth the highly finished ones are, so strikingly marked is the wood of the middle grade of fence and finish, so rough and picturesque are those surrounding the more rural style of garden (for it is hardly necessary to say that these people’s railings are made to conform in style, size, finish, and character to the gardens they surround). Of course it is unnecessary to add that they also look old, and rather worn. The slabs of some of the fences are like grey ‘watered’ silk, and others again like bands of striped ribbon, fair and smooth. The delicate shading, purple, green, and bronze, that water-stained wood acquires, is greatly prized, so old boats are frequently taken apart to furnish forth an artistic fence. I have seen the finely coloured piles of an ancient pier taken up to make supports for such a fence, and to adorn each side of the gateway. At Karuizawa (which is a place so overrun with foreign missionaries that there is not, one would think, much chance left for native taste to show itself) an old and lovely fence (or so it seems) around one of the new and ugly hotels which shows yet another way of exhibiting the grain of the wood. It appears in high relief. At first I thought that, in its nearness to Asama Yama (which is the most active volcano I have ever had the luck to see), the wind, blowing lava-dust and cinders about, had worn away the soft part of the wood, leaving, by one of those happy accidents which one is always imagining with respect to Japanese gardens, the hard, fibrous grain exposed; but, on further looking into the matter, I found that it was purposely, and even laboriously done by hand, the newly cut posts having been rubbed and rubbed and rubbed with the powdered pumice-stone that takes the place of sand and gravel in the neighbourhood of the fiery mountain. The process is employed in other places, using ordinary sand instead of the pumice-stone. The effect, to us, is not particularly pretty, more especially after the remark of an observer when you are admiring it that it suggests an anatomist’s model of a human leg or arm, made to indicate the positions of the sinews and muscles, the veins and the arteries.
It is hardly necessary to say that the help of man’s hand, as well as of the rain and weather, is invoked for the decoration of fences,—not in painting, but in giving the appearance of age. Silvery lichens, velvety moss, green and orange; the warm greys won from the sun, the cold greys brought by the rain, assist in adorning the wood; but while the climate does a great deal, and does it quickly, intelligent aid helps on the good work. Earth is rubbed into the grain of the wood and is carefully damped, and moss is the recompense of this generous charity. Sometimes little ferns grow in the cracks, due, I am sure, to a deliberate invitation on the part of the fence owners.
A favourite method of decorating some wooden fences is to hold a lighted torch under the wood in places, so that it is charred,—an original and ugly form of ‘poker work’; it is, however, popular in fishing villages more particularly, as the charring is said to preserve the wood. The ‘Rustic Fence’ is often found, but it is not the meaningless, mongrel sort of thing that it is with us. Our rustic palings never seem to have any connexion with real outdoor life. But those in Japan are of ingeniously pretty shapes, like country girls, caught, but not frightened out of their native grace, and
A ROCK AND WATER GARDEN
HAKONE
performing with simple charm the work required of them.
When we come to bamboo fences, there is such a wonderful variety that one hardly knows where to begin to describe. First of all, it should be said that here, as always, the style and degree of finish must depend upon that of the garden which the fence is to surround. There are three grades of workmanship—the rough, which is often the prettiest, the medium, and the highly wrought.
Of the first degree, bamboos sliced in half, or in quarters, and tied on to upright supports of whole tubes of the same material, would give one a fair idea, while a delicately woven and plaited paling of basket-work panels might represent the more elaborate kinds. Between these run all sorts of grades and shades of difference.
The methods of tying the bamboos, the material used, and the design, if I may call it so, of the knots, immensely increase the variety. Then there are open as well as closed bamboo fences, high and low ones, simple and severe, fanciful and elaborate kinds, and combinations of all these. There are fences with ‘Moon-entering’ openings, others closed below and latticed above, or with round or square windows set in the solid part, that discover adorable twisted Plum branches, with their delicate snowflake blooms set off against the shadow of the garden behind. There are fences which are bundles of reeds that suggest torches, and fences which have made many a public school boy think of other days; and again more of the same material, but evenly fastened, as if they formed a thin hedge of bare twigs, that are called ‘Nightingale’ fences.
These last were, to me, more poetic in sentiment than in appearance, for they reminded me of the fences of the poor negroes in the swamps of Arkansas; and although I remember how the mocking-birds sang there when I was a child, I recollect, still more clearly, the savagely barking, half-starved dogs that used to dash out from behind them, and the gibbering old ‘witch woman’ who would scream at us over the fence of switches. But the Japanese are gentler than those untamed Africans who had been brought to die of ague in our Southern swamps, and their birds are more serene and happy beings too. The nightingale—the bird-lover of the Plum—may serenade his mistress from these bare twigs, happily fancying his song will evoke her flowers. The poet says—
“My fence of twigs is desolate with snow,
And yet the loving nightingale is there.
He takes the snowflakes for his lady’s flowers,
And pours his soul out in his love and woe.”
These twig fences are built also in two and three tiers, but even the higher ones are only appropriately used around—or as screen fences in—the rougher sorts of gardens.
More than a word should be said, too, of the cords with which parts of bamboo and reed fences are tied, for it is in these little details—as in a dress from a good Paris house—that originality and perfection of finish are displayed. The rope is generally of natural fibre, perhaps of Wistaria, which is so strong that it may be used to hold parts of buildings together; perhaps of the tough little tendrils of vines and creepers, or of the strong grass which the Chinese use so much, but as likely as not it will be of sago palm, or of hemp, dyed black or brown or deep sienna. There are used no ugly glaring and staring yellows and pinks and purples, to insult the eyes of these artistic people; even the cords—I had almost written ‘chords’—must harmonize.
But a most important type of fence is not to be omitted, the ‘Screen,’ or ‘Sleeve Fence.’ In these almost more variety exists than in any other kind, because their object is to conceal, by a beautiful thing, something else that is unbeautiful. They are usually at the edge of the veranda to protect the washer at the water-basin, or perhaps to block out some unsightly but necessary part of the house or grounds, or to give interest, and a sense of there being ‘more beyond,’ to a restricted space. The very name, ‘Sleeve Fence,’ is suggestive of the graceful drooping sleeve held up to screen off a view, though very often it would be larger than the whole kimono is.
This fence may be rather stiff and architectural in form, to add to the dignity of a stately house, and to carry on its style into the garden; but often it is quite irregular in shape and design, and, I confess it sadly, sometimes ‘rococo’ to the last degree.
I give a few names of the many varieties of the ‘Screen Fence,’ and the reader can doubtless construct for himself a picture of the quaintness and charm to which these names are a key. The ‘Clothes-horse Fence’—the shape of that delightful and useful article which the traveller will remember to have seen in the sleeping-rooms of country inns, private bath-houses, etc., in Japan; the open spaces between the bars, in this case, are filled in with bamboo work in good designs. The ‘Armour’ pattern has a diagonal band in the centre, of crossed and tied Wistaria tendrils, which somewhat resembles ancient Japanese chain-mail. The ‘Moon-entering Screen Fence’ is, in an irregular way, like the repeating type which encloses the garden and bears the same name. It is not, however, so attractive, to my thinking, for the single opening, slightly broken at one side, for a Plum tree’s twisted trunk and branches to appear, seems to me too palpable a strain after effect, and gives the pretty little work an air of sophistication instead of the guileless look it should have. Then there is the ‘Bundle of Reeds Screen Fence,’ the ‘Double’ and the ‘Triple’ stage one, and the ‘Nightingale Screen Fence,’ which are all allied in style to their namesakes which surround the garden; the ‘Leaning Plum Tree,’ the ‘Round Window,’ the ‘Looking Through,’ and the ‘Peeping’ kinds, are variations of those with openings. Of the different sorts, with their various modifications and combinations, it would not be hard to make up a list of a hundred kinds.
In between fences and hedges might be placed the open palings of bamboo which serve the double purpose of fence and trellis, and which, with their network of creeper covering, often have the look of hedges. They are delightful, informal-looking affairs, not appropriate for the boundaries of big and imposing gardens, but very charming around the smaller and perhaps more cheerful sorts. Moto Hakone has several, overrun with Morning Glories and the crimson stars of Cyprus Vines. Sometimes one sees them with Wistaria, but this would be the higher kind, not the little ones two or three feet high that are most frequently seen. I have noted them, too, covered with the glowing orange of Bignonia, but that also would soon need a tall trellis to show off the splendours of the blossoms.
I want to call the attention of Americans to this form of fence. It is not unknown in the United States, though it is not employed nearly so much as it might be. People who do not desire privacy, and who are generous enough to wish the public to enjoy the sight of their smooth and sloping lawns and flaming flower-beds, but who still want a line of demarcation at the edges of their property, could use these little low fences to great advantage, covered with Nasturtiums, with white or yellow Jasmine, with climbing Roses, with Passion Vine, or with any of the hundred and one creepers which combine profusion of bloom and colour with density of foliage; and the effect would be charming. And in that land where bamboo is not, but wire is, the result desired could be obtained at little or big cost, as the owner pleased. Variety of effect would be endless.
Another style of open fence, although not a common one, is of living Bamboo, set in at a sharp angle, and tied in a lattice pattern. It is exquisitely pretty, with the delicate leaves and shining green or yellow stems outlined against the sky. Our Willows, which in appearance so closely resemble the Bamboo, although they are far removed in species, could be used with good effect in the same way. A pergola of Willows, leading to the ornamental water which so many gardens boast nowadays, would be a charming thing, first to leap out in the spring, and last, when its silvery leaves have turned, to drop in the autumn. Or an arbour of Willows, beside a pond or brook at an old-fashioned country place, would be a constant delight; for the Willow leaves, like the Aspens, are always fluttering, and give one the sense of a breeze even when there is none.
My sailor husband tells me that in Bermuda, Oleanders, crimson, pink, and white, are planted in interlacing hoops to form a fence of this kind, and that the effect is beautiful. We tried it in Hong-Kong, but not with much success, as without coral soil in which to plant their roots, Oleanders do not seem to do very well.
In Yokohama, Tokio, Nagasaki, and many other places in Japan, hedges are much used instead of fences. The only wonder is that, in a country where so many Laurels are found, where Camellias and Cryptomereas have their feet on their native heath, and grow with a profusion unknown in other climes, one should ever see anything else. I confess that, in Yokohama, these—in winter—splendid great hedges are in summer a pathetic rather than a beautiful sight. In the August semi-dryness (for no season is really dry in Japan) their glossy leaves are dusty and dirty and dejected-looking, with the melancholy of a satin dress in the gutter, of a man who wears shiny broad-cloth and carries a sandwich board. Such sad spots as the rain leaves on them—the very stains of tears! But, if they are not always beautiful in summer, for the rest of the year they are beautiful enough to more than compensate, for never were glossy leaves glossier than in this moist climate, and the Japanese clip them, to represent walls, so well that one is not infrequently led to think that solid masonry is underneath, and is covered with shining Ivy without. Sometimes the gateways go still further in imitation of fortress walls, for a bastion or a scarp is thrown out on each side of the entrance—not for defence, of course, but for privacy. In other words, the visitors at the gates do not command a view of the tea-table on the lawn.
Ilex is not infrequently used, and always makes a close, well-covered surface. It has a delicious, pungent smell, and its twigs are fine and strong like steel, so that it would withstand any amount of aggression. These twigs, and those of the Osage Orange of other hedges, are made into the toothpicks for which, in the East, Japan is so famous. Japanese Box, which is not so slow-growing as ours, but has the same sunny-garden smell, is also a favourite. These hedges do not attain a height of more than five or six feet; but those of the Camellia grow very much higher, up to fifteen or even eighteen feet, while the Cryptomerea will soar as high as you like, and still bristle, impassably, with fine bronze needles.
In Tokio, one sees a combination of bamboo fence below, and wild Orange hedge above, that is very attractive. Doubtless these fences are securely built, but I could not help thinking that, in my childhood’s days in the Southern States, it would have been the fence and not the hedge that I should have considered it easier to get through. I remember a thicket of wild Plum,—for, as it was never trimmed, that is what it came to,—in Arkansas, which bore the most delicious, sour red plums that ever a child longed for, regardless of cholera-morbus; and, in Virginia, an Osage Orange hedge that yielded forth beautiful, big, bitter fruit, and protected nothing in particular. Those two hedges were an end, not a means; and how many torn frocks, and bruised knees, and scratched little hands, and how many cruel, horrid tummy-aches they were responsible for! But I cannot remember ever having broken my way through either of them. The Orange hedge I considered much more impassable than the granite walls and wide moats of Fortress Munroe, in which we lived. It seemed to me, therefore, in Japan, highly appropriate that this look of a sally-port should be given to the entrances of these hedge walls, and that the gates of heavy masonry should often appear nearly solid enough to withstand an attack of artillery. I often wondered if, had the positions been reversed in Manchuria, and the Japanese been defending instead of attacking Port Arthur, Osage Orange, the thorny Bamboo, or the Wild Rose of the Sleeping Princess would not have been planted and intertwined with the wire entanglements, and with the samurai spirit of its defenders the place thus have been made quite impregnable.