International studio (48.1913)

The House Beautiful of Japan

Courtesy of Yamanaka &• Company
A JAPANESE INTERIOR IN A HOUSE AT TUXEDO PARK, N. Y. DESIGNED BY S. MORI


the Japanese, but to the fact that he comes of a
race of artists, whose ideals for thousands of years
back have been ideals of beauty. Physically he
lives in a beautiful country, a country aboundingly
picturesque in its conformation, its flora, its
costumes and its customs. Art in all things is so
inseparably a part of the people that neither can
be understood without the other.
Having, with a superficiality which brevity may
pardon, pointed out certain salient characteristics
of the Japanese idea of interior decoration, we
find that the principles of simplicity in the
interior are reversed in the garden, and that
if any principle is followed, it is complexity.
More accurately stated, the Japanese idea of
a garden, as opposed to that of most of the
great Italian and English garden builders, is that
the garden should be a place of pleasant surprises.
It must not be laid out by diagram, with obvious
“axes” and “centres,” with formal planting and
the like. The Japanese garden abounds in quaint
turnings and unexpected little bridges over pools
of aquatic plants. Here and there are stone
lanterns, miniature rock-gardens and rivulets.

A Japanese writer, who is by way of being an
authority on the matter, says: “In the western
garden one walks, for that seems to be the primary
purpose of its construction; but the Japanese
garden is planned to be looked at, and as a con-
sequence, the Japanese house, even upon the
tiniest plot of ground, has a garden. Attached to
the dwellings in the crowded cities, such as Tokio
or Osaka, you may even see gardens six feet by
three; and even in such a bit of a garden will be a
mountain covered with woods, a lake with an
island and a tiny bridge, a waterfall, and perhaps
an arbor and artistic lanterns. In the construction
of such gardens the dwellers in the crowded cities
seek to satisfy their longing for nature by looking
at a landscape which appeals to them. They
consider it as one considers a miniature by Isabey,
and are wonderfully proud of it.”
And here, as in most things Japanese, is an
admirable piece of general philosophy of life,
illustrating not only a theory of laying out gar-
dens, but of deriving a maximum of pleasure
from a minimum source.
C. M. P.

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