CHAPTER XIAZALEAS

Niji wo haiteHirakanto suruBotan hana.(Spitting forth a rainbowIs about to bloomThe pæony flower.)

Niji wo haiteHirakanto suruBotan hana.

(Spitting forth a rainbowIs about to bloomThe pæony flower.)

[2]Hokkuis a poem of seventeen syllables.

Earlyin May the brilliant-coloured azaleas seem determined, by the splendour of their hues, to try and outshine their graceful, tender-coloured predecessors the plum, peach, and cherry. Surely no other plants ever equalled their display of colours—every shade—pure white, cream, salmon, pink, scarlet, orange, and purple; but even all this feast of colour will not make up for the delicate colour of the blossoming trees. There are so many different varieties of azalea, so many different ways of planting them, and even such a variety in their natural growth, that it is hard to say in which surroundings they appealed to me most.

The most celebrated place for “viewing azalea blossoms”—Satsuki no hana—in all Japan is in the district of Shinjuku, a suburb of Tokyo, where the show gardens, known as the florists’ gardens ofOkubo-mura, present a wealth of colour which I feel powerless to describe. These gardens, or rather azalea plantations, as no other plants are grown, are of very ancient date, and were frequented by the Tokugawa Regents, with whom they were as popular as they are with the sight-seer of to-day. A few sen will suffice to obtain permission to enter a never-ending succession of these little gardens, and so dazzled was I by their splendour that I do not remember that any one seemed more beautiful than another. Imagine these great bushes of immense size and great age simply smothered by their blossoms. Not a leaf was to be seen. My eyes ached at last, and I longed for the repose of a stretch of green. In and out among great banks of the scarlet and crimsonKaba-renge, the variety which flowers before the leaves appear,—on past beds ofAzalea indicawith its large double and semi-double blooms of every shade, the paths will lead us, as if through a maze; and surely this mass of colour helps to bewilder one. I was assured one venerable old bush, the thickness of whose stem testified to its great age, bore each year eight thousand blooms; so closely packed did the blossoms appear to be, that it would have been no surprise to me had I been told they numbered eight million instead of

AZALEAS

thousands. The whole district was thronged with holiday-makers visiting the little gardens in one never-ending stream. But one thing differed here from all the other floral feasts I had ever seen in Japan: there were few, if any, little tea-houses set up in the gardens for the entertainment of the guests, who generally sit sipping tea, or some more potent beverage, and gaze upon the especial flower they have perhaps tramped many weary miles to see. Here there was no tea-drinking, they all retreated to the neighbouring restaurants; and why? The reason was not far to seek: no human eyes could sit and gaze at that mass of colour for more than a few consecutive moments; one would leave the garden blinded. The whole air was sweet with their delicious scent; the bees were busy collecting honey, especially from the hearts of thesinensisblooms, which seemed the sweetest-smelling variety. No visitor to Japan should miss spending a few hours at Okubo, for surely in no other place in the whole world can such a wealth of colour be seen. The soil near Tokyo must be especially suited to azaleas, as there are many other gardens and parks which in this flower month will be gay with their blossoms.

I have mentioned Okubo first, because it is themost celebrated place for azaleas, here every variety and colour are collected in one dense mass; but there were many other places where the blossoms gave me more true pleasure, and where I spent many hours enjoying the scene.

At Nagaoka, in the neighbourhood of Kyoto, many a day have I spent, and I know of no place where one can sit more comfortably and peacefully lost in admiration and contemplation. Nagaoka has a large sheet of water, apparently artificial, but beautified by the great bushes of scarlet azalea along the shore, and the great splashes of colour in the water cast by their reflection. Here they are all one variety, with true fiery scarlet blossoms, and as I sat in one of the little thatched houses built out on piles in the water, great bushes were crowding round me; it seemed as though they had even cast their rosy hue upon the houses, as are not all their walls pink, as if they too reflected the colour of the blossoms?

I felt I should like to sleep among the azaleas and see them in the early dawn, and watch the mist clear off the water when the sun’s first rays would light up their dazzling splendour. But that could not be. Nagaoka, after all, is only a restaurant, though each party of guests is entertained in a

AZALEAS, NAGAOKA

separate little house. They are frail structures these little houses, with only their papershojito protect one from the chilliness of the night, and remember, summer is not yet here; all through the month of May there will be a freshness in the air to remind you that spring is not yet gone. So to Kyoto we must return; but there was plenty of consolation to be found there.

The gardens of the old Awata Palace were a blaze of colour, the azaleas lighting up this beautiful old landscape garden, which at other seasons of the year is apt to look grey and cold and uncared for. The garden here is like two separate gardens; the first part, complete in itself, is the work of the great Kobori Enshu, and the second part, where the azaleas are the glory of the garden, is the work of Soami. Standing between the two is a grand old lantern, whose history is listened to with rapt attention by the little knots of sight-seers who are led by the old priest round the garden and up through the bank of azaleas to look over the great town below, with Hiesan rising in the distance.

Many a little temple garden is quite transformed when the azalea bushes are in flower, their little miniature mountain sides are gay with the blossoms; though often the better the gardens are cared for,the fewer the blossoms, as, in order to keep the bushes in their regular and prescribed shapes, the flowers have to be sacrificed. The little garden of Chishaku-in I can recall, as having the brilliant-coloured bushes in pleasing contrast to the subdued tones of the clipped box and juniper-trees, and the greyness of the lichen-covered lanterns and mossy stones. No doubt there were many such little gardens and also private gardens, but the flower month is too short, and one can only visit the most favoured places or where chance happens to lead one’s steps.

For those who prefer to enjoy the azaleas in their wilder state, there are many places where they can wander undisturbed and inhale their scent which comes wafted on the breeze. I am thinking now of Kasuga Park at Nara, where great stretches ofAzalea sinensisform a brilliant foreground for the wistaria-laden trees. Nature seems to have arranged a veritable picture, almost too beautiful to be real. These gorgeous blossoms shade from delicate yellows and pale pink, through to the brightest orange and flame colour, growing as the woodland scrub. They are not more than a few feet in height, possibly their growth has been stunted by the deer; but they form in places a real carpet or clothe the

AZALEAS, AWATA

banks of the little streams, their colour vying with the splendour of the great temple beyond.

I had heard so much of the beauty of the cherry blossom and wistaria and the glory of the maples, and their fame is amply justified; but no one had told me of the beauty of the azaleas, and never had I realised how essentially they belong to Japan. Throughout the length and breadth of the land they seem to grow, and there appeared to be few places where one variety or another had not found a home. Their pale purple blossoms were hanging from the cliffs among the white-flowered andromeda bushes late in April, when I paid a flying visit to Miyajima, and a few days later I found them again on the banks of the canal on my way from Otsu. In the country round Hikone the more brilliant-coloured forms had found a home, and under the old pine-trees, broken here and there by a rocky projection, or even a few grey tombstones of some long-forgotten graveyard, the banks were covered with an undergrowth of azaleas. Farther north the railway leading to Aomori will wind its way through country which at all seasons of the year is beautiful, but how far more beautiful when the salmon-pink low-growing azalea forms an undergrowth to the pine woods; wherever thetrees have been thinned the rocky ravines are all lighted up with their colour. The azaleas at Nikko and Chuzenji have been described elsewhere, and I feel as if all the country during those short weeks will “always be seen in my mind through a rosy hue of azalea blossoms.”

IfI were to be asked which of all the show gardens in Japan—a garden devoted to the cultivation of one especial flower—gave me most pleasure to visit, I should unhesitatingly answer Hori-kiri, the garden ofhana shobuorIris Kaempferi, in the neighbourhood of Tokyo. Throughout the month of June this garden remains a feast of subdued colour; for the iris is no gaudy, flaunting flower, but a delicate blossom shading from pure white, through every shade of mauve and lilac to rosy purple, and so deep a blue as to be almost black. In the first days of June the paths winding through the rice fields from the banks of the river Sumida will be crowded with sight-seers whose steps are all bent in one direction and with the same intent—to pay their annual visit to Hori-kiri; and throughout the month this never-ending streamcontinues from early dawn until the setting of the sun or the rising of the moon. Flower-sellers there will be too, one perhaps with only a modest bunch of half-opened buds in a wooden tub shaded from the sun by a large umbrella, not the unpicturesque object recalled to our English minds by the word umbrella, but one made of pale yellow paper, large and flat, with bamboo ribs, the owner’s name inscribed in bold, black Chinese characters—or farther on a little stall decked with lanterns, and a gay-coloured curtain with some device suggestive of the iris; tiny toys, little fairy baskets of split bamboo with just one iris blossom, or fans painted with a giant bloom covering the whole fan, and other dainty trifles, to carry home to the little ones left at home or as a souvenir of this iris-land.

The garden of Hori-kiri must be of very ancient date, as the fine old pine-trees, dwarfed and gnarled maple and juniper bushes, are not the growth of this generation, or even the last. The garden is said to date from some three centuries, and to be handed down from father to son, always in the same family. Nothing could be more perfectly laid out for the proper display of its especial flower, the shaping of the beds, the placing of the bridges,and even the colouring of the little summer-houses in which to entertain their host of guests—all has been thought out by this artistic family; and last, but by no means least, the clothing of the little maids who wait on them with untiring zeal—their kimonos and obis all harmonising in colour.

I have lingered too long on the surroundings of the flowers, and the reader will want to know more of this wonderful flower which deserves so much attention—it does indeed deserve the attention, for surely by the middle of the “dew month” it is hard to imagine anything more beautiful than the scene which meets the eye. Some seventy varieties of this king of irises are grown, many raised from seed and jealously treasured by the owner of the garden. There are early and late varieties, three weeks almost between their time of flowering, but by the second week in June the second blooms of the early varieties will have opened and the first blooms of the later ones, so the effect is as if all were flowering together; every shoot of the plants seems to bloom; there are no gaps in their serried ranks. The mere variety is amazing. Some are pure white, only veined with a faint tinge of green; some have a margin of lilac; some are shaded; some mottled;but surely the most beautiful of all is just a great single bloom of one shade, be it white, lilac, or blue. Many people prefer the duplex flowers with an inner row of small petals, but to me this form seemed to have lost some of the natural beauty and grace of the true iris. I tried to learn something of their cultivation, hoping it might be of help to those who grow those poor specimens known in England asIris Kaempferi. It is not the plants themselves, or the varieties, which are at fault, for many thousands of roots leave the Hori-kiri garden every year to be scattered throughout the world,—it would seem to be the soil and climate which they resent and stubbornly refuse to adopt; for a few years they linger and even bravely flower, and then they begin to pine and droop like some poor home-sick mortal pining for his native land.

August appears to be the especial month for dividing the roots or replanting them, so that month had better be chosen as the beginning of the iris year. The yellowing foliage is ruthlessly cut to half its natural height and the plants divided, for no clump is ever allowed to grow so large and old that it is hollow in the centre; the outer shoots appear to be the strongest, and have most promise of bloom for the following year. The beds are

AN IRIS GARDEN

sunk a foot or so below the paths; and the rich soil is like a quagmire, not with standing water, but like swampy ground. In November the plants are all cut down, in preparation for the first dressing of manure in December. The liquid sewage is liberally applied, once towards the end of the year, and then again after an interval of a few weeks, the final dressing being given in January. By February the growth has started, and once the young leaves appear there can be no more manuring, or the foliage would suffer. From now until the time of flowering, the regulation of the irrigation seems to be the chief matter to ensure success in their cultivation. Each variety has its own especial name, generally with some poetical meaning, but difficult for the European ear to grasp, and I noticed that, no doubt for the sake of the foreign market, all the rows were numbered as well as named.

Do not imagine that this is the only iris garden of Japan. There are many others, though I always think that Hori-kiri ranks first, not only for the beauty of the garden, but the actual flowers seem larger and better grown than anywhere else. Only a few minutes’ drive from Hori-kiri will take you to Yoshino-en, celebrated for itswistaria as well as its irises. The ground is larger than Hori-kiri and the irises are well grown, but as the garden is not devoted entirely to their culture the effect is not so pleasing. The whole district almost seemed devoted to the culture ofshobu—many, many fields of them I passed; but as they are grown entirely for the sake of cutting the blooms for market, there is never any mass of colour to be seen.

The gardens at Kabata, belonging to the Yokohama Nursery Company, are perhaps the most extensive iris gardens in Japan; I felt almost dazzled and bewildered by the very size of the grounds—acres of irises—a beautiful sight; but I never derived the same pleasure from it as from the smaller garden. The iris is one of the few flowers which seems to be allowed to enter into the precincts of a true Japanese landscape garden: in many a private garden a stream will be diverted to feed an iris bed, placed where a piece of swampy ground would be most in keeping with the rest of the miniature landscape; or even the margin of a tiny lake will be utilised for just a few plants ofshobu. I remember seeing an old priest tending his little colony of irises, which no doubt were chosen with great deliberation from a large collection for some especial beauty. How often have I seen an old man and woman considering on which particular favourite their few sen shall be expended, and then departing, the happy possessor of a new treasure to add to their little store. My friend the priest’s collection all grew in pots; they did not look as though they would attain their full height and beauty; but as if to reward the loving care bestowed on them they all showed promise of flower; and no doubt in due time they will have been arranged so as to give the best effect and greatest pleasure to their grower.

I asked a Japanese who, with his little gentle wife, was sitting in quiet contemplation and evident enjoyment of the scene, to tell me something of the flower as it appeals to the Japanese, and he said: “We live here in the choicest floral kingdom; and to our mind the flowers are beautiful, and we do not ask why or how, the sight of their beauty is far more real to us than any meaning which they may suggest. You will find no other nation like Japan, which loves Nature so truly in her varied forms and holds communion with all her aspects; we love the iris as a flower, but as nothing else. I cannot make my mind associate it with any meaning of zeal or chivalry, nor do I think of it asany messenger; it appeals to me only as a little quiet beauty of the water side, making friends with the sadness of the rainy season. In our poems the iris is almost inseparable from water; one of our celebrated poetesses has written the following seventeen-syllable poem—

Midzu ga kaki,Midzu ga kashikerikakitsubata.(Water was the painter,Water again was the eraserOf the beautiful fleur-de-lis.)

Midzu ga kaki,Midzu ga kashikerikakitsubata.

(Water was the painter,Water again was the eraserOf the beautiful fleur-de-lis.)

“It is the universal custom throughout Japan to celebrate the fifth day of May by hanging bunches ofshobubeneath the eaves of our houses, and to put them into the hot water of the public baths, as it is perfectly delicious for the bathers to inhale their odour. We also drinksakéin which they have been steeped, on the same day. I felt proud to hear that the fleur-de-lis, as I believe you call the iris, is the national flower of France, as I like to think that it has found a home in the West, and when I was told that the flower which was put above Solomon’s greatest glory was not the lily of our country, but that of the iris family, I felt glad and agreed with it.”

The delicateIris Tectorumwould be an immense addition to our English flower gardens, if only our summers were hot enough to bake their roots sufficiently to make them flower. I succeeded in making them grow; they threw up their shoots each year, but never one single flower, until at last, disgusted, I condemned them, like so many other treasures brought from foreign climes, as unsuited to our cold grey skies. Late in May these irises will be in full bloom and forming a purple spur on the top of the thatched straw roofs of the farmhouses; they are generally planted in this way (hence their name), and transform the roof ridge of many a peasant’s dwelling into the aspect of a flower garden. Many different reasons are ascribed to their being planted in this manner; some say the irises are planted to avert the evil spirits, and there is a superstition that they are efficacious in the prevention of disease. There is also a legend that during one of the famines that devastated the land in olden days an order went forth that all cultivated land was to be given up to the growing of rice, but that the women of Japan, determined to save their iris roots, from which their powder (so essential to the toilette of every young Japanese lady) is made, planted them onthe roofs of their houses. I give the tale with all due reserve, as I was never able to verify it, nor do I even know for certain that their preciousshiroiis made from iris roots.

Other people no less positively affirm the growth to be accidental. Others, again, assert that the object is to strengthen the thatch. We incline to this latter view; bulbs do not fly through the air, neither is it likely that bulbs should be contained in the sods put on the top ofallthe houses in a village. We have noticed, furthermore, that in the absence of such sods, brackets of strong shingling are employed, so that it is safe to assume that the two are intended to serve the same purpose. (Chamberlain’sThings Japanese.)

No matter the reason for their being so planted—be it for protection, be it for the sake of vanity or merely for safety—the effect is none the less charming, and later in the year these little roof gardens are sometimes gay withHemerocallis aurantiacaor a stray tuft of scarlet Nerine.

The trueIris japonicaorchinensisis a shade-loving plant, with many lavender-coloured flowers on a branching stem, each outer petal marked with purple lines, and in the centre of the flower a deep orange horn. Like so many delicately marked flowers, it has a very short life, each individual bloom appearing to last only from one

IRISES

sunrise to the next, but the stems bear so many blooms that other buds quickly open and fill the gap of yesterday’s blossom.

Iris gracilipesseems the commonest and most free-flowering of all the irises. In May its graceful purple flowers and vivid green grass-like foliage seemed to fringe each pond, and the only fault I had to find with this form of iris was the short duration of its flowering season; the plants bloom so freely they appeared to flower themselves to death, and after one short week their slender heads would hide themselves until the resurrection of the next “flower month.”.

I learnt that theIris lævigata, which appears to be synonymous with Kämpfer’s iris, is much used as a decoration for ceremonies and congratulatory occasions, but on account of its purple colour it is not desirable for weddings, though permissible for betrothals. It is much honoured in the art of flower arrangement, and ranks high among the flowers used for the vase on thetokonoma; and the leaves are as much prized as the flowers, lending themselves to the bending and twisting required to attain the regulation curves. As a rule it is not permissible to use the leaves alone of a plant which may bear a flower, or the flowerless branches of ashrub which may bear blossoms or berries; butIris japonicaseems an exception to this rule, and the leaves alone may be used before the flowers appear. The first of the ten artistic virtues attributed to certain special combinations is headed in Mr. Conder’s list bySimplicity—expressed by rushes and irises in a two-storey bamboo vase. The beautiful arrangement known asRikkwa(double stump arrangement) consists of a combination of pine, iris, and bamboo grass.

“Asagaoblooms and fades so quickly, only to prepare for the morrow’s glory,” such is the theme of one of the oldest songs on theasagaoor morning glory, written by the Chinese priest at the temple of Obaku near Uji, who is said to have been the first person to introduce the flower to Japan.

It was but a primitive weed when it first came from China; it is only in the land of its adoption that it has evolved its thousand varying forms and developed into the floral wonder of to-day. It was still a semi-barbarous beauty, and had not advanced to its present plane, whenKaga no Chiyowrote her well-known morning glory poem, better known to us from Sir Edwin Arnold’s version—

The Morning Glory,Her leaves and bells have boundMy bucket handle round;I could not break the bandsOf those soft hands.The bucket and the well to her I left;“Lend me some water, for I come bereft.”

The Morning Glory,Her leaves and bells have boundMy bucket handle round;

I could not break the bandsOf those soft hands.The bucket and the well to her I left;“Lend me some water, for I come bereft.”

For centuries theasagaoin Japan remained the same trifling little Chinese flower, only the wild morning glory of the bamboo fences in the back gardens; but even then the bright poetesses of the Kyoto Court admired it, and the Nara poets sang its praises. As they delighted to write of the fleeting condition of our human lives, they found a congenial subject in the morning glory, for it is true that no flower has a briefer life and beauty, and the buds of yesterday are flowers to-day, but only for a few short hours, and then nothing will be left but ruin and decay; though how quickly fresh buds will appear and fresh flowers open to be the morrow’s “morning glory.”

It was not until the eighteenth century that theasagaobecame fashionable among the Daimyos andhatamoto, who worked wonders in its cultivation in the rivalYashikior noblemen’s gardens at Yedo. Their blossoms developed in size, depth, and variety of colour, until suddenly at the close of the eighteenth century a spell of cold weather during their season of flowering, dwarfed the blossoms andruined all the seeds in Yedo. So theasagaoculture was dropped until theTempoperiod (1830). Then a revival of interest culminated in the mad craze at the time of Commodore Parry’s visit, when princes, priests and potentates, nobles,hatamoto, and gardeners all vied with each other in the culture of this flower. Fancy prices were put on plants and seeds, as much as fourteen or eighteen yen (2s.) being given for one seed of some new favourite. Naritaya of Yedo and Tonomura of Osaka were rival gardeners, and the latter sent his precious flowers to the Yedo show by means of relays of coolies, to compete with those grown at Yedo.

The restoration and complete change of social conditions were unfavourable to the culture of the morning glory, as it again went out of fashion and only languished, until its recent revival about fifteen years ago, when anasagaoclub was formed and many prominent persons became members.

To-day the craze has spread among all classes, and there is hardly a house—more especially in Tokyo, but almost throughout the country—where there are not a few pots of this favourite flower, it being within the reach of the poorest in the land; for a few sen the seeds may be procured to raisethe plants which are so often grown upon the house-top.

Iriya (an attractive name meaning “Within the Valley”), beyond Uyeno Park, is the most famous place in Japan for the morning glory; here thousands of carefully trained plants of every shade and variety of colour, fancy flowers less than half an inch in size, in clusters, and shaped like a butterfly orchid, and other strange varieties may be seen; some trained in pots over light bamboo frameworks representing rustic structures and other quaintly designed frames. The gardens are visited by hundreds of visitors in the early morning, for it is at four o’clock in the morning of a scorching July or August day that the plants will look their best: the buds will just be opening, the faded flowers of yesterday will have fallen, and all will be fresh and make you forget the heat of the day that is dawning. One of theasagaoexperts remarked to me—

We don’t call him anasagaoman, however large his garden be, however good the other preparations; the rarestasagao, one which makes our mouths water, as we say, comes frequently from the hands of aHachikoorKumako, and is often raised upon the roofs in Nihonbashi or Kyobashi, where the ground is too dear for any garden, where we say “one handful of ground means one handful of gold.” And there’s almost no expense inasagaocultivation. What’s needed for it is only a little time to spare—the little time which you can spare from the resting hours or nap-time in the midsummer days. And any common sort of pot which you can buy for two or three sen will do just as well. And since it is the glory of early morning you have not to prepare anything, even when you invite your friends; a cup of tea will be sufficient. We hear quite often of cases of chrysanthemum parties which were the cause of poverty; but theasagaois not such a vulgar thing at all. And, on the other hand, it will make you forget the summer heat. It is the nature of the flower to love the intense heat; in the hot weather you have them more beautiful. Theasagaoman is simply glad to have the hottest days: “Surely to-morrow morning’s display will be a splendour,” he will say. He will not lose his time in taking a nap, but busy himself arranging the flower vines; and his brain will not suffer from the heat if he wear a large hat—on the contrary it will feel better. I have seen many cases ofasagaocultivation curing brain illness. And it represents the true spirit of Japanese democracy; it is such an aristocratic flower, like the chrysanthemum. A peer and a heimin will equally enjoy it: at the Himpivokwai (asagaoshow) people of every station have equal freedom and enjoyment.

The“time of the lotus” is suggestive of the damp hot August days when from earliest dawn the cicadas will be singing, if their discordant noise can be described as song, and the croaking of the frogs day and night, makes one wonder at last whether frogsnevergrow hoarse, or cicadasnevertire of singing. From the last weeks in July till the first weeks of September the lotus will be blooming bravely, undaunted by the sun’s fierce rays; and the first breath of autumn, which brings new life and energy to a human being after the heat of the summer, will mean death to the lotus. Truly it is a beautiful flower this flower of Buddha, as from its close association with the Buddhist religion it seems essentially to belong to Buddha. The colossal figures known as the Dai butsu at Kamakura and Nara sit in immovable calm as

LOTUS AT KODAIJI

though drawing inspiration from the bronze lotus before them; the silence of their souls is the silence of the flowers, and the shape of the open blooms in the sunlight is the symbol of Buddha’s enlightenment. Every little idol of Buddha, be it in the family shrine or grand and stately temple, sits upon a lotus throne; the temples are all decorated with carved lotus or the freshly cut flowers in their season; gold and silver paper lotus are carried at funerals; tombstones are often set upon a stone base in the form of a lotus flower, and lotus beds are planted near shrines. The mighty feudal lord Iyeyasu sleeps in the silence of Nikko’s cryptomerias, hearing only once in a while the long sad cry of a great bell, and before him as his only companions are the eternally same bronze lotus flowers. So not only is the lotus the especial flower of Buddha, but it is also regarded as the flower of death, and for that reason it is disliked as a decoration for any occasion of rejoicing.

There is no more beautiful sight than a lotus bed at the dawn of a hot August day. Stately and yet tender is the beauty of the lotus blossom, the great buds opening with a noise which is indescribable to one who has not heard it; and how quickly the delicate pink or white petals unfurl,as though hastening to make the most of their short life, for before the overpowering heat of the August noonday the flower closes, to open once more on the morrow and then die a graceful death; the petals dropping one by one, but still retaining all the freshness of their colour, and then nothing will be left but the great seed pod, very beautiful in itself, but not as beautiful as the great bluish-green leaves studded with dewdrops, which seem to reflect every passing cloud. For the beauty of the lotus lies not only in its flowers; you will begin to see the beauty of the plant even when the tender young leaves peep out shyly upon the surface of a pond in early June; their colour is dark brown, and the Japanese call themzenibafrom their resemblance to the shape of copper money. Then day by day the leaves will spread and float out as a spirit upon the water, gradually the stalks grow and they will get higher and higher, their broad curling surfaces losing the bronze colour and turning to every shade of soft green and deep emerald; and so through all the scorching summer days they remain fresh and cool to look upon, until in October they begin to flag, but they will be beautiful even in death. The stalks then seem too weak to carry their burden any longer, and suddenly, even as one

LOTUS AT KYOMIDZU

watches them, the stem bends near the top, and the great curling leaf will give one last shiver in the breeze, topple, and turn over and hang with head bent as if in penitence.

Though the beauty of each individual flower may be short-lived, each morning will bring fresh buds, which in a few hours open into fresh flowers, bringing new beauty to the lotus bed; so its glory lasts for six long weeks.

For the true lover of the lotus there can be scarcely any night, for soon after midnight he must rise and start for the lotus pond to see their real beauty and hear the opening of the buds with the sudden touch of dawn; so in old days the Japanese used to visit the famous Shinobazu pond in Uyeno Park, where the little temple dedicated to the goddess Benten stands on a small peninsula, as though to protect the lake from desecration, though if that were her mission she has surely failed. Four years before, I too, in the early morning, had visited the Shinobazu pond, and filled with awe and admiration had spent many hours watching the rosy petals open, and the great glaucous leaves toss hither and thither with every breath of wind, and the iridescent dragon-flies darting through the air; until driven away at lastby the overwhelming heat, I had to seek shelter from the sun. Again last August I felt I must see the lotus at Uyeno in all their glory; but I feel ashamed, for the traditions of Japan, to say what greeted me. Great staring Exhibition buildings in the worst possible taste have been built all along the shores of this historical lake. But the worst part is still to come: overshadowing the little shrine and into the very heart of one of the great stretches of lotus leaves dashed a water-chute. It took my breath away. I stood spell-bound, and then turned away with horror and asked myself, as many other people, alas! are asking: “Are the Japanese losing all their artistic feelings?”

Happily there are still many quiet spots where lotus grow, away from the desecrating hand of the “new Japan,” and there we can sit and enjoy this “emblem of purity,” its clean fresh flowers and leaves rising unsullied from the stagnant mud; and this is one reason for associating it with a religious life, or comparing it to the virtuous soul of a woman who lives in suspicious surroundings.

A favourite Buddhist precept says: “If thou be born in the poor man’s hovel, but hast wisdom, then art thou like the lotus flower growing out of the mud!”

Wherever undisturbed pools and channels of muddy water exist, the lotus is to be found: the old moats surrounding the remains of a grand old Daimyo’s castle, the muddy temple or monastery ponds, and even the ditches beside the railway, will all be rendered gay in the summer, when the great pink and white lotus are in bloom. Their history is a very old one, for their beauty is sung in the old Buddhistsutra, and one passage describing the golden glory of Paradise tells of “a pond where the lotus flowers large as a carriage-wheel grow; the green flowers shine in green light, the yellow flowers in yellow light, red flowers in red light, and the white flowers are supreme in beauty and odour.”

It may be true that the leaves are as large and round as a carriage-wheel—of a Japanese carriage, akuruma; and certainly I should be afraid to state rashly how large and high the foliage of the white variety may grow. The whiteNelumbium speciosum, for all the so-called lotus of Japan are really this species of water-lily, has a powerful and sweet perfume; but the pink ones, which are far more beautiful, have but little scent. I think the leaves and their stems, as well as the flower, must have their own peculiar odour; for often I noticednear lotus beds, where no blossoms were to be seen, a strong and rather sickly perfume came floating in the air in whiffs which will always be associated in my mind with lotus, as I cannot compare their scent to that of any other flower.

There are other varieties, one a deep crimson colour and one called “gold-thread lotus,” but these are seldom seen. The Indian lotus has a larger double flower, deep pink in colour, which never closes day or night, and the blooms last in beauty for five or six days. In India, the source and centre of Buddhism, the lotus has been chosen as a national flower, and Burmah also is famed for its lotus; so wherever Buddhism makes its presence felt, there you will find the lotus. Sir Monier Williams says that “its constant use as an emblem seems to result from the wheel-like form of the flower—the petals taking the place of spokes, and thus typifying the doctrine of perpetual cycles of existence.”

The lotus is a favourite subject with the Japanese artist in conjunction with the mandarin duck and other water-fowl, and so faithfully do the Japanese represent their flowers that each vein in the leaves seems to be depicted if not exaggerated. Mr. Parsons admirably describes the lotus, and alsothis form of exaggeration and mannerism in their art—

Take for example the spots on the lotus stems; if you look very closely you can see that there are spots, but certainly it could not strike every artist as a marked feature of the plant, for they are not visible three yards away. But some master noticed them many years ago and spotted his stems, and now they all spot them, the spots getting bigger and bigger; and so it will be until some original genius arises who will not be content with other people’s eyes, but will dare to look for himself, and he may perhaps, without abandoning Japanese methods, get nearer to nature, and start a renaissance in Japanese art.

He also remarks—

The lotus is one of the most difficult plants which it has ever been my lot to try to paint: the flowers are at their best only in the early morning, and each blossom, after it has opened, closes again before noon of the first day; on the second day its petals drop. The leaves are so large and so full of modelling that it is impossible to generalise them as a mass, each one has to be carefully studied, and every breath of wind disturbs their delicate balance and completely alters their forms. Besides this, their glaucous surface, like that of a cabbage leaf, reflects every passing phase of the sky, and is constantly changing in colour as clouds pass over.

Such is an artist’s true appreciation.

No honour seems too great for this flower of Buddha, and we are told that you will be permitted, if you are fortunate enough to be amongthose who are admitted into Nirvana, or Paradise, to sit upon the lotus throne, leaving behind the dirt and dust of the world. In the days of old Japan, when the religious influence was stronger, and far more romantic than it is to-day, to sit together upon the lotus throne in Paradise was the customary dream of two lovers who wished to commit suicide.

Another honour for the lotus is that the Japanese dedicate their wonderful and awe-inspiring mountain Fuji-san to it, and call it Fugo Ho, meaning Lotus Peak. Thousands of their poets have sung praises of this lotus peak, but to our minds the words of Mrs. M‘Neill Fenollosa will be easier to understand: “Now far beyond the grayness, to the west, the cone of Fuji flashes into splendour. It, too, is pink; its shape is the shape of a lotus bud, and the long fissures that plough the mountain-side are now but the delicate gold veining of a petal. Slowly it seems to open. It is the chalice of a new day, and the pledge of consecration.” It would seem as though the opening of the lotus flower is the signal of the awakening of summer dawn and the opening of a new day.

In Chinese literature there is a legend of Teiko

LOTUS FLOWERS

who gathered his guests together on a midsummer day and put wine in the lotus leaves and let his guests drink it from the stems of the leaves. A truly romantic feast.

In Japan the leaves are used for dishes at the Soul’s Festival in July; the dead spirits who return to this world from Hades are supposed to eat the offerings from the leaf dishes. The Japanese have a delicacy calledhasu meshi—hasumeaning lotus,meshi, rice—consisting of the young and tender lotus leaves chopped fine and cooked with rice. They also eat the little fruit of the lotus, no larger than a pebble, which, contrary to most fruit, can be eaten raw when it is unripe, but gets so terribly hard as it ripens that it has to be cooked. The dried leaves seem to be valued as a drug, and also the vegetable-sellers wrap their vegetables in them. All this is too unromantic to be associated with the lotus, and I was better pleased to hear of the Japanese phraseben po, meaning lotus step, which they associate with the light step of a beautiful woman. A pretty story of old China is told of the Lord Tokonko of the province Sei, who was extravagant in the extreme. He had as his mistress a lovely girl called Han hi. One day he made lotus petalsof real gold and scattered them in his garden; then he called out to his mistress to let her step on them, and he was very happy to see his fair lady and his gold flowers equally well matched in beauty. Truly Han hi’s “lotus step” must have been a wonder.

In saying farewell to the time of the lotus I feel I cannot do better than quote Mrs. Fenollosa’s charming poem—

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