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                          THE BROCHURE SERIES
                           Japanese Gardens
                            FEBRUARY, 1900


[Illustration: PLATE XI      DAIMIO'S GARDEN AT SHINJIKU]




                                  THE
                            BROCHURE SERIES
                    OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION.

                    1900.     FEBRUARY	    No. 2.




                           JAPANESE GARDENS.


The Japanese garden is not a flower garden, neither is it made for
the purpose of cultivating plants. In nine cases out of ten there
is nothing in it resembling a flower-bed. Some gardens may contain
scarcely a sprig of green; some (although these are exceptional) have
nothing green at all and consist entirely of rocks, pebbles and sand.
Neither does the Japanese garden require any fixed allowance of space;
it may cover one or many acres, it may be only ten feet square; it
may, in extreme cases, be much less, and be contained in a curiously
shaped, shallow, carved box set in a veranda, in which are created tiny
hills, microscopic ponds and rivulets spanned by tiny humped bridges,
while queer wee plants represent trees, and curiously formed pebbles
stand for rocks. But on whatever scale, all true Japanese gardening is
landscape gardening; that is to say, it is a living model of an actual
Japanese landscape.

But, though modelled upon an actual landscape, the Japanese garden
is far more than a mere naturalistic imitation. To the artist every
natural view may be said to convey, in its varying aspects, some
particular mental impression or mood, such as the impression of
peacefulness, of wildness, of solitude, or of des