Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/258

JAPAN Already in the Heian epoch, as shown in a previous chapter, the designing of parks with miniature lakes, islands, and rockeries, occupied a prominent place in aristocratic attention. Some successful attempts were also made to reproduce natural landscapes and waterscapes within the limits of a mansion's enclosure. But the art was still in a comparatively conventional stage, not having broken away from the trammels of its Chinese origin. It was reserved for the men of the Military age not merely to extend the limits of the art enormously, but also to convert it into something like an exact science, codifying its principles and imparting allegorical significance to every part of its practice. Originally the scheme of a garden was worked out by a pictorial artist, consulting his own instinct of beauty in strict subordination to general rules. But, by and by, the Buddhist monks began to acquire a monopoly of skill. That was a natural result. Never from the first had a Buddhist temple been erected in Japan without most careful consideration of its surroundings. Its congruity with the environing landscape, its contrasts or agreements with the features of its approaches, the adaptation of its grounds to the "points" of their vicinity, — all these things were thought out with the utmost care, and the delightful impression produced by Buddhist edifices is due as much to this harmonising of art and nature as to any grace and grandeur of the 230