Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/261

REFINEMENTS AND PASTIMES island, and the host island. To Soami also was due the conception of the shore of the "spread sand" and the shore of the "piled sand," and his indications as to cascades, streams, trees, and shrubs are voluminous. Many of the ideas that a landscape was supposed to convey were purely subjective. Thus, in the park of the Silver Pavilion of Yoshimasa, which was laid out by Soami, there were scenes and features called the landscape of the "law of the waters," the landscape of the "sound of the stream," the landscape of the "essence of incense," the landscape of the "gate of the dragon," the "bridge of the mountain genii," the "vale of the golden sands," the "hill that faces the moon," and so on, several of which names have reference to Buddhist doctrines, and owe their appropriateness to an arbitrary association of ideas. Indeed, if it were necessary to indicate the chief difference between the parks of Japan and the parks of Europe, perhaps the truest formula would be that whereas the latter are planned solely with reference to a geometrical scheme of comeliness, or in pure and faithful obedience to nature's indications, the former are intended to appeal to some particular mood or to evoke some special emotion, while, at the same time, preserving a likeness to the landscapes and seascapes of the world about us. The two systems might also be described as the prose and the poetry of garden-making, respectively. The Japanese pays more 233