Page:Four Japanese Tales.pdf/31

 of Fulfilled Desire, for its dimensions were no greater than twelve inches by twenty, the hillock towered some eight inches, the temple was something over four inches high, the stone lantern by the grave about two inches, the clumps of bamboo were all sizes between three and five and a half inches, and the centenarian pine barely overtopped the moss-grown roof of the temple. Everything else was in the same elf-like proportions: the lake and the bridges, the path and the boulders and the tiny statues of various deities which were placed here and there

It was a family tokoniwa, a miniature garden placed, according to custom, in the recess called tokonoma, which contains, besides various ornamental objects, the only pictures which hang in room, it was an unbelievably wee garden, in which just as in larger gardens out of doors, the charming impression was given that everything was really large–that hillock, temple, lake, tree–, and only seemed to be small because we were looking at it from afar and from on high, or perchance through the wrong end of a pair of opera-glasses. Of course, the Japanese art of gardening contributes substantially to the possibility of this enchanting illusion with its dwarfed trees. One often sees maples, pines and other trees even a hundred years old and still only a foot or so high, though with branches perfectly developed and with a gnarled trunk which at first glance betrays its venerable age. The pine in Kumamotó’s tokoniwa was not the first miracle of that art that I had beheld in Japan, but harmonized as it was with its surroundings, with which it had grown up, it seemed to me the most wonderful dwarfed tree of my experience. So majestically did it dominate over the Garden of Fulfilled Desire that it seemed to me as if it had created its space and time and did not belong to this world. In truth I would not have been surprised if suddenly on the path around the lake there had appeared proportionately tiny folk in kimonos, with microscopic smiles on their faces.

“You never showed me anything more exquisite, Mr. Kumamoto”, I cried in sincere enthusiasm. “There is not a single thing in your tokoniwa that is not a treasure of art. If your garden were a thousand times as large, it would be a thousand times less charming” I looked out of the window into the narrow and somewhat dirty little street, resounding with a hundred different sounds. “Who would suspect the existence of such a treasure in your little home, so modestly hidden among the most modest. I have half a mind to be angry at you for not having shown me your Garden of Fulfilled Desire long ago. A beautiful name, but its bearer is far more beautiful. That tree! It is certainly a hundred years old!”