Page:Japanese Gardens (Taylor).djvu/225

Rh weeds and mosquitoes, is too sensible to require either comment or commendation. Even the moats and temple lakes, where the beautiful Lotus flowers grow, have their constant, if slow, intake and outlet of water. I do not claim that there are no stagnant pools in Japan, where gnats and mosquitoes can pester the passer-by (or the artist who wishes to paint them), but these places are not arranged according to accepted gardening rules, and cannot even be cited as exceptions. Clear, shallow, moving water, which can sparkle while it reflects, is the essential idea; for it suggests happiness and serenity, the gaiety of Nature as well as its tranquillity.

Another dictum regarding water, which it is hard to consider anything but a superstition however, is the idea that it must enter the garden from the East and leave it by the West, no matter how difficult of arrangement this may be. Of course this is but the world-wide belief in the doctrine of not going against the sun. I suppose the conservative Briton, who would be horrified if the port were sent round ‘the wrong way,’ would refuse to recognize this custom as a survival of that idea, but it can be nothing else. The North, justly enough, is considered a malign influence, as the cold winds and storms come from that quarter, so that if water must, perforce, enter from that side of the grounds, its course is first carefully trained towards the East (round a sheltering hill, or group of trees,