Page:Japanese Gardens (Taylor).djvu/86

48 gratefully glad to help me to information on a subject at the same time so near to their hearts and so deeply interesting to me, have given me almost the same facts and many of the same names, I could not begin to present the rules as clearly as he does, or to be sure that, in my inability to read the Japanese characters, I could even approach it in the same spirit.

The five radical shapes for garden stones are given as follows:—

“A tall vertical stone, bulging out towards the middle and finishing conically at the top, called the Taido-seki,—the nearest intelligible translation of which is ‘Statue Stone,’—on account of its supposed resemblance in form to that of the human body.

“A shorter vertical stone, rounded slightly at the base, finishing in an irregular blunted cone, and resembling the bud of a Magnolia flower, the name applied to which is Reijo-seki, which may be rendered as ‘Low Vertical Stone.’

“A low broad stone of irregular shape and horizontal character, with a flat top, rather higher than the ordinary stepping-stone, and called the Shintai-seki, or ‘Flat Stone.’

“Another stone of medium height, with a broad flat top, bent over to one side in an arched manner: this is called the Shigio-seki, here freely translated as ‘Arching Stone.’