Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 7.djvu/499

 us.vii.jd«21,1913. NOTES AND QUERIES. 491 not. That such controversies never proved a bar to the great majority of the Japanese approving of double flowers is evident from their long-used metaphors of Chinese derivation, " the floral king " and " the floral premier." respectively applied to Pasonia Moutan (tree peony) and P. albi- flora. It is evident, too, from the national employment of the Chrysanthemum sineme for decorating on 3 November, the birthday of their never forgettable last emperor. And for the same purpose on 31 August— the present emperor's birthday—not a few savants are now advocating dahlias as the most timely flowers. These plants are all of foreign origin, each comprising at present a remarkable number of double kinds. The following extract from Mujii's ' Shaseki Shu,' written between 1279 and 1283, torn, vi., well illustrates how inordinate an esteem was sometimes set by the mediaeval Japanese upon certain double flowers, which have become nowadays very common :— " Yamada no Shigetada, a provincial baron of Owari, was killed in 1221 because of having espoused the Imperial cause in the civil war of that year [for which war see ' The Encyc. Brit.,' vol. xv. p. 250]. He was a renowned archer, brave and talented, but graceful and benign, always sympathizing with the poor and distressed. Once it happened that a cenobite resident in his domain possessed a semi-double azalea. Despite his very ardent desire thereof, Shigetada continued to refrain from uttering it, quite conscious of how dear-loved was it by the cenobite. Some time after the latter committed a serious offence, whereupon the former, seizing the opportunity, instructed a judge to impose on him a choice between two alternative penalties, viz., the mulct of silken fabrics totally measuring seven hiki and four j6 [ = 434 ft. 6 in.], and the for- feiture of the plant in question. Deeming that azalea only his lifelong consolation, the religious preferred to give up so exorbitant a quantity of silk. It was only by dint of the judge's forcible persuasion, dwelling on the possibility of his refusal to alienate the azalea leading to aggravate his case, that he reluctantly dug and delivered it up to the baron. As it was then a usage in such judicature to entitle the judge to half the value of whole forfeit, he demanded of Shigetada a branch of the shrub for cutting. Notwith- standing the baron's strong wish to substitute silk for it, the judge compelled him to part with it. So equally replete with 8C3thetic concern were those three men, to any one of whom there is hardly a parallel in these days. The azalea, the subject of the above account, still exists in the place of their past residence. " The classically famed ' Semi-Double Cherry of the Old Capital Nara ' flourishes to this day in the precincts of Kdbukuji. The Empress J6td Mon-inl(987-1073) had intelligence of its super- lative beauty, and ordered the bishop of that cathedral to present it to her. Accordingly the tree was dug up, and near being carted into Kydto, when a clergyman under his rule happened to come upon it. On learning what was being done with it, he vehemently oppugned the removal of so celebrated a tree. He threatened to call together his communion with the blowing of a trumpet shell, thus to take back the tree and expel the bishop, and declared his readiness to suffer whatever heavy punishment might befit him as their ringleader. When this was reported to the empress, her praise was high of the zealot's boldness. She directed the tree to be immediately restored to its original site and made her own only nominally. Farther, she donated to the cathedral the manor of Yono in the province of Iga, renaming it ' The Manor for Fencing the Bloom,' and decreed that from its annual proceeds should be defrayed all the necessary costs for maintaining a fence around the semi- double cherry and for setting watchmen thereto for one week of its full bloom. Thenceforward the manor has ever remained the cathedral's depend- ency. All in all, this deed of the empress was characteristically graceful 1 " The last query of Peregrintjs, as for any popular Japanese flowers correspond- ing to double races of daffodils or haw- thorns, is practically impossible for me to answer, as there is no infallible test for such a comparison. Both these flowers are now grown, though uncommonly, in Japan, whose people appear mostly to care much for neither. When Bates showed an elephant's pic- ture to some Mundurucus, they are said to have settled it as a large kind of tapir ('The Naturalist on the River Amazons,' 1863, chap. ix.). Seeing that Cuvier has made them both members of the order Pachydermata, there is much reason in the red men's opinion, and equally reason- able it would seem to say that of all English flowers the hawthorn most resembles the Japanese cherry in its general aspect, although these rosaceous trees mutually differ much in some corresponding parts. This thought occurred to me when I visited Prof, (afterwards Sir) Robert K. Douglas at Dulwich one fine warm day in May, 1897. There, near his dwelling, stood a cottage amidst a thicket of hawthorn, which, Mrs. Douglas told me, was somehow con- nected with Charles Dickens's ' Pickwick Papers.' The magnificence of its flower- laden boughs, the picturesque fluttering of its falling petals, the sunshine that attended its blooming in full, together with its growth in such monumental ground, put me forcibly in mind of the spring scenery of cherry groves in my far-away home, whence I had been out over ten years already. KUMAGTJSTJ MlNAKATA. Tanabe, Kii, Japan.