Lafcadio Hearn "In A Japanese Garden"part4

from "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan" 1894
renewal!

since8/31/98




The third garden




Japanese version is here




*Inside the fence is the second garden.


    *The well is still used for supplying water to the lotus pond.


The third garden, which is very large, extends beyond the inclosure containing the lotus pond to the foot of the wooded hills which form the northern and northeastern boundary of this old samurai quarter. Formerly all this broad level space was occupied by a bamboo grove; but it is now little more than a waste of grasses and wild flowers. In the northeast corner there is a magnificent well, from which ice-cold water is brought into the house through a most ingenious little aqueduct of bamboo pipes;



And in the northwestern end, veiled by tall weeds, there stands a very small stone shrine of Inari, with two proportionately small stone foxes sitting before it.
    The high wood of the hill behind the garden is full of bird life. There dwell wild uguisu, owls, wild doves, too many crows, and a queer bird that makes weird noises at night,-long deep sound of "hoo, hoo."





@Thank you very much for enjoying our quaint garden.
Then, let's go back to the last chapter of "In A Japanese Garden".




    Yet all this - the old katchiu-yashiki and its gardens - will doubtless have vanished forever before many years. Already a multitude of gardens, more spacious and more beautiful than mine, have been converted into rice-field or bamboo groves; and the quaint Izumo city, touched at last by some long-projected railway line - perhaps even within the present decade - will swell, and change, and grow commonplace, and demand these grounds for the building of factories and mills. Not from here alone, but from all the land the ancient peace and the ancient charm seem doomed to pass away. For impermanency is the nature of things, more particularly in Japan; and the changes and changers shall also be changed until there is found no place for them - and regret is vanity.





His prophecy, so far, doesn't have come true at least here in Matsue.
After Hearn and his family left Matsue to Kumamoto, the owner of the Katchu-yashiki returned from his post in Hikawa county. (He- Negishi Tateo- was a district headman there.) His son Iwai was a student at Matsue high school, and knew well about Hearn. Time had passed, Iwai graduated Tokyo Imperial University and got a job as a bank clerk. In 1907, he happend to read "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan" published in German, and found that these fantastic gardens were of his old home. Then he decided to keep these gardens as they were during Hearn's stay in Matsue. (So we've heard in a family circle. I am one of the granddaughters of Iwai. He died when my father was seven years old.) After his death, his wife Ayame and their children carried out his will even during the Second World War.( Ayame was persecuted by police because Hearn was a foreigner; that meant a hostile person.)
Today, these gardens and katchiu-yashiki are cared for by Negishi Michiko, wife of Iwai's son Keiji, and you can visit the katchiu-yashiki to enjoy what Hearn loved. Maybe the 'ancient peace and the ancient charm' in Matsue city will still remain.

to "In A Japanese Garden"
to the garden on the south side
to the garden on the north side
extra version


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