Somei: Landscape Gardening in Edo

Two main highways leading north from Edo -- the Naka- sendo and the Nikko Kaido -- divide just as they leave the busy residential suburbs where most of Edo's wealthiest families have their manors. The countryside beyond is dotted with hundreds of small farms and occa- sional clusters of homes. As you make your way along the Naka- sendo and into the countryside, the spring landscape unfolds in beautiful colors. There are flowering trees and bushes everywhere you look. The delicate pink blossoms of cherry trees dot the roadside, and many of the hills are covered with a multicolored blanket of shrubbery -- especially azaleas and rhododendrons.

This is the Somei area -- a general name given to a cluster of small towns and villages that specialize in growing orna- mental plants and trees to plant in the gardens of all the wealthy daimyo in Edo. The two main towns in this area are Koma- gome and Sugamo, but most people in Edo know the area as "Somei" and the farmers who live in the region are known as the Somei uekiya (the landscape gardeners of Somei). They get their reputation from their great skill in raising thousands of different types of ornamental plants.

The farms in the Somei area produce most of the ornamental plants that the daimyo plant in their gardens, and many flower markets are held in the small towns along the Naka- sendo, where common people can also buy flowers, trees and shrubs. In fact, even the beautiful gardens inside Edo Castle are landscaped and tended by gardeners from Somei.

Gardening is one of the most common and most universal hobbies in Edo. Although the daimyo spend lots of money to build large and extensive gardens, even the poorest city dweller can raise flowers and small shrubs along the roadside or on their balcony, because all it takes is a pot, some dirt and a few seeds or cuttings. Since poor city dwellers have only a limited amount of land for growing plants, one popular hobby of lower-class people is bonsai . A bonsai tree is planted in a small pot and carefully trimmed to keep it from growing too big. If the grower does a good job of tending the tree, in ten years or so he will have a miniature bonsai tree, that looks exactly like a full-sized tree, but is only about a foot tall! Although Edo is a very crowded city, it is quite beautiful. In even the most crowded downtown neighborhoods, you can always see beautiful and well-tended flowers, shrubs and bonsai trees in almost everyone's front yard or doorstep. However, nothing can quite compare to the sight of Somei, with its endless acres of bushes, flowers and trees of every type imaginable.

Somei is the home of one of the most famous gardeners in Edo: Ihei Masatake. Masatake is the son of perhaps the greatest landscape gardener ever -- Ihei Sannojo, and many believe that Masatake is as good at actual gardening as his famous father. The Ihei family first got into the landscaping business back in the early days after Edo was founded. Masatake's grandfather was a simple farmer in the northern suburbs of Edo. Back then, most of the farms in the area grew only rice and vegetables for sale in the city, though a lot of farmers supplemented their income by working part time as gardeners and handymen at the estates of daimyo who lived nearby.

Ihei Masatake's grandfather was named Hotsukimaru. Since he was just a poor farmer, he did not have a last name. In Edo, most of the low-class people do not have a surname, because surnames are a sign of respect, and only fairly important people are allowed to have one. Hotsukimaru got a job working as a gardener and handyman at the estate of the Todo family, who were the rulers of Tsu province, in southern Japan. When Hotsukimaru was still a young man one member of the family, Todo Ihei, brought back some azalea bushes from his home in Tsu province and asked Hotsukimaru to plant them in the garden. The azaleas from southern Japan were more colorful than any Hotsukimaru had ever seen before, so he took cuttings home to his farm and carefully raised the bushes around his house. He soon discovered that if he carefully bred different plants together, the colors of the flowers were slightly different. After carefully tending the azaleas for about ten years, he had bred some beautiful varieties of different azalea, including purple, red, and even white varieties. After several years, when the new bushes had grown big enough, he brought these new varieties back to the Todo family estate and planted some in the gardens. When he saw them, Todo Ihei was amazed! He thought the bushes were so beautiful that he immediately appointed Hotsukimaru the head of all gardeners on the estate, and urged him to continue working to try to develop new varieties.

To show how pleased he was with the new types of azaleas, Todo Ihei asked the Shogun to let Hotsukimaru use a family name. When the Shogun saw the beautiful flowers, he agreed, as long as Hotsukimaru promised to grow some azaleas to plant in the gardens at Edo Castle. Hotsukimaru felt deep gratitude for his master. Once he got a last name, he would no longer be just a poor farmer -- he would be somebody important. To show his gratitude, he asked if he could take the name Ihei as his family name (so he would be named after his master). Todo Ihei agreed, and from that day on, everyone in the area knew of the gardener Ihei Hotsukimaru. Ihei Hotsukimaru's son, Sannojo grew up on the Todo estate, and worked with his father in the gardens. More and more daimyo in the area started planting large and elaborate gardens ,so they could show off to their neighbors. As the demand for gardeners increased, Hotsukimaru and Sannojo set up a family landscaping business. Although many other farmers in the area also began doing landscape work at the daimyos' estates, the Ihei family was the most famous. All the daimyo wanted to have their landscaping done by the Ihei ueki-ya (the Ihei landcaping company).

Sannojo learned all about azaleas from his father, but he could see that there was a strong demand for all sorts of flowering trees and bushes. He started to study every type of flowering tree and bush he could find, and planted many different varieties on his farm in Komagome. By the time Sannojo was thirty, he had developed several new varieties of ume (plum trees) and sakura (cherry trees). Since the new types were more colorful and had more flowers, all the daimyo wanted to buy them for their gardens, so they could show off to their friends. Sannojo became very wealthy selling the new types of cherry trees, plum trees, azaleas and other flowering bushes. When they saw how succesful the Ihei family had become, most of the other farmers in the area stopped growing rice and began raising ornamental plants instead.

By the time Masatake was born, Somei was the center of a huge landscaping business. From the time he was a little boy, every hour of the day he spent doing landscape work for rich daimyos, or trying to breed new varieties of flowers. The demand for trees and shrubs to plant in the elaborate gardens of Edo provides work for hundreds of farmers, and the convenient location of the Somei area -- on the main road leading into the suburbs where all the daimyo live -- makes it the "flower and garden center" of the entire country.

Naturally, every daimyo wants to have the most unique plants in their garden, so they can show off to the other daimyo . Therefore, the Somei uekiya (landscape gardeners of Somei) search far and wide for new varieties of plants. Not only do they try to breed new varieties of popular flowers; they also search in the forests for new species that might make good ornamental plants. They even import seeds and cuttings from countries far, far away. In 1695, Ihei Sannojo published a best-selling book on gardening that gave information on over 2000 different types of plants, including varieties from as far away as Africa and South America. 1


this all (well... the words part) from an extraordinary time-travel website where, in the blink of an eye, you are transported to edo in 1790, and it really feels like you're there. fascinating, well-written, well-researched.

EDO JAPAN: A Virtual Tour

a poem as long as California

PSYCHOANALYSIS: AN ELEGY

What are you thinking about?

I am thinking of an early summer.
I am thinking of wet hills in the rain
Pouring water. Shedding it
Down empty acres of oak and manzanita
Down to the old green brush tangled
in the sun,
Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard.
Or the hot wind coming down
from Santa Ana
Driving the hills crazy,
A fast wind with a bit of dust in it
Bruising everything and making the seed sweet.
Or down in the city where the peach trees
Are awkward as young horses,
And there are kites caught on the wires
Up above the street lamps,
And the storm drains are all choked with dead branches.

What are you thinking?










I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summer
As slow getting started
As 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanza
After a lot of unusual rain
California seems long in the summer.
I would like to write a poem as long as California
And as slow as a summer.
Do you get me, Doctor? It would have to be as slow
As the very tip of summer.
As slow as the summer seems
On a hot day drinking beer outside Riverside
Or standing in the middle of a white-hot road
Between Bakersfield and Hell
Waiting for Santa Claus.

What are you thinking now?








I’m thinking that she is very much like California.
When she is still her dress is like a roadmap. Highways
Traveling up and down her skin
Long empty highways
With the moon chasing jackrabbits across them
On hot summer nights.
I am thinking that her body could be California
And I a rich Eastern tourist
Lost somewhere between Hell and Texas
Looking at a map of a long, wet, dancing California
That I have never seen.
Send me some penny picture-postcards, lady,
Send them.
One of each breast photographed looking
Like curious national monuments,
One of your body sweeping like a three-lane highway
Twenty-seven miles from a night’s lodging
In the world’s oldest hotel.

What are you thinking?










I am thinking of how many times this poem
Will be repeated.
How many summers
Will torture California
Until the damned maps burn
Until the mad cartographer
Falls to the ground and possesses
The sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding.

What are you thinking now?

I am thinking that a poem could go on forever.

Jack Spicer



Forthcoming from The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer
from Wesleyan University Press.

california dreaming

as we've seen, the principles of design learned from the japa- nese prints were used heavily in travel post- ers. the train was new, as was the middle class, a group with the ability to do some traveling.

one geographical area that pushed it to the limit was california. in their competition with florida* for tourist dol- lars, and for their need to populate the state, they created 'california is calling you,' an image


of an arena so golden, so spiritually uplifting, and with so many possibilities for joy that it was an irresistible dream for many.

some of those dreamers were masters of the fine arts who were drawn to california's promise (some from as far away as germany): william wendt, maurice braun, frank morley fletcher, and more. together, many of them formed the movement called the 'california impressionists.'

many felt that their work often had a very similar feel to the promotional artwork, which only demonstrates the level of beauty in the promotional materials, and points to the stars in the eyes of those who responded when california beckoned.

CALIFORNIA HERE I COME
(Al Jolson / Bud De Sylva / Joseph Meyer)

1ST VERSE
When the wintry winds are blowing and the snow is starting in to fall,
then my eyes turn west-ward, knowing that's the place I love the best of all.
California , I've been blue, since I've been away from you.
I can't wait 'til I get going.
Even now I'm starting in to call, Oh...

REFRAIN
California, here I come right back where I started from.
Where Bowers of flowers bloom in the spring.
Each morning at dawning, birdies sing an' everything.
A sunkist miss said, "Don't be late" that's why I can hardly wait.
Open up that Golden Gate,
California here I come.

2ND VERSE
Any one who likes to wander ought to keep this saying in his mind,
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder" of the good old place you leave behind.
When you've hit the train awhile, seems you rarely see a smile;
that's why I must fly out yonder, where a frown is mighty hard to find! Oh....

REFRAIN
California, here I come right back where I started from.
Where Bowers of flowers bloom in the spring.
Each morning at dawning, birdies sing an' everything.
A sunkist miss said, "Don't be late" that's why I can hardly wait.
Open up that Golden Gate.
California here I come.

(Recorded by : John Arpin; Gordon Beck; Jethro Burns; Joe Bushkin;
Freddy Cannon; Eddie Cantor; Judy Carmichael; Ray Charles;
Eddie Condon; J. Lawrence Cook; James Dapogny;
Cliff "Ukelele Ike" Edwards; Bill Evans; Firehouse Five Plus Two;
Jimmy Giuffre; Benny Goodman; Lionel Hampton; Ted Heath;
Duke Heitger; Art Hodes; Claude Hopkins & His Orch.; Betty Johnson;
Al Jolson; Martin Litton; Louis Mazetier; Bob McHugh Trio;
Paris Washboard; Ed Polcer & His All Stars; Mel Powell;
Pee Wee Russell; Slappin' Mammys; Hal Smith; Ralph Sutton;
Fats Waller; Jackie Wilson.) 1

some wonderful source books:

and many more.





* we'll get to florida later

inheriting the wind, and the water...

hiroshige was a fireman. his family was too poor for him to try to make it on his own as an artist.


but he had had the artist's spirit since he was a child, and spent many years working, travelling, and being inspired by hokusai, slightly his predecessor.

the patience paid off because when he made it big, he made it with images from his travels; drawn from life, they were of great interest to a populace that was developing into a 'middle class,' one that travelled itself.

as we have discussed, while his work still appears to us as purely japanese, western artistic characteristics (shadows, reflections, and perspective) had begun to make an appearance in his work, along with great gradations of color--a result of

both his acquaintance with western art, and his involvement with a printing industry that was improving rapidly.

when we see the work of the yoshidas, of kawase hasui, of fletcher, phillips, riviere or any of the rest of the direct descendants of hiroshige's experimentation we have mentioned here, we can remember hiroshige's death poem:

i don't want to set
the world on fire.
i just want to start
a flame in your heart.1

(oh please please forgive me. the real one is here.)

meadowsweet

frank morley-fletcher was born in england but moved to california and created some of the most important woodblock prints of early california. he was one of bjo nordfeldt's most important teachers of the woodblock process.

morley-fletcher's 1916 instructional manual, 'woodblock printing by the japanese method,' is entirely online here.

the whole woodblock.com is jam-packed with woodblock printing information. find also another manual on this by hiroshi yoshida.