"In a Japanese Garden"
By Lafcadio Hearn

"No effort to create an impossible or pure ideal landscape is made in the Japanese Garden.  Its artistic purpose is to copy faithfully the veritable landscape, and to convey the real impression that a real landscape communicates.  It is therefore at once a picture and a poem; perhaps even more a poem than a picture.  For as nature's scenery, in its varying aspects, affects us with sensations of joy or solemnity, of grimness or of sweetness, of force or of peace, so must the true reflection of it in the labor of the landscape gardener create not merely an impression of beauty, but a mood in the soul."

Excerpted from:
The Atlantic Monthly
Volume 70, Issue 417
July 1892

Japan Fest 2005

This year's celebration of All Things Japanese will take place at the New Orleans Museum of Art on Sunday, May 15th.  Details are available on the Japanese Consulate's website.