Rosa Gallica

Wild Roses Native to Japan

Introduced in France by Takashima

François Joyaux

Some decades ago, or we may say some years ago, the name of Tokuzo Takashima, a botanist and artist, was hardly known to anybody, even in Japan. How ever, as interest rose in the artistic movement called "Art Nouveau", or more precisely in the glass and ceramic artist Emile Gallé, one of Takashima's friends in France, Takashima's name gradually rose from obscurity, in France as well as in Japan, at least among specialists in the history of art. Further, the book entitied Hokkai by Nobuko Takagi, published in Japan in 2004, made his name known more widely to the public in Japan.

On the other hand, still little is known about the effort which Takashima devoted to make the wild roses of his own country known to people in France. We would like to take this up as the subject of this article.

The Early Introduction into Europe of Wild Roses Native to Japan

When Takashima arrived in France in 1885, some wild roses native to Japan were already quite well known in France as well as in the rest of Europe.

Rosa rugosa had been described exactly a century before by a Swedish botanist C. P. Thunberg (1743-1828) in his Flora japonica published in Leipzig (Germany) in 1784. Rose breeders had already used it for obtaining new varieties, sometimes giving them names suggestive of things Japanese. For example. in 1879, Regel, in Russia, had raised a rugosa variety and named it 'Taïcoun' (syn. 'Kaiserin des Nordens'). 'Taïcoun" is a word of Chinese origin, but Europeans in those days used this word to describe "Shogun" in Japan. The first Rugosa hybrid raised in France was `Souvenir de Yeddo' (1874) bv Morlet, a rose still grown today. However, it was in the 1880s, precisely when, Takashima was in France, that Rugosa hybrid varieties greatly increased in number.

Similarly, Rosa muitiflora had also been described by Thunberg in his Flora Japonica in 1784. Then other botanists named it Rosa polyantha in 1844, and this proved to be the origin of serious confusion. Certain varieties of Rosa multiflora had arrived in Europe by way of China at the beginning of the  nineteenth century, though it was as late as 1860-62 that this species came Japan to France.

The following is one of the versions of the Rosa multiflora introduction story. In those days, a French mining engineer named Coignet was in Japan, employed by the Edo government. The work in his charge was the modernization of silver mine development in Ikuno, Hyogo Prefecture, but personally, he was also highly interested in botany. He collected many navel plants and sent them to France, for example, a climbing vine, the one with the very name "Vigne de Coignet" or Vitis coignetiae. Do not forget that this was before the Meiji era, and that Europeans collecting plants in Japan might have caused some delicate problems. One of the items he sent in 1862 was addressed to his brother-in-law, Jean Sisley, running a rose business in Lyon. The item was some seeds of a type of Rosa multiflora. Sisley gave the seeds to one of his friends, the rose breeder Guillot fils, who sewed them, and many years later, finally raised a rose of which he was very fond. This rose was `Pâquerette', the first polyantha rose. It was put on sale in 1875, and is still grown today. This rose caused a great surprise among those engaged in the rose business, since from a large climber giving single flowers, an extremely small rose buste giving double flowers was raised.

In the same way, Rosa luciae came to be known in Europe thanks to a French physician Dr. Savatier. He was the doctor for a group of French engineers working on the construction of the naval arsenal in Yokosuka, ça 30km south of Yokohama. He was also an enthusiastic botanist. Between 1867 and 1878 he collected in Japan more than 15,000 plants of about 1,800 différent kinds. All those items were sent to the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, and are still preserved there. Two botanists described those plants. Among them there was a rose which, in 1871, was named Rosa luciae in honor of Dr. Savatier's wife Lucie.
A rose very similar to Rosa luciae was discovered in Japan by another botanist in the same period. The discoverer was a lawyer and botanist from Germany, Dr. M. E. Wichura (1818-1866), who, in 1860 — 61, sent its seeds to botanical gardens in Munich and in Brussels. It was a Belgian botanist François Crépie (1830 - 1903) who described it and named it Rosa wichuraiana in honor of Dr. Wichura. (NB: It should have been Rosa wichurana.) This was in 1886, one year alter Takashima arrived in France. We will return to this topic later.
However, according to Professor Hideaki Ohba, University of Tokyo, the author of the section Genus Rosa in the Flora of Japan, the specimen on which Crépin based his description of Rosa wichuraiana, was in fact Rosa luciae! This was the beginning confusion, in the West, concerning these botanical roses from Japan.

Takashima in France

Thus, around 1885, in France and also more widely in Europe, many wild roses native to Japan were already known, but those roses were also found in other East Asian countries such as China, Korea, and Far East Russia.

In Japan, Tokuzo Takashima (1850 - 1931), who latex came to be known also by his artist's appellation Hokkai Takashima and Hokukai Takashima, was learning French with Coignet while working with him in the silver mines in Ikuno. He was little interested in his work, and grabbed his chance to be sent to France by the Japanese government to study at the forestry school in Nancy. He stayed in this city for three years, from April 1885 to March 1888. However, he was also deeply attracted by plants and botany - his father was a doctor, a specialist in medicinal herbs - and also by art, particularly painting. Coignet also highly appreciated Takashima's paintings.
Therefore, his stay in Nancy was going to be a special occasion for a truly happy encounter between botany and art.

In those days, Nancy was a city of particular distinction, because a number of artists lived there in pursuit of what is known in Europe as the "Art Nouveau" movement. Within this "Art Nouveau", one of the remarkable trends was what is called the "japonisme", an interest in imitating Japanese art. In Nancy, one of the distinguished artists representing this artistic movement was Emile Gallé (1846 - 1904), who is very popular today, especially in Japan, where many museums possess some of his glassworks.

Very naturally, Takashima got on friendly terms with artists in this group which in France is named the "Ecole de Nancy". There he gained popularity quite rapidly. In the very year he arrived there, the journal Nancy Artiste started to publish some of his paintings. In 1887, the sculptor E. Bussière (1863 - 1913) made a sculpture of Takashima in the full round; the original plaster figure can be seen in the Museum of l'Ecole de Nancy today. In the saure year, E. Auguin, a mining engineer, made a sketch of his portrait, which is in the art museum in the city of Shimonoseki, Japan. Was Auguin in Japan? He wrote in La Lorraine Artiste (18 March, 1888), "we saw the child (Takashima) by the side of his father, on his botanic, geologic and geographic excursions". (see p.211)

His relationship with Emile Gallé seems to have been a particularly close and friendly one. The latter often talked about "horticulture Japanese style", a sort of "horticultural Japonism". He particularly loved roses. He wrote many articles on this subject, in the Bulletin de la Société d'Horticulture de Nancy, articles which were reprinted in his Ecrits pour l'Art published in Paris in 1908 alter his death. We notice the very roses of Japanese origin which Emile Gallé was growing in his garden in Nancy in preference to ail others. Here is the short list of those roses:

Rosa acicularis Lidl. Hokkaido, Honshu, Siberia, Kamchatka, Sakhalin, Korea, N. America (von Siebold, October 1883)
Rosa X iwara Sieb. Hokkaido, Honshu (von Siebold, October 1883)
Rosa multiflora Thunb. Hokkaido, Honshu (von Siebold, October 1883)
Rosa multiflora Thunb. 'platyphylla' (von Siebold, October 1883)
Rosa rugosa Thunb. Hokkaido, Honshu; E.Asia, Kuriles, Sakhalin Kamchatka (von Siebold, 1883)
Rosa rugosa Thunb. 'rubra' (von Siebold, October 1883)

It is also clear from this inventory that each rose was purchased for one franc!

Also, Emile Gallé must have been truly interested when Takashima presented him with a book he had brought from Japan: Nippon Shokubutsushi (or Nomenclature ofJapanese Plants) compiled by J. Matsumura and R Yatabe, professons of botany in the University of Tokyo and published in Tokyo in 1884. We find in it Rosa iwara (No. 1918), Rosa multiflora Thunb. and Rosa multiflora Thunb. 'platyphylla (No. 1922), and Rosa rugosa Thunb. (No. 1923). At present, this book is preserved in the Library of the Horticultural Society in Nancy with the following comment:

"Possessed by Mr. Tokouso Takasima, from Tokyo, a student at the Forestry School in Nancy 1886 — 88, and presented by him to his friend Emile Gallé, from Nancy"

Takashima's Roses

Soon after he started his stay in France, Takashima intended to make the wild roses in his own country known to French people. In fact, he arrived in Nancy in April 1885, and already in February 1886, the Journal des Roses, an important French magazine in those days specializing in roses, gave the following small announcement:

"Roses from Japan. Under this title, the Journal des Roses is due to publish in the near future, the descriptions and pictures of différent varieties of roses known in Japan, and designated by the name Ibara (wild roses) in that country. We owe this to the kindness of Mr. Jean Sisley, a dedicated supporter and highly-informed collaborator of the journal, who ardently hopes to impart his information with us. The five varieties we are going to reproduce in the coming issues were described, and drawn on location, by a Japanese botanist Mr. F Fakashima".

"Mr. F. Fakashima" was none other than Takashima.

So it was Jean Sisley, rose nurseryman in Lyon, and Coignet's brother-in-law, who, since he knew Takashima, served as an intermediator with the Journal des Roses. Besides, Sisley, who also called himself Sisley-Vandael, had another reason for having interest in painting; he was in fact the nephew of Jean-François Vandael (1764 —1840), a great painter of flowers in the period of the Empress Joséphine.

Eventually, as was announced, Takashima published his pictures of roses in the Journal des Roses with some botanical comments, from May 1886 to March 1888, the month he left Nancy. To tell the truth, Rosa multiflora has produced so many différent forms that it is pretty difficult to determine which of them he wanted to represent in his pictures. Besides, it is known that some botanical roses from Japan such as Rosa wichuraiana and Rosa luciae are very close to Rosa multiflora, and this further adds to the confusion. Further, Takashima calls many of those roses No-Ibara indiscriminately, which proves that in his mind they are different forms of the same wild species. Finally, let us emphasize that those pictures were made in Japan, not in France, in other words before 1885, a period when Takashima probably did not have so much accurate knowledge of botany.

Depending on différent specialists of wild roses in Japan, the views considerably differ as to the species which Takashima actually represented. Miss Yuki Mikanagi, a specialist in this field, kindly provided her opinion for us. It is given below:
No. 1: Rosa multiflora type (No-Ibara)
No. 2: (Most likely) Rosa luciae (R. wichuraiaua, Teriha No-Ibara)
It is surprising that Takashima writes that this rose has less foliage than Rosa multiflora. Besides, the number of leaflets and the form of leaves look différent from those of Rosa luciae.
No. 3: Rosa onoei var. oligantha (Rosa luciae) (Azuma Ibara, aka 0-Fuji-Ibara)
No. 4: Might be Rosa nipponensis (Takane-Bara)
However, flowers, leaves, and prickles look différent from those of Rosa nipponensis.
No.5: Rosa multiflora `Platyphylla' or in English `Seven Sisters Rose'
[Notice that in the West, this rose is sometimes recognized according to this very description by Takashima: Rosa multiflora 'Platyphylla' (Takeshima). The author]
A-- Rosa laevigata (Naniwa lbara)
In fact, this rose originates in China, but has been naturalized in Japan since very old days, particularly in the western areas of the country, familiar to Takashima. He might have considered it as a rose native to Japan.
B: R. rugosa (Hama-nase)
Alter ail, what have these pictures and descriptions given us?

For the artists in Nancy, they saw once again an example of striking originality of perspective taken by Japanese painters. In the West, no one had so far represented roses from such angles or placed them in such positions on the page. Here they saw a happy marnage of Botany (even if Takashima's pictures were not painted with absolute precision in this respect) and art Japanese style. Gallé and the other artists were sensitive enough to realize this.

As for the rosarians, that is, the readers of the Journal des Roses, they discov ered a great diversity of the flora in Japan. They had already started to work on some of this material, but now the movement was further expanded. So far they had tried their hand mostly on Multifloras and Polyanthas. Just when Takashima published his pictures of roses, in 1886 –1888, Monet, who raised "Souvenir de Yeddo" in 1874, put on the market a new variety of Rugosa, which he called, sensitive to the popularity of things Japanese, "Mikado" (1888).

Further, the Journal des Roses itself seems to have been sensitive to the manner in which Takashima represented roses. It is true that in the same year when Takashima arrived in France, Bernaix, a rose breeder in Lyon, put on the market a new variety of Multiflora, which he named –unfortunately—`Polyantha Grandïflora'. Soon afterward, the Journal des Roses, in its March 1887 issue (though many pictures by Takashima had already been published in 1886), gave a "chromolithograph" of this rose in perfectly Japanese style, at least for a Frenchman.

Probably we should not exaggerate the influence of Takashima either on art Japanese style or on horticulture Japanese style in France. The trend had started there pretty long before his arrivai. However, it is true that Takashima found hîmself in a city, in an environment, and at a period, ail of which were very exceptional. Nancy was one of the capitals of Art Nouveau; many artists of the Nancy School, especially Emile Gallé, were strongly attracted to horticulture and the pictorial representation of plants; and finally in 1886 – 88, there was a full wave of popularity of things Japanese. Ail these farts helped to make Takashima and his horticultural and artistic activity in Nancy look particularly outstanding. It is to be emphasized, for example, that as soon as he arrived in Nancy, he visited the office of the local horticultural society and entered his paintings at the exhibition in 1886. A little later, the French government asked him to supply models for the porcelain workers in Limoges, and for this, he was decorated with an award for distinguished service in education.

In addition, it should be reminded that the years 1880 and thereafter are when rosarians started to raise an increased number of new varieties derived from botanical roses originating in Japan. We are particularly reminded of Polyanthas such as `Gloire des Polyantha' (Guillot fils, 1887), `Marie Pavié' (Alégatière, 1888), `Georges Pernet' (Pernet Ducher, 1888), etc. But similarly there are Rugosa hybrids such as `Madame Georges Bruant' (Bruant, 1887), `Monsieur Hélye (Monet fils, 1889), `Madame Charles Frédéric Worth'(Widow Schwartz, 1889), etc, then later, Wichuraiana hybrids, particularly those raised by Barbier in Orléans. This chronological coincidence between "art Japanese style" and "horticulture Japanese style", which applies also to plants other than roses (irises, for ex-ample), proves clearly that they are two inter-connected trends. This is why the relation between the artistic and botanic activities of Takashima in France and the breeding of new varieties with wild roses native to Japan is a matter of real interest, which wonderfully illustrates the constant ties existing between the history of art and the history of horticulture.