The grounds about the palaces in Tōkyō are most beautifully laid out and cultivated, but not in that artificial manner, with regular flower beds and trees at certain equal distances, which is seen so often in the highly cultivated grounds of the rich in this country. The landscape gardening of Japan keeps unchanged the wildness and beauty of nature, and imitates it closely. The famous flowers, however, are, in the imperial gardens, changed by art and cultivated to their highest perfection, blooming each season for the enjoyment of the members of the court. Especially is attention given to the cultivation of the imperial flower of Japan, the chrysanthemum; and some day in November, when this flower is in its perfection, the gates of the Akasaka palace are thrown open to invited guests, who are received in person by the Emperor and Empress. Here the rarest species of this favorite flower, and the oddest colors and shapes, the results of much care and cultivation, are exhibited in spacious beds, shaded by temporary roofs of bamboo twigs and decorated with the imperial flags. This is the great chrysanthemum party of the Emperor, and another of similar character is given in the spring under the flower-laden boughs of the cherry trees. In these various ways the Empress shows herself to her people,--a gracious and lovely figure, though distant, as she needs must be, from common, every-day life. Only by glimpses do the people know her, but those glimpses reveal enough to excite the warmest admiration, the most tender love. Childless herself, destined to see a child not her own, although her husband's, heir to the throne, the Empress devotes her lonely and not too happy life to the actual, personal study of the wants of daughters of her people, and side by side with Jingo,[32] the majestic but shadowy Empress of the past, should be enshrined in the hearts of the women of Japan the memory of Haru Ko, the leader of her countrywomen into that freer and happier life that is opening to them. [32] Jingo Kōgō, like many of the heroic, half mythical figures of other nations, has suffered somewhat under the assaults of the modern historical criticism. Many of the best Japanese historians deny that she conquered Corea; some go so far as to doubt whether she had right to the title of Empress; all are sure that much of romance has gathered about the figure of this brave woman; but to the mass of the Japanese to-day, she is still an actual historic reality, and she represents to them in feminine form the Spirit of Japan. Whether she conquered Corea or no, she remains the prominent female figure upon the border line where the old barbaric life merges into the newer civilization, just as the present Empress, Haru Ko, stands upon the border line between the Eastern and the Western modes of thought and life.