Japan - True Stories

Sample Chapter: When the Cherries Bloom

by Donald W. George

How a glorious annual sight became a treasured national rite.

The singular significance of cherry blossoms in Japanese culture is a phenomenon even the casual student of Japan is likely to be familiar with. It was one of the few things I knew about Japan when I went to live there on a two-year teaching fellowship twenty years ago.

Of course, this knowledge was limited to what books could teach: that cherry blossoms so suited the Japanese sensibility that they had long ago become an unofficial symbol of the country (the official symbol is the chrysanthemum), and the word for flower, hana, had become synonymous with the cherry blossom itself; that cherry-blossom-viewing parties, or ohanami, had been initiated by the aristocracy in the 8th and 9th centuries and had evolved through succeeding centuries into extravagant ritualized excursions; that these parties had been whole-heartedly adopted and popularized by commoners in the 16th century, and were still so important that the country virtually shut down for the precious few weeks in April when the blossoms bloom; and that the flowers are celebrated both for their beauty and for their brevity, which have come to symbolize, for the Japanese, the haunting and glorious impermanence of life.

This knowledge blossomed into resonant reality my first spring in Japan. I had been living in Tokyo for about half a year when, in early March, anticipations of and predictions about the opening of the buds began. By the end of the month these had built to a crescendo, and it seemed that virtually every conversation somehow ended in speculation about the flowers.

When the first buds bloomed in the south, the media’s cherry blossom bonanza began. Television newscasters and newspaper reporters tracked the pink- and-white trail as it slowly spread along the length of Kyushu and Shikoku, then moved through southern Honshu toward Kyoto and Tokyo.

At first, it was hard to understand what all the fuss was about. Then one morning, virtually the entire campus where I was living and teaching—a place famed in Tokyo for its cherry trees—had overnight exploded into a fragile, fleecy shower of impossibly delicate white-and-pink blossoms. It was magnificent, it was breathtaking—exquisitely ethereal and sensual at the same time.

And it was as if all of Tokyo had blossomed at the same moment: wherever I went, the incomparable flowers were, too—sometimes a single tree in solitary splendor by the bank of a river, sometimes a festive procession along a downtown street, and sometimes, on the grounds of a park, row upon row creating the effect of a fluffy pink cloud.

What first struck me about the blossoms was their elusively sexual character. At one point that youthful spring I even exulted into my journal: “On some of these bleached-blue days, when the cherry blossoms stand out so brave and submissive against the sky, I want to leap into the branches of the trees and never come down. Incomparably fluid and feminine, they somehow embody all that is sensitive and stoic, submissive and dominant, giving without ever being given, all that is lasting and eminently perishable in the Japanese woman.”

This sexual nature still strikes me each spring, but there is much more to their allure than that. I was walking through Ueno Park, one of Tokyo’s largest parks and famous throughout Japan for the beauty and breadth of its cherry blossoms. It was the first Sunday after the buds had opened, and raucous sounds of singing and laughter carried on the air. In the area with the most spectacular concentration of cherry trees, the lawns were blanketed with people sitting on reed mats and colorful quilts, their shoes neatly laid in rows beside them. Arrayed on their spreads were multilayered lacquer containers full of food—sushi, rice balls, pickled vegetables, boiled eggs wrapped in tempura-fried fish paste, salads, fried chicken—and big bottles of beer and sake. There were businessmen and blue-collar workers, house-wives and fashion models—all of Tokyo, it seemed—sitting side by side, feasting and drinking, breaking into song and dance, guffawing and shouting and swapping tales.

Such public celebrations, such freeing of pent-up emotions, are extraordinarily rare in Japan. This is one of the invaluable functions of the cherry blossoms as well: once a year, their opening makes it permissible for the Japanese people to bloom, too, to sing and dance and in general abandon themselves for a day under the benevolent, all-forgiving branches.

Even more amazing was the fact that one of the groups invited me to join them. I demurred, but they insisted, and I soon found myself sitting cross-legged on a soft mat, surrounded by a Japanese family who would probably never, under any other circumstances, invite a foreigner into such intimate contact. They bade me feast on sushi and sake, and as the liquid warmed through me and the blossoms whispered in the breeze—a few frail petals already drifting around us like soft and softly scented snowflakes—I joined their jokes and songs, even serenading the park with a warbly version of “Yesterday” before the afternoon was over.

In ensuing years I have seen this scene repeated throughout Japan, on castle grounds and in city parks, along high mountain trails and by the glittering sea. It is one of the glorious rituals that unifies and enriches Japanese life, and no matter where you may be in April, if the cherry blossoms bloom, you will see such rituals, too. It may be a grand reenactment of an early ohanami, with aristocrats in gorgeous kimono proceeding in pomp and splendor; or a company outing, where the president performs a snaky, sake-inspired dance for his employees; or a simple family gathering where children wheel and squeal and parents sup and sip and sigh at the pink-petaled sky. Whatever version of the cherry-blossom-viewing party you see, you will be witnessing one of the deepest and best-loved rites of Japanese life.

It is a celebration whose sense and significance are at once social and spiritual, a glorious affirmation of the present in the effusive, efflorescent beauty—at once individual and collective—of the blossoms, and a transcendent renewal in the tangible demonstration that the universe is proceeding as it should, and once again blessing the world with these offerings of evanescence and eternity.

Before becoming Lonely Planet’s global travel editor, Don George was travel editor at the San Francisco Examiner for nine years and then founded Salon.com’s travel site, Wanderlust. He is the editor of The Kindness of Strangers, A House Somewhere, and the author of Lonely Planet’s Travel Writing.

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