AROUND the country, the cherry blossom will soon reappear. It is a bloom that has a special place in the human heart. It has inspired poetry, such as AE Housman’s evocative lines: “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now/ Is hung with blooms along the bough,/ And stands about the woodland ride/ Wearing white for Eastertide.” Cherry blossoms are indigenous to many Asian countries, Japan especially having a wide variety. There they are an abiding metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life because they have such a delicate flower and bloom for a short time.
They can also signal good fortune, are an emblem of love and have been used widely in Japanese art and on everyday items such as kimonos, stationery and dishware.
Both cherry blossoms and leaves are edible and are used as food ingredients in Japan. The blossoms can be pickled in salt and umezu(plum vinegar) and used in various dishes. There is a drink called sakurayu, which consists of salt-pickled cherry blossoms in hot water, which is drunk at festive occasions instead of green tea.
However, there was a sinister side to the cherry blossom in Japan as well. In expanding their empire from the 1920s onwards, the Japanese often planted cherry-blossom trees as a way of "claiming occupied territory as Japanese space" as Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney observed in Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms and Nationalisms. During the second World War, the bloom was used to arouse nationalism and militarism among the Japanese people.
Kamikaze pilots painted cherry blossoms on the sides of their planes before setting off on their deadly missions and some even took branches of the trees with them in their planes. In this way, falling cherry-blossom petals came to symbolise the sacrifice of the young men’s lives on behalf of their god-emperor.
If the cherry blossom does not have the rich symbolism in other countries that it has in Japan, fortunately it does not have the same sinister associations either and it is celebrated in many places with the holding of spring festivals.
In Canada, Vancouver is famous for its thousands of cherry-blossom trees lining streets and filling parks, and the city holds an annual Cherry Blossom Festival.
Toronto’s High Park has many Somei-Yoshino cherry-blossom trees (the earliest species to bloom and which feature fluffy white flowers), given to the city by Japan in 1959. Colour and beauty are added to many university campuses in Toronto thanks to the numerous cherry-blossom trees donated by the Japanese over the years.
In 1912, Japan gave the United States 3,020 cherry-blossom trees to mark the growing friendship between the two countries. Some of the trees were planted in Sakura Park in Manhattan and many more line the shore of the Tidal Basin in Washington DC. (In 1965, there was a renewal of the gift in the form of 3,800 additional trees.)
The trees reach full bloom in early spring, when they prove a major tourist attraction and the occasion of Washington DC’s annual National Cherry Blossom Festival. The two-week festival celebrates the return of spring and commemorates the Japanese gift of 1912.
Many other US cities have notable plantations of cherry-blossom trees. Philadelphia has more than 2,000 flowering Japanese trees, half of which were a gift from the Japanese government in 1926 in honour of the 150th anniversary of American independence. The other half was planted by the Japan-America Society of Greater Philadelphia between 1998 and 2007. The city holds the annual Subaru Cherry Blossom Festival of Greater Philadelphia to celebrate the trees in full bloom.
As well as Washington and Philadelphia, other US cities have annual cherry-blossom festivals. One of the most impressive is the International Cherry Blossom Festival held in Macon, Georgia. The city calls itself the “Cherry Blossom Capital of the World” and its festival features a stunning 300,000 trees.
New York City’s Brooklyn Botanic Garden is also the site of a well-attended festival each year.
Gyeongbok Palace (which translates as the “Palace Greatly Blessed by Heaven”) in Seoul in South Korea was mostly destroyed by the Japanese in the early 20th century and is being slowly restored. One of a number of cherry-blossom festivals across the Korean peninsula is held in the magnificent setting of the palace every year.
So the joy of the return of spring is expressed in many cherry-blossom festivals internationally. The first stanza of AE Housman’s beautiful poem was cited above. In the second he calculates, according to the biblical claim that a lifespan is “threescore years and 10” that he has only 50 more years left to enjoy gazing on the enchanting cherry blossom in the spring.
That number of years, he concludes, is not nearly sufficient time. “And since to look at things in bloom/ Fifty springs are little room,/ About the woodlands I will go/ To see the cherry hung with snow.” At your next opportunity, take a trip to the woods to enjoy the beauty and delicacy of the cherry blossom. As another poet exhorted: “Look your last on all things lovely,/ Every hour. Let no night/ Seal thy sense in deathly slumber/ Till to delight/ Thou has paid thy utmost blessing.”