For more than a decade, I longed to see the fabled blooming of cherry trees in Japan. But each time I arrived I would be told that I had come too late. The blossoms had fallen from their branches and all that greeted my sight were pink and white petals now sodden with rain and caked with soil.
However this year, my luck changed, because it seemed the cherry blossoms waited for me. Although predicted to bloom on March 31 by sakura experts, for some reason the trees held on and obliged me on April 7, which happened to be the date of my arrival in Japan. Knowing my long-time obsession with cherry blossoms, my son, whom I was visiting at his post as PAL station manager in Narita, wasted no time arranging for us to make a trip to Ueno Park in the outskirts of Tokyo where more than a thousand cherry trees were bursting into bloom.
We took a Skyliner train from Narita to Ueno and walked a short distance to Ueno Park. And let me tell you, those trees, seemingly transformed into clouds of puffy white, an endless ethereal canopy arching above our heads, were an intoxicating sight. All this surfeit of beauty was not wasted on the Japanese who turned out en masse towing babies and older progeny together with picnic baskets stacked with food and wine, to sit or lie down on tarpaulin covered grass and gaze at the beloved cherry trees. Many of them looked like they were camping out for the night, when there would be songfests and exhibitions and much pouring of wine.
As morning deepened into late afternoon, the lanes of the park became congested much like our North Cemetery on All Saints’ Day. Everybody, but everybody in town was out cherry blossom watching and seeking to preserve the moment through the modern technology of digital cameras and cell phones. There they were: Senior citizens hobbling along with canes or supported by younger companions, couples pushing babies in strollers, toddlers looking like Japanese dolls and lovey-dovey pairs taking in the amazing sight.
Not too cognizant of Japanese culture and tradition we might ask why is there a cherry blossom mania among the Japanese? Why celebrate the annual blooming of cherry trees like a virtual national holiday?
The tradition of cherry blossom viewing goes back to more than a thousand years. It was adopted by the samurai, those warriors of old, immortalized in literature and film, who regarded the sakura as symbol and inspiration. The samurai knew they would die young, by their own hands or by the hands of others, so they strove to live a splendorous life and die a glorious death, just like the cherry blossoms which fall off at the peak of their beauty. Apart from the samurai, the Japanese are inherently nature lovers, and it is not hard to see why they would revere such overwhelming beauty as that which made us giddy in Ueno Park.
Cherry blossoms are a favorite subject in Japanese poetry, in particular the haiku, those three-line poems which, for all their brevity, are designed to evoke a world of meaning. Again, the symbolic connection of the idea of brevity between the short-lived flowers and the haiku form. The classic haiku poet Basho, among Japan’s most renowned poets, wrote reams of poetry dwelling on the transcendence of cherry blossoms.
Perhaps the modern reason why the Japanese celebrate the blooming of cherry trees need not be so profound. It’s just that Japan’s winters are harsh, even cruel, and the Japanese are only too happy to experience the advent of spring. Cherry trees, which shed all their leaves in winter, turning into skeletons with bare branches, begin to unfold their blossoms at the earliest hint of spring. Some internal clock tells them when this moment will begin, and experts are tasked to predict the exact date when this will happen. Sometimes they turn out to be off the mark by several days, like what happened (fortuitously for me) this year. Not all cherry blossoms are white; others come in various shades of pink. The latter bloom later than the white and last longer on the branches.
The transitory nature of cherry blossoms evokes sadness, as it reminds us of the impermanence of human life. But they are also symbols of hope because no matter what happens there is the certainty that they will bloom again without fail when winter is over, when life is renewed in spring.
Toward afternoon when we were preparing to go back to our hotel, a gentle wind wafted over Ueno Park, and we beheld another aspect of cherry blossom viewing. Clouds of white petals rained down like a shower of snow and fell on our faces and got tangled in our hair. We tried to catch the fleeting moment on film but the petals were too fragile, too delicate to be caught by the camera. We walked back to the train station and thanked the flower devas of those ancient trees for allowing us a glimpse of the meaning and mystique of cherry blossoms.