Hanami (花見) is the Japanese traditional custom of enjoying the beauty of flowers, "flower" in this case almost always meaning cherry blossoms or plum blossoms (梅 ume). From the end of March to early May, sakura bloom all over Japan, and around the first of February on the island of Okinawa. This is hanami and sakura at Himeji Castle.
The blossom forecast (桜前線, sakurazensen, literally cherry blossom front) is announced each year by the weather bureau, and is watched carefully by those planning hanami as the blossoms only last a week or two. In modern-day Japan, hanami mostly consists of having an outdoor party beneath the sakura during daytime or at night. Hanami at night is called yozakura (夜桜, literally night sakura). In many places such as Ueno Park temporary paper lanterns are hung for the purpose of yozakura. On the island of Okinawa, decorative electric lanterns are hung in the trees for evening enjoyment, such as on the trees ascending Mt. Yae, near Motobu Town, or at Nakajin Castle.
The History of Hanami
The practice of hanami is many centuries old. The custom is said to have started during the Nara Period (710–794) when it was ume blossoms that people admired in the beginning. But by the Heian Period (794–1185), sakura came to attract more attention and hanami was synonymous with sakura. From then on, in tanka and haiku, "flowers" meant "sakura." Hanami was first used as a term analogous to cherry blossom viewing in the Heian era novel Tale of Genji (Ukiyo-e painting from Tale of Genji, 花宴 Hana no En, "Under the Cherry Blossoms", by artist Kunisada (1852)).
Sakura originally was used to divine that year's harvest as well as announce the rice-planting season. People believed in kami inside the trees and made offerings. Afterwards, they partook of the offering with sake. Emperor Saga of the Heian Period adopted this practice, and held flower-viewing parties with sake and feasts underneath the blossoming boughs of sakura trees in the Imperial Court in Kyoto. Poems would be written praising the delicate flowers, which were seen as a metaphor for life itself, luminous and beautiful yet fleeting and ephemeral. This was said to be the origin of hanami in Japan.
The custom was originally limited to the elite of the Imperial Court, but soon spread to samurai society and, by the Edo period, to the common people as well. Tokugawa Yoshimune planted areas of cherry blossom trees to encourage this. Under the sakura trees, people had lunch and drank sake in cheerful feasts. Today, the Japanese people continue the tradition of hanami, gathering in great numbers wherever the flowering trees are found. Thousands of people fill the parks to hold feasts under the flowering trees, and sometimes these parties go on until late at night.
In more than half of Japan, the cherry blossoming period coincides with the beginning of the school and fiscal years, and so welcoming parties are often opened with hanami. The Japanese people continue the tradition of hanami by taking part in the processional walks through the parks. This is a form of retreat for contemplating and renewing their spirits. The teasing proverb dumplings rather than flowers (花より団子, hana yori dango) hints at the real priorities for most cherry blossom viewers, meaning that people are more interested in the food and drinks accompanying a hanami party than actually viewing the flowers themselves.
Dead bodies are buried under the cherry trees! is a popular saying about hanami, after the opening sentence of the 1925 short story "Under the Cherry Trees" by Motojirō Kajii.
Poems were written praising the delicate flowers, which were seen as a metaphor for life itself; beautiful, but lasting for a very short time. This "temporary" view of life is very popular in Japanese culture and is usually considered as an admirable form of existence; for example, in the samurai's principle of life ending when it's still beautiful and strong, instead of slowly getting old and weak. The Heian era poets used to write poems about how much easier things would be in spring without the sakura blossoms, because their existence reminded us that life is very short.
In Japan cherry blossoms also symbolize clouds due to their nature of blooming en masse, besides being an enduring metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life, an aspect of Japanese cultural tradition that is often associated with Buddhistic influence, and which is embodied in the concept of mono no aware. The association of the cherry blossom with mono no aware dates back to 18th-century scholar Motoori Norinaga. The transience of the blossoms, the extreme beauty and quick death, has often been associated with mortality.
During World War II, the cherry blossom was used to motivate the Japanese people, to stoke nationalism and militarism among the populace. Even prior to the war, they were used in propaganda to inspire "Japanese spirit," as in the "Song of Young Japan," exulting in "warriors" who were "ready like the myriad cherry blossoms to scatter." In 1932, Akiko Yosano's poetry urged Japanese soldiers to endure sufferings in China and compared the dead soldiers to cherry blossoms. Arguments that the plans for the Battle of Leyte Gulf, involving all Japanese ships, would expose Japan to serious danger if they failed, were countered with the plea that the Navy be permitted to "bloom as flowers of death."
The last message of the forces on
Peleliu was "Sakura, Sakura" — cherry blossoms. Japanese pilots would paint them on the sides of their planes before embarking on a suicide mission, or even take branches of the trees with them on their missions. A cherry blossom painted on the side of the bomber symbolized the intensity and ephemerality of life; in this way, the aesthetic association was altered such that falling cherry petals came to represent the sacrifice of youth in suicide missions to honor the emperor. The first
kamikaze unit had a subunit called
Yamazakura or cherry blossom. The government even encouraged the people to believe that the souls of downed warriors were reincarnated in the blossoms. In its colonial enterprises, imperial Japan often planted cherry trees as a means of "claiming occupied territory as Japanese space".
Hanami and Sakura in Outside of Japan
Hanami festival has also become popular outside of Japan in the last years, and is also celebrated today at other countries. Smaller hanami celebrations in Taiwan, Korea, Philippines and China also take place. In the United State, hanami has also become very popular. In 1912, Japan gave 3,000 sakura trees as a gift to the United States to celebrate the nations' friendship. These trees were planted in Sakura Park in Manhattan and famously line the shore of the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. (see West Potomac Park). The gift was renewed with another 3,800 trees in 1965.
The cherry blossom trees continue to be a popular tourist attraction (and the subject of the annual National Cherry Blossom Festival) when they reach full bloom in early spring. Also, Balboa Park of San Diego has 2,000 cherry blossom trees that blossom in mid to late March. In Los Angeles, over 2,000 trees are located at Lake Balboa in Van Nuys. These trees were donated by an anonymous Japanese benefactor and were planted in 1992. They originated from a single parent tree and were developed to grow in warm climates.
Philadelphia is also home to over 2000 flowering Japanese cherry trees, half of which were a gift from the Japanese government in 1926 in honor of the 150th anniversary of American independence, with the other half planted by the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia between 1998 and 2007. Philadelphia's cherry blossoms are located within Fairmount Park, and the annual Subaru Cherry Blossom Festival of Greater Philadelphia celebrates the blooming trees. The University of Washington in Seattle also has cherry blossoms in its Quad. Other US cities have an annual Cherry Blossom Festival (or Sakura Matsuri), including the International Cherry Blossom Festival in Macon, Georgia, which features over 300,000 cherry trees.
Belleville,
Bloomfield, and
Newark, New Jersey celebrate the annual
Branch Brook Park Cherry Blossom Festival in April, which attracts thousands of visitors from the local area, Japan, and India. As of April 2009,
Branch Brook Park has a cherry tree collection with over 4,000 cherry blossoms in more than fourteen different v
arieties. Branch Brook Park will soon have more flowering cherry trees than Washington, D.C., thanks to an ongoing replanting program. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York City also has a large, well-attended festival. Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is the site of the peace conference that produced the
Treaty of Portsmouth, for which the original Washington, DC cherry trees were given in thanks. Several cherry trees planted on the bank of the tidal pond next to Portsmouth City Hall were the gift of Portsmouth's Japanese sister city of
Nichinan—the hometown of Marquis
Komura Jutarō, Japan's representative at the conference.
In Canada,
Vancouver, BC is famous for its thousands of cherry blossom trees lining many streets and in many parks, including
Queen Elizabeth Park and
Stanley Park. Vancouver holds the annual Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival every year.
High Park in
Toronto, ON features many Somei-Yoshino cherry trees (the earliest species to bloom and much loved by the Japanese for their fluffy white flowers) that were given to
Toronto by
Japan in 1959. Through the Sakura Project, the Japanese Embassy donated a further 34 cherry trees to
High Park in 2001, plus cherry trees to various other locations like
Exhibition Place,
McMaster University,
York University and the
University of Toronto's main and Scarborough campuses.
The cherry trees naturally grow in China. However, the two most famous cherry blossom parks in China reflect Japan's brief occupation of parts of China during the first half of the 20th century or the donation from Japan thereafter; Longwangtang Cherry Blossom Park in Lushun, Dalian, Liaoning and Wuhan University in Donghu District, Wuhan, Hubei. The cherry blossom is also a major tourist attraction in Germany's Altes Land orchard region.
Watching of cherry blossom was introduced to Korea during Japanese rule. The festivals continued even after the Japanese surrendered in WWII, but have been contentious, and many cherry trees have been destroyed because they were seen as symbols of the occupation. However, there has been considerable confusion about the origin of the cultivated Japanese cherry trees and the differences between them and native Korean trees. Certain trees at Seoul's Gyeongbok Palace were cut down to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Japanese surrender in World War II. Although Cherry blossoms are already indigenous to Korea, Japan had planted trees on sacred and offensive locations in the Palace. Once the offending trees were cut down the festival continued with the indigenous trees. The cherry blossom festival at Gyeongbok Palace is one of a number of such festivals across Korea and is prominently advertised to tourists.
In 1933, the Japanese botanist Koizumi Genichi reported that the Japanese Sakura (Somei Yoshino) originated on Jeju-do island (Quelpaert). In 1916, Ernest Henry Wilson had thought that "Japanese Sakura (Somei Yoshino)" was a crossbreed of the wild species of Japanese Sakura ("Edo higan" and "Oshima zakura"). In 1991, Professor of Tsukuba University Iwasaki Fumio reported that "Japanese Sakura (Somei Yoshino) originated around 1720-1735 by the artificial crossing in Edo (Tokyo)." Recent studies conducted on the comparison of Korean and Japanese cherry blossoms concluded that the two trees can be categorized as distinct species, but the Korean species apparently has not yet been given a scientific name.
In 2005, Japanese cherry trees were presented by Japan to the Nezahat Gokyigit Botanical Garden in Istanbul, Turkey. Each tree represents one sailor of Ertugrul Frigate which was the famous frigate of the Ottoman/Turkish navy. She had encountered a typhoon on the way back from a goodwill visit to Japan in 1890. That heavy weather condition caused her to sink. That disaster resulted with unfortunate loss of 587 Ottoman/Turkish sailors. That unfortunate occurrence is being remembered in every anniversary. The Japanese Cherry Trees represent memory of those passed away and provide remembrance. Batsford Arboretum in Gloucestershire holds the national collection of Japanese village cherries, sato-sakura group. Keele University in Staffordshire also has one of the UK's largest collections of flowering cherries, with more than 150 varieties.
Cherry blossoms within a field of Phlox subulata at Yachounomori Garden in Tatebayashi, Gunma
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