Cherry Blossom Festivals
With April comes the cherry-blossom, and with it fade the memories of dull, dark days, and the cold of past winds and rain.
From: 1914 C.E. To: 1914 C.E.
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Things Seen in Japan by Clive Holland, 1914.
With April comes the cherry-blossom, and with it fade the memories of dull, dark days, and the cold of past winds and rain. Even so great a city as Tokio becomes a lovely place. The grass in parks and gardens has again become green, and the cherry-trees are laden with pink-and-white blossom, mingling with the crimson of the peach. On the hillside throughout the land the budding maples give a crimson note amid the green, and there is a wealth of flowering plants on every hand. But it is the cherry-blossom which reigns supreme in the affections of the Japanese at this time. Nature has spread a white-and-pink carpet beneath the trees, and as a Japanese poet would say: "A nacre-coloured cloud falls out of the sunny sky."
It is the cherry-blossom festival, and every dainty musumé and every other woman dons her fairest and most beautiful kimono and knots her richest obi to sally forth to view the cherry-blossom. Throughout the land are many tiny festivals of the wonderful cherry-tree. In Shiba Park, Tokio, the laughing, merry throng surges from early morning till sunset, keeping happy festival, perhaps,—who knows?—calling back for the nonce to earth the kindly spirits of dead ancestors who in ages past planted the trees, whose beautiful raiment of blossom now gives such unalloyed and simple pleasure to their souls. At dead of night, maybe, these gentle ghosts come forth out of their ancient tombs, and tread the exquisite carpet of fallen petals beneath the trees, and wonder whether things are as they were in ages gone.
"Blessed be those who planted the cherry-trees,” is a Japanese saying to which any who knows their loveliness can surely utter a fervent "Amen."
Of these fallen exquisite petals a Japanese poet has sung:
"Who knows? the Spring’s soft showers
May be but tears shed by a sorrowing sky.”
And just as the beauty of the coming and present blossom appeals with extraordinary strength and tenderness to the spirit of the Japanese, so (as one can gather from the foregoing lines)do the fading petals infect it with sadness for the time.
The season of cherry-blossom is the season of flower visits those delicately-thought-out social functions peculiar to people; and should the knowledge to dwellers in the town that in the outlying villages there are belated cherry-trees in bloom, the fact is noted and made the excuse for an excursion.
Holland, Clive. Things Seen in Japan. Seeley, Service & Co., 1914.
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