Sakura no saku
Japanese here
……….. to see the sakura in flower for the first time is to experience a new
sensation.
Percival
LOWELL, The Soul of the Far East
“The Soul of the Far East” published in 1888 shows Percival LOWELL’s several keen-eyed perceptions about the Japanese
customs. Concerning the Japanese convention about the cherry flowers the
following should be said one of the most outstanding insights:
….... there at their flowering season are
to be found throngs of admirers. For in crowds people go out to see the sight,
multitudes streaming incessantly to and fro beneath their blossoms as the time
of day determines the turn of the human tide. To the Occidental stranger such a
gathering suggests some social loadstone; but none exists. In the cherry-trees
alone lies the attraction.
Any queue must be
accompanied by an aim, and any gathering without any sideshow must just look
sinister. The Japanese crowds however stay or go to and fro choosing the place
and time:
……...he appreciates not only places, but times. One spot is to be seen
at sunrise, another by moonlight; one to be visited in the spring-time, another
in the fall.
In
spring, people await a three-day glory of cherry flowers, and in autumn, people
enjoy a full-moon-admiring party in a specific evening (this year in 2004 on 28
September) awaiting the full moon’s coming above the eastern horizon. They
usually go on the racket before the moonrise, while as soon as it begins to
rise from the edge of the eastern mountains they become very quiet all watching
the full moon.
As
to the Japanese Sakura in glory, LOWELL
writes as follows:
Such is the profusion of flowers that the
tree seems to have turned into a living mass of rosy light. No leaves break the
brilliance. The snowy-pink petals drape the branches entirely, yet so
delicately, one deems it all a veil donned for the
tree's nuptials with the spring. For nothing could more completely personify
the spirit of the spring-time. You can almost fancy it some dryad decked for
her bridal, in maidenly day-dreaming too lovely to last.
Wherefrom did he get this idea about
the Japanese cherry blossoms? See the following:
Indeed, not content with what revelation
Nature makes of herself of her own accord, man has multiplied her
manifestations. Spots suitable to their growth have been peopled by him with
trees. Sometimes they stand in groups like star-clusters, as in Oji, crowning a
hill; sometimes, as at Mukojima, they line an avenue
for miles, dividing the blue river on the one hand from the blue-green
rice-fields on the other,--a floral milky way of light.
Here both of Oji and Mukojima
are the well-known place names even now used in Tokyo,
and the river is the Sumida
River, though nowadays it
may not be said blue any longer. The places noted for the cherry blossoms in Tokyo (formerly
called Edo) were first publicly settled around 1725 in the era of the 8th
Shogun Yosimuné of Tokugawa Shogunate
(TOKUGAWA Yoshimuné: Shogun from 1717 to 1745).
Especially at the Sumida bank near Mukojima and on
the Asukayama at Oji, people were allowed to make a
racket. The bank at Mukojima was continued to be
planted with cherry trees during the Edo
period. The Edo bakufu-government came to an end in
1868 with the resignation of the 15th Shogun TOKUGAWA Yoshinobu and the "Meiji restoration" came. Even
in the era of Meiji (under the Imperial rule), the Sumida bank received further
afforestations of cherry trees in 1874, 1880, 1883 in
the unit of 1,000 trees. So it must have been these series of rows of cherry
trees in length of 3 km or more that LOWELL
saw at Mukojima. Nowadays however the trees
themselves as well as rows should be said different: The life span of Sakura is
about 60 years, and hence old trees should have been replaced by new ones to
keep the glory of the bank cherry trees. The environment must also have been
very changed from the Edo era. Later in 1986
Claude LEVI-STRAUSS went upstream the Sumida River
on an old Japanese–style boat, while he felt disappointed since the sceneries
seen above the Sumida banks were very different from those he amicably imagined
from the prints of Hokusaï. As to the bank cherries
at the beginning of the 20th Century, several give witness that
there were still old fat cherry trees on the bank although even then they said
at the much older time in Meiji they enjoyed more beautiful cherry blossoms. We
may so judge that LOWELL
witnessed the height period of glory of Sakura at the Sumida bank, which we
cannot enjoy now. Anyway this special experience must have brought him to find
out to the point the queer but admiring gathering under the cherry trees.
At almost the same time as LOWELL
haunted at Mukojima, there was another American lady
who was enchanted by the cherry trees at Mukojima. It
was Eliza R SCIDMORE (1856 – 1928) who landed at Yokohama in September 1884 just one and a
half year after LOWELL’s arrival. So it must have been in the spring of 1885 or 1886
that she was moved after seeing the old cherry trees in their glory at Mukojima alongside the Sumida River to broach the idea of
planting the Japanese cherry trees at Potomac Tidal Basin to
hide those old dump heaps (in a modern sense E SCIDMORE was a genuine
environmentalist). In her, the Potomac River
was compared with the Sumida
River. She looked
listened but the idea was kept long as if falling on deaf ears, and it took
about next 24 years for SCIDMORE to restart to ask "annual dollar
subscriptions from every traveller I could think of who had seen the Sakuras in their glory in springtime in Japan, with special
reference and appeal to those who had sipped the Emperor's champagne at the
Palace Spring Garden parties." (SCIDMORE herself first
joined the Palace Spring Garden Party at Hama-Rikyu in the spring of 1886.) Fortunately she
could contact the First Lady Helen TAFT just after William Howard TAFT's inauguration. The Tafts
had lived for several months on a Yokohama Yamaté
(bluff) and supposed to have known well the beauty of cherries. The First
Lady’s reply was positive as follows: “The White House, Washington. April 7, 1909, Thank
you very much for your suggestion about the cherry trees. I have taken the
matter up and am promised the trees, but I thought perhaps it would be best to
make an avenue of them, extending down to the turn in the road, as the other
part is still too rough to do any planting. Of course, they could not reflect
in the water, but the effect would be very lovely of the long avenue. Let me
know what you think about this. Sincerely yours, Helen H. Taft.”
At
the similar time, Dr. Jokichi TAKAMINÉ, a Japanese chemist famous
for the discovery of adrenaline, was in Washington,
D.C. Hearing that Washington was to have Japanese cherry trees
planted in a stretch of rows, he met First Lady Taft, who accepted the offer of
a donation of trees. Otherwise Tokyo City Mayor Yukio
OZAKI came to Washington
to tell Mrs. TAFT formally of a gift of 1,000 trees from the Tokyo City as a gift of friendship
to the United States
from the people of Japan. The first 2,000 trees, shipped in 1909 and arrived in 1910 in the DC,
were however infested with scale, insects, larvae "and what not."
They had to be burned down. Dr. TAKAMINE again donated the cost for the trees
whose number was more than 3,000. The cuttings or scions for these trees were
taken in December 1910 based on the selected understock
in Itami
City. On 27 March
1912, Helen TAFT and Mrs CHINDA, the Japanese ambassador's wife,
planted the first trees between the drive and the Tidal Basin.
Eliza attended the ceremony. This much is the story of the Potomac Cherry Trees
which are still cared. See further details in
http://www.nps.gov/nacc/cherry/history.htm
We however hear that a plaque there
records the names of Mrs Helen TAFT and the Japanese ambassador's wife, but
Eliza SCIDMORE is not mentioned.
Incidentally, Eliza SCIDOMORE wrote a
good detailed travel sketch in 1890, entitled “Jinrikisha Days in Japan” (Harper and Brothers Publishers, NY and
London, 1891) in which she wrote her observations at Yokohama, Tokyo, Mt Fuji, Tokaido, Biwako Lake, Kyoto, Uji, Nara,
Osaka, Miyajima/Hiroshima, Nagasaki and so on,
(but never about Noto). Her writing is all-round, and
touches on No plays as well as on Danjyuro on one
hand, and illustrates how to use the Japanese chopsticks on the other. She
classified that the crowds under cherry trees at the Ueno Park
were more refined than those gathering at the Mukojima
bank. In a sense she was right: It was a tradition from the time of Yoshimuné for people to be allowed to give a racket at Mukojima and Oji as aforementioned.
Eliza looks to have favourable feeling
for the books on Japan by W
E GRIFFIS and E S MORSE, while she explicitly disapproves LOWELL’s “The Soul of the
Far East”.
She also showed much favour to the
blossoms of Umé (Japanese apricot), Kiku (chrysanthemum), and Asagao
(morning-glory). She says Asagao is the flower of the Japanese flowers in The Wonderful Morning-Glories of Japan (The Century, vol 55, issue 2
(December 1897)). Asagao is common but mostly cared
in private way.
Now we are
in a position to mention about the present-day status of cherries at Mukojima and Oji. Just before the Lowell Conference at Anamidzu
(2 -5 May 2004),
we stood by from the end of March to visit the places. It is not so easy to get
information to be able to arrive on time under the cherry flowers which are
supposed to be
within a
three-day glory since the cherry is sensitive to the atmospheric situation of
the season. Eventually we decided to
choose 3
April (Saturday): We chose Saturday because we were in fear of missing to view
the crowds. On the afternoon of 3 April, the present writer (MINAMI) was met by
MURAKAMI at the Tokyo Station, and readily we went to the Sumida River
via Asakusa. We reached the right bank of the River
at the Azuma Bridge, and happily found that the
Cherries at the right bank were in full bloom and the area was very crowded by
people without purpose. Some were walking,
some were
leaning against along the edge of the bank, and some were sitting in a circle
under trees. We saw a couple of Jinrikishas, one of which was carrying two ladies wearing
Kimonos (Japanese clothes). There were also some street stalls. The Sumida River
was wide and full of water, and there were several modern boats floating on the
water: some looked sightseeing boats and there was found a queue which was
waiting for the next boat. Mukojima was seen at
the
opposite bank, and we could see an array of the cherry trees on the other bank,
but alas! there was seen an elevated rigid
superhighway just above the soft enveloping line of the tops of Sakura trees.
It looked unfavourable and it was apparent the highway was constructed
neglecting the cherry trees: They must have not been able to detour around the
traditional Mukojima bank just only for the cause of
a three-day glory of the cherry. Apparently the times of any Hokusaï passed away!
We walked along the
right bank in the upstream direction, passing the Kototoi Bridge, up to the Sakura Bridge.
The upper bank was still full of the trees, but we crossed the Sakura Bridge
to Mukojima. The left bank was
also crowded, and some
were seen down near the river side, and otherwise almost all were walking. The
trees must be under the shade in the morning, and the cherry looked less bright
than those on the right bank (Asakusa side). However
we were walking in the afternoon and so they were brightened, and some trees
appeared to have more beautiful and older shapes than those at the right bank.
We ate Yaki-soba under Sakuras
at a stall kept by Mukojima citizens.
MURAKAMI and the present writer spent an
evening time by talking over the coming Lowell
Conference at Anamidzu, and then we again went to
the right bank to see the cherry blossoms at night. Trees and the road were
lighted, and the cherry looked beautiful in light. A large crowd was still
present of people who were enjoying the Saturday-night cherry blossoms. It was
supposed the area would be vacant next Saturday however.
Next morning, the present writer went to Oji to view the Cherry trees on the Asuka-yama.
It was rather colder
the morning,
and not so much people were found there: The blossoms looked to be going and a
lot of cherry petals were fallen making the ground whiter. Some young persons
were busy in preparing something for the Sunday entertainment at the lower
plaza, and at the upper place, a group of persons was seen composing Haiku. The
trees appeared to be just randomly planted, not arrayed nor
particularly clustered.
That is, it was not so easy to find out the clusters of trees in the way as
suggested by LOWELL.
Among trees, there was preserved a large old stone monument which states about
a history of the Asuka-yama in an old styled Chinese
composition. This was built in 1737, just ten or so years after the Yoshimuné’s idea of Sakura planting. This monument is foun
d in several pictures
made in the Edo era: Here is shown the case of
a picture framework of KATSUSHIKA Hokusaï (here only
a part: find the stone monument at
the upper right of the frame). We can easily suppose LOWELL saw it when he visited the area to see
the Oji Sakura.
(Appendix): Bill SHEEHAN was suggested to visit Tokyo to encounter the Mukojima
Sakura in
time, but since it was difficult to fix
the time of flouring time, he gave up the idea and reached our land on 22
April. It was too late to see Sakura on level ground, while we could catch
sight of several Sakura trees in bloom when we were running by car at the
mountainous side near the Saji Observatory. We
happened also to view another flourish case of mountain Sakura at Mitaké
Village when we were on
the way (about 1000m above the sea) near
Mt Ontaké to look up its summit (3067m high) covered
with snow.
(August 2004)
Masatsugu MINAMI, CMO Fukui
Japanese here
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