The cherry blossom is one of my most favorite flowers of all time. If you grew up in Japan, you would probably feel the same way. Sakura is very important to Japanese people. “Hanami” (cherry blossom viewing) is an old Japanese spring tradition that has been practiced for centuries.
Many tourists from all over the world come to Japan every year to see the beautiful blooming of the cherry blossoms. If you have never been to Japan and are planning to visit in the future, I recommend you go during the cherry blossoms season. It will make your trip a more memorable one. The blooming of the cherry blossoms varies each year but it usually starts in late March and lasts for about one month.
Like many people that grew up in Japan, the cherry blossoms bring up many good memories as well as bittersweet ones to me. The cherry blossoms are very important to Japanese people as many celebrations and festivals take place during the blooming season. This very short blooming period is often compared to the transition nature of life. It reminds us that every beginning has an end and that life is beautiful yet very short.
Ultimate Guide To The Cherry Blossom Festival In Japan [2023]
My most favorite part of the cherry blossoms is not the blooming but actually the falling cherry blossoms petals. I will never forget the breathtaking view of falling cherry blossoms in April exactly ten years ago. I went to the Ueno Park with my childhood friend and we were speechless as we saw tens of thousands of petals falling from the cherry blossoms trees.
For a second, I thought we were in a different world of pink snowflakes falling gently on our skin. After the viewing, I wondered if I would see that again and it turned out to be the very last time that I would be in Japan during the cherry blossom season.
Another reason that I get a little sentimental when I think about the cherry blossoms is that I had to say goodbye to my classmates each year and anxiously started a brand new academic year with newly assigned classmates in April. The academic year in Japan starts on April 1 and Japanese schools assign students certain classes in which we spend a lot of time studying and planning various group oriented activities. So the cherry blossoms bring up many memories of achieving certain milestones in my life back home, which has made me the success I feel I am today.
Stunning Places To See Kyoto Cherry Blossoms
As the cherry blossoms season is just around the corner, I think about my family and friends back in Japan. Although I live in a completely different environment, I miss the cherry blossoms as I become nostalgic about the past.
If Shimokita feels mainstream to you, here’s a list of places in Tokyo that you might never have heard of but should definitely visit.
The Bairin Plum Festival (Ume Matsuri) is a famous plum blossom festival held at the park in March every year. The festival features live musical performances and lots of food vendors selling all kinds of tasty Japanese festival food.To everyone’s delight, cherry blossoms in Japan are already blooming as families and friends unite for the highly anticipated, centuries-old tradition of hanami (cherry blossom-viewing). The explosion of pale pink petals is a euphoric sight to behold, but did you know there’s more to their splendour than meets the eye? The meaning of cherry blossoms in Japan runs deep, making the country’s national flower a cultural icon revered around the world not just for its overwhelming beauty, but for its enduring expression of life, death and renewal.
The Cultural Significance And Meaning Of Japanese Flowers
Cherry blossoms, also known as sakura in Japan, are the small, delicate pink flowers produced by cherry blossom trees. The springtime bloom is a lavish spectacle but remarkably brief; after only two weeks, they drop to the ground and wither, falling like snow with the ebb and flow of the winds. As flowers native to Asia, they can also be found in China, South Korea and India, but today they enjoy worldwide blooming.
Cherry blossoms hold elevated status in China, signifying love and the female mystique (beauty, strength and sexuality), but nowhere in the world are the elusive flowers more cherished than in Japan, home to thousands of cherry blossom trees. The floral imagery permeates Japanese paintings, film and poetry.
Every April, families and friends across the country ceremoniously gather in large groups for hanami and elaborate feasts with music under giant, feathery canopies of soft pink.
Cherry Blossom Meaning In The Language Of Flowers
Tied to the Buddhist themes of mortality, mindfulness and living in the present, Japanese cherry blossoms are a timeless metaphor for human existence. Blooming season is powerful, glorious and intoxicating, but tragically short-lived — a visual reminder that our lives, too, are fleeting.
Why don’t we marvel at our own passing time on earth with the same joy and passion? Why do we neglect to revel in life when it can end at any moment, or in the grace surrounding us everywhere: our family, friends, a stranger’s smile, a child’s laugh, new flavours on our plate or the scent of green grass? It is time, cherry blossoms remind us, to pay attention.
In Japanese culture, sakura as the embodiment of beauty and mortality can be traced back centuries. No one in history personified this metaphor more than the samurai, the warriors of feudal Japan who lived by bushido (“the way of the warrior”) — a strict moral code of respect, honour and discipline. It was their duty to not only exemplify and preserve these virtues in life, but to appreciate the inevitability of death without fearing it —in battle, it came all too soon for the samurai. A fallen cherry blossom or petal, it’s believed, symbolized the end of their short lives.
The Significance Of The Cherry Blossoms In Japan
During World War II, cherry blossoms took on a similar meaning for Japanese pilots who painted their kamikaze warplanes with the flower imagery before embarking on suicide missions to “die like beautiful falling cherry petals for the emperor”.
Sakura are also revered as a symbol of rebirth. Hanami was in fact established as a ritual as early as 710, long before the rise of feudal Japan. Believed to represent the mountain deities that transformed into the gods of rice paddies in Japanese folk religions, cherry blossom trees signified agricultural reproduction. It was during this time the Japanese travelled to the mountains to worship the trees every spring, then transplanted them to inhabited areas.
Sakura have therefore always signalled the beginning of spring, a time of renewal and optimism. With the blooming season coinciding with the beginning of the Japanese calendar year, they also bring hope and new dreams at a time when students start their first day of school and employees their first day of a new job. When cherry blossoms are in full bloom, the future is bursting with possibilities.
The Beautiful Meaning Behind Japan's Many Words For Cherry Blossoms
When the Japanese gather under the cherry blossom trees every April, they’re not just admiring the aesthetic attributes of a flower. Over tables of sake-filled glasses, bento boxes and sweet mochi, they’re seizing the day. They’re wringing the beauty out of life. They’re commemorating the loss of loved ones and reflecting on their own precious lives with a sense of wonder while shedding the past to usher in a bright, promising new year.
Planning a trip to Japan to see the cherry blossoms for yourself? Click on one of the cities below to search for hotels on Booking.com: Tokyo | Kyoto | Osaka | Hiroshima
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Cherry Blossom Festival In Japan: When And Where Go
Cherry Blossoms are ephemeral and ethereal. They are the gentlest flowers, encouraging us to be inspired by the future and things to come, but also tragedy, as their fleeting beauty is short-lived and transient. Cherry blossom’s energy is shy and delicate, quiet and gentle, and overwhelmingly powerful and awe-inspiring when they come to bloom.
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Cherry blossoms are intensely magical. Their sweet, smelling aroma is a font of inspiration for many powerful oils and incenses, thus making them a mainstay in the magical world. The wafting smoke of cherry blossom incense is irresistible and invaluable in love magic.
The sights of cherry blossoms herald the arrival of Spring, freshness, and renewal. Use cherry blossoms to draw in these enlivening
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