Cherry blossom

• 1. Introduction

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  The cherry blossom, known in Japan as sakura, begins its yearly march through the country in Okinawa in January. From there it climbs the archipelago, and the whole nation watches it go. For decades the movement of this cherry blossom front was a fixture of the nightly news, announced right after the weather segment. Since 2009, private forecasting companies have mostly taken over the tracking, while the Japan Meteorological Agency concentrates on collecting data. In a typical year the blossoms reach Kyoto and Tokyo at the start of April. Recent years have leaned toward the end of March. Hokkaido follows a few weeks later. Japanese locals and overseas tourists alike study these forecasts closely. Why would a flower attract this kind of attention? How did one country end up with hundreds of ornamental cherry trees when so many other places had almost none? What did the blossom come to stand for, for better and for worse? And what becomes of a tradition built on a few days of bloom when the calendar itself begins to shift?

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• 2. A Flower Shaped by Japan

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  Prunus speciosa, the Oshima cherry, grows wild only in Japan, and it has nearly every trait a plant breeder could ask for. It carries many large, fragrant flowers and grows quickly. It also mutates easily into double-flowered forms. A second Japanese wild tree, Prunus jamasakura, called Yamazakura, likewise bears big blossoms and grows into a large tree. Both were spread across a wide area of the country, close to where ordinary people lived.

  Mainland China had a long culture of viewing plum blossom. Most of its wild cherries, though, had small flowers, and the large-flowered kinds were thinly scattered. Europe and North America had few cherry species worth gathering around at all. For these reasons, the craft of making ornamental cherry cultivars grew up mainly in Japan.

  Since the Heian period, Japanese growers had picked out superior or unusual trees from among the natural crosses of wild cherries. Later they also crossed trees by hand and multiplied the results through grafting and cuttings. The Sato-zakura Group, built on the Oshima cherry, has been produced since the 14th century. In the modern period, grafting became the standard method, because it quickly yields trees genetically identical to the original.

  The Oshima cherry itself began on Izu Oshima Island. In the Kamakura period, as the population of the southern Kanto region grew, it was carried to Honshu and cultivated there. It then made its way to the capital at Kyoto.

  Sorting these trees into tidy categories has never been simple. Cherries mutate readily, and researchers in different eras have given the same tree different scientific names. De Tournefort named Cerasus as a genus in 1700. In 1753, Linnaeus folded it into the larger genus Prunus. Cerasus later became a section and then a subgenus, although some botanists revived it as a genus. China and Russia, which have many more wild cherry species than Europe, still treat it that way. The group holds about 100 species and leaves out bush cherries, bird cherries and cherry laurels.

  Japan long followed the European and North American habit of using Prunus. A 1992 paper by Hideaki Ohba of the University of Tokyo made Cerasus more common there. As a result, Prunus incisa is now often written Cerasus incisa.

  Where the first cherry came from is still argued over. In 1975, three Japanese researchers proposed that cherries began in the Himalayan region and spread east. In their account, the trees reached Japan before any human civilisation, while the archipelago was still joined to the Eurasian continent. Masataka Somego, a professor at Tokyo University of Agriculture, puts the origin 10 million years ago in what is now Nepal. The Kazusa DNA Research Institute reports that Prunus itosakura and the Japanese endemic Prunus speciosa split into separate species 5.52 million years ago. Ko Shimamoto, a professor at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, says detailed DNA work rejects the Himalayan root. He estimates the true ancestor was a plant related to Prunus grayana.

  The wild Himalayan cherry, Prunus cerasoides, still grows today in Nepal, India, Bhutan and Myanmar, where it is also cultivated.

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• 3. The Long Party

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  Under the Nara period, which ran from 710 to 794, the custom of feasting beneath blossoming trees is said to have begun. The flower people admired then was the ume, not the cherry. By the Heian period, 794 to 1185, cherry blossoms drew most of the attention, and hanami had become a word for sakura viewing. In both waka and haiku, plain "flowers" now meant cherry blossoms, as one of Izumi Shikibu's poems implies.

  At first only the elite of the Imperial Court took part. The habit soon spread to samurai society. By the Edo period, ordinary people were joining in too, and Tokugawa Yoshimune planted stretches of cherry trees to encourage them. Beneath the branches, crowds held cheerful feasts and drank sake.

  The Edo period also brought double-flowered cultivars, planted along riverbanks, in Buddhist temples, in Shinto shrines and in the gardens of daimyo in cities such as Edo. Books of the time record more than 200 varieties, including 'Kanzan'. Yet this richness belonged to the cities. Across the rest of the country, people still gathered mainly under wild trees such as Yamazakura and the Oshima cherry.

  The Meiji period changed the picture. As Japan modernised, the Yoshino cherry spread everywhere and became the main object of hanami. Many other cultivars were cut down as cities reclaimed waterways and demolished daimyo gardens. Two people refused to let them vanish. The gardener Takagi Magoemon and Shimizu Kengo, the village mayor of Kohoku Village, planted a row of assorted cultivars along the bank of the Arakawa River. In Kyoto, a gardener named Sano Toemon XIV collected and propagated many kinds.

  After World War II, these surviving cultivars passed to the National Institute of Genetics, the Tama Forest Science Garden and the Flower Association of Japan. From the 1960s onward, they were once again used for viewing.

  Today most Japanese schools and public buildings have cherry trees planted outside. Both the fiscal year and the school year start in April, so across much of Honshu the first day of work or classes lands in blossom season. A lesser-known winter type, called fuyuzakura, blooms between October and December. The Japan Cherry Blossom Association has even published a list of Japan's Top 100 Cherry Blossom Spots, with at least one in every prefecture.

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• 4. Hundreds of Cultivars

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  Nobody agrees on how many cherry cultivars Japan has. One classification method counts more than 600, while the newspaper Tokyo Shimbun claims 800. In 2014, Japan's Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute analysed the DNA of 215 cultivars. It found that many of those spread around the world are hybrids, made by crossing the Oshima cherry and Yamazakura with various wild species. The many-petaled Sato-zakura Group and other cultivars share a large number of petals, and the representative one is Prunus serrulata 'Kanzan'. Yoshino cherries are actively planted across Asian countries, while Kanzan is the favorite in Western ones.

  The most popular cultivar in Japan is 'Somei-yoshino'. Its flowers are nearly pure white, tinged with the palest pink near the stem. They open and usually fall within about a week, so the trees look white from top to bottom. The name comes from the village of Somei, now part of Toshima in Tokyo. The cultivar was developed in the mid- to late 19th century, around the end of the Edo period and the start of the Meiji period. Historical dramas called jidaigeki often show it growing in earlier centuries, which is an anachronism.

  Then there is 'Kawazu-zakura', which flowers before spring has properly arrived. It is a natural hybrid of the Oshima cherry and Prunus campanulata, with deep pink petals. For a wild tree, blooming in the cold is a mistake, since pollinating insects are not yet active and no offspring can result. The early habit is thought to come from Prunus campanulata, a native of Okinawa that did not originally grow in Honshu. People prize the trait, so growers preserve the tree by grafting.

  Japanese naming also sorts cherries by appearance. Trees with more than the usual five petals are yae-zakura, double-flowered sakura. Those with drooping branches are shidare-zakura, the weeping cherries. Famous weeping cultivars include 'Shidare-zakura', 'Beni-shidare' and 'Yae-beni-shidare', all descended from the wild Prunus itosakura. A book from the Heian period mentions a weeping cherry, which is why the Pendula form is thought to be Japan's oldest cultivar.

  Most blossoms shade from white to red. Yet the Edo period produced cultivars in yellow and green, namely Prunus serrulata 'Grandiflora' (Ukon) and 'Gioiko' (Gyoiko). In 2007, the research institute Riken blasted cherry trees with a heavy-ion beam and obtained 'Nishina zao', a mutation of the green-petaled Gyoiko. Its flowers open pale yellow-green-white and turn pale yellow-pink as they fall. The same method gave 'Nishina otome', which blooms in both spring and autumn, or all year in a greenhouse. It also gave 'Nishina haruka' with larger flowers and 'Nishina komachi', whose lantern-like flowers stay partly closed.

  Some cultivars cannot reproduce on their own at all. 'Hisakura' (Ichiyo) and 'Albo-rosea' (Fugenzo) both came from the Oshima cherry. Their pistil develops into a leaf-like structure, so they survive only through grafting and cuttings.

  A few cherries are not cultivars at all but living monuments. Prunus itosakura, the Edo higan, is a slow-growing wild species with the longest life of any cherry. Old specimens are often regarded as sacred and serve as landmarks for shrines, temples and whole districts. Jindai-zakura is around 2,000 years old, Usuzumi-zakura around 1,500, and Daigo-zakura around 1,000.

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• 5. Symbol of Fleeting Life

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  In waka poetry, cherry blossoms most often stand for impermanence. Because the flowers open all together and then vanish, they became a lasting metaphor for how brief life is. This reading is tied to Shinto and to the idea of mono no aware, the pathos of things. The link between the blossoms and that idea goes back to the 18th-century scholar Motoori Norinaga. The flowers' fragility and beauty have often been connected with mortality and with a graceful, ready acceptance of fate and karma.

  The flower turns up across Japanese culture. It appears in art, manga, anime and film, and in stage sets for musical performances. At least one popular folk song titled "Sakura" was originally meant for the shakuhachi, a bamboo flute, and several later pop songs share the name. Kimonos, stationery and dishware, both old and new, carry its image.

  Sport has adopted it as well. The Japan national rugby union team has worn the blossom on its uniforms since its first international matches in the 1930s, shown as a bud, half-open and full-bloomed. The team is nicknamed the Brave Blossoms, and its current logo dates to 1952. The Japan Cricket Association and the national American football team also put the flower in their logos.

  In irezumi, the traditional art of Japanese tattooing, cherry blossoms are a common subject. They are frequently paired with classic symbols such as koi fish, dragons or tigers.

  The tradition continues in the present. Someity, the mascot of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, was modeled on the flower. In the Animal Crossing video games, many of the trees are flowering cherries, a quick signal that spring has arrived.

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• 6. A Darker Blossom

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  In September 1930, a group of young Imperial Japanese Army officers chose the name Sakurakai, the Cherry Blossom Society, for a secret society. Its aim was to reorganize the state along totalitarian militaristic lines, through a military coup if necessary.

  The flower served that mood well. Before the war, propaganda used it to inspire what was called the Japanese spirit. The "Song of Young Japan" praised warriors "ready like the myriad cherry blossoms to scatter." In 1894, Sasaki Nobutsuna wrote a poem, Shina seibatsu no uta, to coincide with the First Sino-Japanese War. It compared falling blossoms to soldiers who die for country and emperor. In 1932, the poet Akiko Yosano urged Japanese soldiers to endure hardship in China and likened the dead to cherry blossoms.

  During World War II, the blossom became a tool for motivating the public and stoking nationalism. The proverb hana wa sakuragi, hito wa bushi, meaning "the best blossom is the cherry blossom, the best man is a warrior," was invoked inside the Imperial Japanese Army. Planners of the Battle of Leyte Gulf faced the objection that committing every Japanese ship would endanger Japan if the plan failed. The reply was a plea that the Navy be allowed to "bloom as flowers of death." The last message from the forces on Peleliu was "Sakura, Sakura."

  Pilots painted sakura on their planes before suicide missions, and some carried branches along. A blossom on the side of a bomber stood for the intensity and brevity of life. Falling petals came to mean the sacrifice of youth in honor of the emperor. The first kamikaze unit even had a subunit named Yamazakura, the wild cherry blossom. The government encouraged people to believe that the souls of fallen warriors were reincarnated in the blossoms.

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• 7. The Bloom Under Pressure

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  Every tree of a single cultivar is a clone, propagated by grafting or cuttings, so trees planted in the same place flower together. Wild cherries differ genetically from one individual to the next and open at slightly different times. The Yoshino cherry became the favorite for viewing because of that synchrony. It also blooms before its leaves open, bears many flowers and grows into a large tree. The Edo higan and the cultivars derived from it share the habit of blooming before leaves. Many Sato-zakura Group cultivars, built on Oshima hybrids, usually reach full bloom a few days to two weeks after Yoshino.

  That precise timing is now moving. In Kyoto, the full-bloom dates of Yamazakura have been recorded for about 1200 years. They stayed relatively steady from the year 812 into the 1800s, then rapidly came earlier. The earliest date in the whole record fell in 2021. The average peak was around the 17th of April in the 1850s and the 5th of April by the 2020s, while the average temperature rose about 3.4 degrees Celsius. The Yoshino cherries around the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., peaked on the 5th of April in 1921 and on the 31st of March in 2021. China reported peak bloom weeks earlier in 2023 than a few decades before. Global warming and the heat island effect of cities are both thought to play a part.

  The seasons also flip in the Southern Hemisphere. In Australia, the trees at the Cowra Japanese Garden bloom from late September to mid-October, and the Sydney cherry blossom festival is held in late August.

  Forecasts attributed to the Japan Meteorological Agency suggest that, without substantial efforts to rein in climate change, the Somei-Yoshino could struggle badly. By 2100 it could even disappear from parts of Kyushu, including Miyazaki, Nagasaki and Kagoshima prefectures. Earlier flowering could also mean reduced bloom and a weaker cultural role for the festivals built around it.

  Other pressures are biological. An invasive longhorn beetle, Aromia bungii, was first confirmed in Japan in 2012. It is believed to have arrived in wooden packing material used for international cargo. It has spread rapidly, and its feeding forces the removal of large branches or the felling of whole trees.

  The Yoshino cherry has weaknesses of its own. It is especially prone to Witch's broom disease, and the Japan Flower Association had stopped distributing and selling it by 2009. Its fast growth, wide crown and extensive roots can damage pavement and push branches into neighboring property, making it a poor street tree in narrow urban spaces. Poor maintenance and age have also reduced flowering in many trees and raised the danger of falling dead branches.

  Planters are therefore turning to 'Jindai-akebono', which came from Jindai Botanical Garden. It has a similar flower shape, size and tree form but resists disease better, stays smaller and bears slightly deeper pink flowers. Another replacement, 'Yoko', was developed in Ehime Prefecture in 1981 and is spreading fairly quickly. Its large, deep pink flowers and early blooming set it clearly apart from the Yoshino.

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• 8. Beyond the Garden

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  Cherry blossoms and cherry leaves are both edible in Japan. The blossoms are pickled in salt and umezu, the vinegar from ume, and then used to give flavor to wagashi confectionery and to anpan, a sweet bun usually filled with red bean paste. This pickling method, sakurazuke, is said to date to the end of the Edo period. Pickling vegetables in salt as tsukemono, however, was known as early as the Jomon period.

  Salt-pickled blossoms steeped in hot water make sakurayu, served at festive events such as weddings in place of green tea. Leaves pickled in salted water wrap sakuramochi. The blossoms also appear as a flavoring botanical in Roku gin.

  The scent has a chemical explanation. Leaves and blossoms contain coumarin, which smells like vanilla. It is also potentially hepatotoxic, and the Food and Drug Administration bans it in high doses. The traditional curing process involves washing, drying and salting the blossoms or leaves for a full day. That reduces the coumarin to acceptable levels while keeping the aroma. Coumarin can also be isolated for perfumes, pipe tobacco, or as an adulterant in vanilla flavorings, though the tonka bean is a more common natural source. Cherry seeds and bark contain amygdalin and should not be eaten.

  Wild cherries do bear small, unpleasant fruit. Cultivars grown for eating are generally varieties of the related species Prunus avium, Prunus cerasus and Prunus fruticosa.

  Flowering cherries were historically present in Europe, North America, the Philippines and China. Even so, ornamental cultivation centered on Japan, and many varieties planted worldwide, such as Prunus × yedoensis, descend from Japanese hybrids. In Europe and the United States, planting began to spread in the early 20th century. Japan presented trees to the United States in 1912 as a token of friendship. Hanami festivals abroad largely started in the same era, often with trees given as gifts from Japan. After the First World War, the British plant collector Collingwood Ingram carried out important studies of Japanese cherries, work that helped fix their place in Western gardens.

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