Cherry blossoms

Like to the fleeting world of ours,
Methinks, are the frail cherry-flowers,
For they that bloomed yesterday
Are seen to-day to fade away.
Anonymous

It’s cherry blossom season in Japan.

Your humble servant works hard to keep this website focused on tools, as promised, and strives to not pad it with vain and pointless pictures of pets, projects, or product promotions. But every 4 years or so I like to add a post about cherry blossoms, that beautiful flower so important to the people of this island nation.

These photos are mostly of cherry trees and their blossoms in Tokyo proper, a metropolitan area of a little more than 14 million residents containing approximately 13,400 km² (5,190 sq mi). But despite the difficulty and cost of maintaining them, Tokyo’s residents love their cherry trees adorned in white and pink dresses, and look forward to visiting and admiring them for a few days every year. This is an old and worthy tradition indeed.

I don’t pretend to know much about flowers, but I love trees. So I am posting this in tribute to the adornment of the cherry tree, for like all things that live, their petals will be glorious for only a few days, then fail. Can any of us hope for finer raiment or a more glorious future?

YMHOS

An old cherry tree in a nearby park. Its trunk and limbs are dark and twisted, but its flowers are lovely as ever.

The same old cherry tree dancing into the sky. Fallen petals are scattered by the wind to decorate the ground for a brief time.

A family has setup a picnic under the cherry tree. I think Treebeard would praise this tree

A row of cherry trees with people enjoying the flowers and a picnic lunch

This old cherry tree is nearing the end of its flowers, but it has turned the asphalt below into a pink carpet.

Even the house across the street, wet with rain, is adorned with petals.

Mrs. YMHOS in her cherry blossom pink best.

Kappabashi Market

The entrance to Kappabashi Street, a center for kitchenware and restaurant supplies in Tokyo. If you enjoy cooking and the tools used in that contact sport, you must visit this huge shopping area.

The primary goal for the day: A cedar and bamboo seiro for steaming yummy dumplings. Mmm…. Dumplings.

A dish store in Kappabashi named Komatsuya. The wide angle lens makes it look bigger than it is, but the sheer volume and variety of dishes is not exaggerated.

A knife store in Kappabashi with a 100 year history. When professional chefs in Eastern Japan buy the tools of their profession, this is where they go. There are 8-10 such cutlery stores like this, all selling the world’s best food prep knives.

A bride going for a ride in a human-powered rikisha at Kappabashi.

Kaminari Mon (Lightning Gate)

From Kappabashi we walked to nearby Sensoji Temple, famous for the Kaminari Mon aka “The Lightning Gate” in Asakusa. Crowded with tourists, but good to see every few years.

The huge paper lantern hanging inside the Kaminari Gate at Sensoji Temple in Asakusa. H3.9m x D3.3m x 700kg (1,543lbs). A dragon in clouds is carved into the base.

After purchasing the seiro and other essential items at Kappabashi and visiting Sensouji Temple and Kaminarimon, we went to a little restaurant and enjoyed a nice lunch. After lunch we traveled a little further afield to view the last hours of the year’s cherry blossoms.

Cherry blossoms have an important place in the hearts of the Japanese people. The seasons change suddenly here and cherry blossoms seem to explode into bloom. For a few days the trees are bright and fluffy and glorious, but as quickly as they appear the individual petals fall to the earth leaving green leaves behind. The fallen flower petals decorate parks, sidewalks and ponds and flow down the rivers in spinning, colorful rafts.

The Japanese people love to walk underneath blossoming cherry trees, and where possible, spread a blanket under the flowers to enjoy lunch and few adult beverages with family and friends.

Since ancient times, as evidenced in literature, poetry (see the famous example above), and artwork, the budding, bloom and fall of cherry blossoms have been seen as a metaphor of all living things, including humans. Cherry blossoms represent a quiet, elegant, pure life with an inevitable, unselfish, beautiful ending. The cherry tree shares its bright raiment with everyone; The blossoms dance in the wind that scatters them. No complaints, no regrets, just the cycle of life.

Modest pink cherry blossoms close to the end

One of my favorite memories is of walking home from the train station late one night after a long day at work. It was a cold night and the wind was blowing. Fallen cherry blossom petals formed a soft, beautiful snowstorm that whirled around me in an unexpected and sudden blessing of nature.

Setsunai 切ない

Lest any druids or tree-huggers among my Gentle Readers be offended, I will not say that trees do not have emotions, but I think we can agree their language skills are limited. Humans however definitely have emotions and lots of words, so allow me to delve a little deeper into the Japanese language and the emotions cherry blossoms evoke in the hearts of many Japanese people (at least the mature ones). If there is even a little bit of an artist or poet hiding among the dusty barrels in your soul’s basement you should find it interesting.

There is a strange word in the Japanese language pronounced “Setsunai” and written 切ない The direct translation of the characters means “can’t cut.” Strange, right?

The dictionaries translate the word as “painful” (both physical and emotional); sad; or even “heartrending sorrow.” But when used in the context of something as beautiful and inevitable as the budding, flowering, falling, scattering and often muddy end of cherry blossoms, it is used to express the emotions of the quite, sad, unavoidable end of a beautiful thing that once gave joy, a natural event that repeats every year. Not hopelessness or despair, in this case, but sadness after beauty.

A human life is (hopefully) much like this cycle. A baby is born and becomes a happy, energetic child. It grows into an adult, is productive and loving, and imparts beauty into the world. The adult grows old; its beauty and energies change. And the day comes when each human’s physical existence fails and their spirit is carried away, perhaps dancing on the wind like the petals of a cherry blossom. Beautiful on the one hand, sad on the other, but definitely setsunai.

Knowing cherry blossoms will appear next year and the cycle of life will continue tempers the sadness at the loss of such great, unselfish beauty, and gives one hope for the future, at least for a while.

I invite you to read Onitsura’s poem at the top of this blog again. Simple but setsunai indeed.

A craftsman, upon realizing a chisel, plane or saw blade won’t cut may jokingly call it “setsunai,” but not in the poetic sense.

The End of the Day

We enjoyed a beautiful day at Kappabashi and Asakusa, complete with a lunch of tempura soba for me and some sort of raw fish for my patient wife. Life is short and sometimes hard, but it has its beautiful moments. I pray you have many such moments, and that your blossoming will be joyous and your dance on the wind graceful.

Fallen cherry blossoms floating quietly on the Shakujii Park pond. A beautiful ending to a short life. Who could ask for more?

YMHOS

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