Vince and Connie Patchwork arrived in Japan just before the cherry blossoms came out in early April. They spent their first week in the country with a family called the Suzukis in Chiba who spoke in raptures about how lucky it was that they had arrived in the country at such a fortuitous time. They'd be able to get an early view of the sakura.
Vince had spent his entire toddlerhood wearing light blue romper pants and the experience had left him with a particular disdain for light pink romper pants and originally anyone wearing them. This prejudice had eventually translated into a distaste for pink in general. To say that he was unimpressed with the cherry blossoms is an understatement. He was totally bewildered as to why anyone would make such a fuss over tiny flowers that weren't adequately adhered to the trees on which they'd grown. No sooner did half a gust of wind come along than all the cherry blossom was sprinkling a fine carpet of petals on the lawn. He couldn't understand why a large segment of the weather forecast was devoted to flowers rather than the possibility of rain. And why, if it were going to rain, the major concern was over what it would do to the blossoms.
Of course, Vince was culturally sensitive enough not to go around bad mouthing the cherry blossoms, but he said nothing in their praise. When someone rhapsodised about their supposed beauty, he remained non-committal or asked: "When can you eat the cherries?" Of course, if the rhapsodiser knew anything about cherries at all, they'd have to admit, "No, no, no. These cherry trees don't have any fruit, just blossoms. We get our cherries from other trees." "Oh, cherryless cherry trees," Vince would nod, trying not to sound sarcastic.
Twelve months later, Vince didn't particularly feel like a different man, but he had survived the sultry Japanese summer which began with the the tsuyu rainy season and ended with the typhoons, an autumn in which the trees seemed a thousand different hues, and a freezing if sunny Japanese winter. He knew just how much smog billowed out of the farms and factories around the tiny district of Saedo, although everyone was blaming the murky atmosphere on Sadam Hussein's burning oil wells. And then, there was suddenly a brightness not only around the community, but everywhere. The sakura had arrived and Vince couldn't keep his eyes off it. It was so refreshing and vital. Vince was moved to write to his father about why the sakura were so impressive in spite of their light pinkness.
a). They're everywhere. You spend the whole year passing these Colditz-like factories and then suddenly one day you discover that they are surrounded by cherry trees. The landscape truly changes, not just in the country but in the city as well. The sakura is always in places you least expect to find it.
b). They're bright. It is hard to escape the fact that spring is one of the wettest seasons and that rain usually brings clouds which generally mean no sunshine. Unlike other flowers and plants that look far better under bright sun shine, the sakura seems to be luminescent. The greyer it gets, the brighter the blossoms becomes. Last week, Osamusan rolled up unexpectedly in his van just as we were preparing to go to bed. He was all excited and insisted that we get into his van and go around to see the sakura. We visited Orimoto Awashima Jinja, a shinto shrine in Yokohama which is dedicated to a female deity and which is especially popular among women. It is noted for promoting good luck and happiness in marriage. It also offers a safeguard against road accidents. With only one street lamp to view it by, the cherry blossoms seemed absolutely brilliant in the night, like pink coral under the water. c). They are temporal in nature. The Japanese claim to see religious significance in the falling blossoms. They represent the fleetingness of life and the fickleness of external beauty. They soon fall like flakes of snow in a scattering called Hanafubuki. For me, the effect is very refreshing. There has been little snow to speak of in Yokohama, this season, but some bitterly cold days all the same. There is something about the falling snow that is a reward for the cold weather and we don't get enough of it here. I guess it's just a novelty because I'm an Australian.
Vince knew that the Japanese usually celebrated the sakura in picnic style, a statement that winter was over and it was time to eat outdoors again. They called this hanami, literally flower appreciation, although as far as Vince could see, it was really an excuse for a booze-up and, even in his first cynical attempts at flower-appreciation during that first year, he could identify with this. He believed that a cherry tree wasn't really in bloom until there was at least one little Japanese man holding a sake cup and pitcher sitting underneath it. Later, when he came to appreciate the blossoms, himself, he discovered that there was even an expression in Japanese, hanayori dango, which described people who preferred the drink and food to the sakura. It was only during his third sakura season in Japan that Vince experienced a real hanami. During the second such season, the Matsumotos and Atsukawas had wanted to take him to Kodomo No Kuni, a huge park for children and the young at heart. They were all set to head off when Mrs. Atsukawa remembered that no alcohol was permitted in Children's Land. At the last minute, they changed their destination to Shiki No Mori Koen, a park that had about a thousand blossom revellers but only two cherry trees. Vince was suitably impressed that good spots for hanami were hard to come by. He had heard that new recruits in companies usually got the job of staking out a picnic area the night before the party and camping there to guard against poachers until the rest of the group arrived, usually in the afternoon.
Vince's first real hanami was at Mitsuzawa Park, which had once been the soccer venue for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. A statue of a man running with an Olympic torch and no soccer ball marked the spot. Mitsuzawa Koen was an athletics stadium by this time and there was a 1300 metre jogging track around the park. This meant that various species of superjocks and keep-fit enthusiasts kept running through the picnic area trampling the newly fallen cherry blossom petals into the ground and giving everyone indigestion.
Vince had a peculiar dislike of joggers in general. Not only did he regard the activity as particularly unhealthy, but he believed that to exhibit one's body in such a manner while ordinary people were eating good food and drinking good booze was to enact a moral invasion akin to the Jehovah's Witnesses trying to change your religious convictions outside Ichigao station. They were certainly more annoying than the roar and rumble of the traffic on the Shuto Expressway, just over the road from the picnic site that Matsumotos had selected.
Nozomi Matsumoto had prepared a feast of onigiri, that morning. Somehow, she could take a clump of shapeless sticky rice and with a vigorous pumping of palms and fingers fashion it in a matter of seconds into a perfect equilateral triangle. In a fit of shameless hanayori dango, the onigiri, with centres of pickled plum, salmon and mentaiko fish eggs, disappeared as fast as it had been made.
Vince need not have worried about going hungry. A Japanese picnic was nothing so much like one of the afternoon teas prepared by his great aunts during his childhood in Australia. He would think he had just finished a huge meal only to discover that that was the hors d'oeuvres. Just as his great aunts had assumed that because he was a growing boy he needed to eat to excess, Japanese cooks felt because he had a big stomach he needed a comparable amount of food to fill it. Vince's big stomach was more the result of too much beer drinking than anything else.
The onigiri was succeeded by fried chicken, senbei wrapped in cheese and seaweed, cold oden, boiled eggs, sashimi, sushi, pizza, pickle salad. And each course had to be liberally watered by beer, whisky, nihonshu, wine, umeshu and shochu. Curried rice, candied seaweed, raw slices of carrot, onion and capsicum, dried fish, dried squid, cold yakisoba ... The list would have gone on had Vince not dropped off to sleep. The sunny morning had turned to grey and was threatening rain, a wind had sprung up and was sprinkling sakura petals in Vince's hair.
It was a month after hanami that Vince and Connie were walking with Nozomi and Osamu along the four kilometre track that circumnavigates the Kodomo No Kuni park. Osamu suddenly reached up and pulled a twig off a tree.
"This is sakura," he explained, "but it's a different variety to the hanami blossom. It blooms later in the year and has many petals on a single flower, not just one." In fact, there were 33 varieties of sakura cherry blossom, all of which bloomed at different times. He had been told that the main variety of blossom, or the one most revered by the Japanese was Someiyoshi. He also discovered that there were far bigger blossoms. The largest was called Yaezakura.
Vince was later to discover all these facts from a Mr. Ishibashi at the Children's Botanical Garden in Hodogaya Ward. If anyone was just right for their job it was Mr. Ishibashi. He oozed enthusiasm once he started to talk about anything horticultural. He took Vince and Connie around the gardens showing them the rose that was named Princess Michiko after the current empress and the persimmon arbour with some 80 different species of the 624 varieties of persimmon that grew in Japan alone. He bustled them out of the persimmon arbour into the bamboo grove where he quickly located a genus that had been brought from Virginia in the United States. This had been the very species of bamboo, Mr. Ishikawa informed them, that Thomas Alva Edison had used in the very first light bulb. Vince was just digesting this as he was led to the sunflower patch.
"These are Vincent Van Gogh's sunflowers," Mr. Ishikawa informed them. "They were brought over from Arles in France where he painted the sunflower series." Mr. Ishibashi apologised to Vince and Connie for the size of the sunflowers.
"Usually, they are two metres or taller," he explained, "but there hasn't been much rain, this year." They didn't stop too long to lament the lack of rainfall, Mr. Ishihara pushed on to show them Newton's apple tree. This tree had been grown from cuttings from the legendary apple tree that provided the falling fruit which inspired the theories of gravity. Mr. Ishihara informed Vince that the original apple had survived Newton by more than a hundred years and finally died in 1814. Cuttings had been transplanted in the Royal Physical Research Centre in London as a symbol to encourage young scientists. In 1962, Sir Gordon Sutherland had brought another cutting from the tree to Japan.
As a finale, Mr. Ishibashi had organised an arachnine spectacular, spider sumo. Only the males, identifiable by their short rounded antennae, as opposed to the long feminine feelers, fight usually over territorial or mating rights.
"Children, young boys in particular, catch the spiders and make them fight," Mr. Ishihara explained.
"What?" Connie asked, rather alarmed, "do they kill each other?" "No, no, no," Mr. Ishihara laughed. "The loser just runs away." Vince was well aware of Connie's distaste for blood sports even when they involved spiders, but she seemed to feel that it was quite acceptable once she discovered that all that was hurt was male vanity. Vince selected the first spider, an Arnold Schwarzenegger among arachnids. Unfortunately, Arnold turned out to be a bit of a wimp and was easily defeated by Connie's spider. Vince, chagrined by his defeat, tried to get his spider to fight again but Arnold wouldn't be in it. Vince had to be content with further proof to his theory that body builders were poseurs.
Mr. Ishihara also informed Vince that cherry blossoms were hardly the end of Japanese hanami. There were flowers and natural events for every season of the year - the plum blossoms in February, the quinces in March, the tulips in April, the morning glories in May, the irises and fireflies in June, the hydrangeas in July, the lotuses in August, singing crickets under the harvest moon in September, chrysanthemums in October, falling autumn leaves in November, camelias in December and January. Everything, it seemed, had its season under heaven.