Advertisement

Blush, it’s cherry blossom season

The blooming of cherry blossoms is an event to celebrate in Japan and other parts of the northern hemisphere. This year's late bloom has reached its peak

A visitor photographs cherry blossom on trees in Greenwich Park in south London, April 10, 2014. (REUTERS/Toby Melville)

It's ironic that some of the most beautiful flowering cherry trees do not produce any fruit. Yet, when they come into bloom in spring, entire landscapes blush a pale, rosy pink. The most celebrated blooms, of course, are in Japan when sakura or ume trees burst into flower. In fact, so ingrained in culture is this event that the Japanese have a special word for camping or picnicking under a flowering cherry tree - Hanami.



During WWII, the cherry blossom was a symbol of nationalism in Imperial Japan and was used in propaganda to motivate soldiers. Japanese fighter pilots painted cherry blooms on their aircraft before they set out for war. In fact the first kamikaze (suicide mission) had a subunit called Yamazakura or wild cherry blossom. The cherry blossom is a leitmotif in Japanese poetry, particularly haiku, and in art. Irezumi, the traditional art of Japanese tattoo, also uses a richness of cherry blossom imagery.  

Today, the martial significance of cherry blossoms has faded into history but the event of the cherry blossom season is still tracked with precision by the Japan Meteorological Agency, which tracks and reports the sakura zensen (cherry blossom front) as it moves northwards up the Japanese archipelago as warm weather approaches.


It's not only in Japan that cherry blossoms paint the landscape. Cherry blossoms have travelled with the Japanese diaspora to Australia, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and Brazil. In China, South Korea and northern India, where the trees grow naturally, the mass flowering of cherry trees is an event to rejoice over.



In Washington, DC, the peak bloom of cherry blossoms is tracked very closely, with tabular data on the color and maturity of the flowers. Walkers in Tidal Basin frequently post Twitter updates on the bloom. This year, cold weather in March led to an unusually late bloom, the most delayed flowering since 2002.