Mountain-cherry blossoms

Present-days cherry trees that we normally see in towns are a breed called “Someiyosino”, which was bred in the middle of the Edo period of the eighteenth century. Someiyoshino blooms rapidly in spring and the aspects of the full blooming are beautiful, and people can enjoy holding parties beneath cherry blossoms of Someiyoshino. Furthermore, immediate falling petals of blossoms is emotional with reluctance. Japanese people have loved such aspects, so it might have been the reason that someiyoshino spread to every corner of Japan. Someiyoshino isn’t a normal tree and all the genes of someiyoshino in every place are the same, yes those are clones.

By the way, the origins of the cherry trees are mountain-cherry trees in the mountains. Probably those might not have been very different from other mountainous trees with blossoms. Nonetheless, some characteristics of mountain-cherry blossoms might have influenced the old Japanese people. This time I will write about mountain-cherry trees and the transition to Someiyoshino.




Discoverers of mountain-cherry trees

In ancient Japan the representative blossoms in the intelligent class were plums. Many poets made poems about plum blossoms in Manyosyu, which is the oldest national poetry anthology in the eighth century. And one of the greatest Buddhists in the thirteenth century, Dogen, wrote about plum blossoms as the most significant blossoms. In those situations a famous poet in the twnteenth century, Saigyo, made a lot of poems about cherry blossoms. However, he was a samurai from the start in the most urban city, Kyoto, then he wasn’t the first finder of cherry blossoms. The popularity of cherry blossoms at that time gradually might have grown under the overwhelming popularity of plum trees.

Some people knew the sincerity and beauty of mountain-cherry. I think those people were prayers to deities in many places before the chronicle of ancient Japan. They thought cherry trees were trees that deities came and dwelled. The descendants of them were syugenjas, practicing priests of Shygendo of Japanese mountain asceticism-shamanism incorporating Shinto and Buddhist concepts. The reason of my thinking is that two famous places of mountain-cherry blossoms are both the famous places of practices of shugenjas, Yoshino-yama and Daigo-san. Shintoism orders that practicing people keep clean. Contrarily, Buddhism teaches practicing people to recognize that all things are always changing. Mountain-cherry blossoms are clean and changing. Then the ancient shugenja loved mountain-cherry blossoms, I think.

One current priest of Shugendo says that mountain-cherry blossoms are the devotion to mountain deities and planting mountain-cherry trees is for building clean and beautiful lands. At last mountain-cherry blossoms were religious with some hopes in ancient times. In such scenes there was no place holding for joyful parties.


The largest party of mountain-cherry blossoms in history

A drastic change to viewing mountain-cherry blossoms happened in 1598 at Daigo-ji Temple, Kyoto. A big earthquake devastated Kyoto in 1596, then the Fushimi castle and many houses were destroyed and several thousand citizens were killed. More-worse, the economy plunged. All the citizens of Kyoto, samurais and the emperor’s court members were stricken and lived in somber and melancholy. The then supreme leader, Hideyoshi Toyotomi, might have thought he had to come up with something dumbfounded to change people’s minds.

He decided that the largest party beneath mountain-cherry blossoms in history would be held. He planted over seven hundred mountain-cherry trees from another several mountains on the middle of the slope of Daigo-san, which was one of the most famous places for mountain-cherry blossoms. He ordered some merchants to create new foods and new events with entertainment. He ordered many artists to hold tea ceremonies, Noh, flower arrangements, and dances. Moreover, he ordered clothes tailors to make over four thousand eight hundred cloths for women, the number was the total of three outfits per woman for one thousand six hundred women. The great party was for requiems of the people’s souls who were killed in the earthquake, for giving vitality to people and for the revival of plunged economy. It was in the spring of the year of his death and it was the event that Hideyoshi devoted all the energy in his old body.

After over 100 years since the death of Hideyoshi, the Tokugawa Bakufu built many banks on rivers to control floods. And they planted many cherry trees on the banks. It was to solidify the banks by the footsteps of the people who walked around the cherry trees on the banks to see the cherry blossoms.


As a result the party gave citizens the popularity of viewing cherry blossoms and holding parties beneath cherry blossoms. It made Japanese people continue planting cherry trees and developing new cherry blossoms in normal places in every corner from mountain-cherry blossoms which can live in mountains.

Firstly, cherry trees are dwelling places of deities. Deities are the symbol of life. Then viewing blooming and scattering cherry blossoms is to feel the breath of life. Finally, Someiyoshino is the symbol of Japanese people’s love and enthusiasm for cherry blossoms containing the breath of life.

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