Japanese Cherry Blossoms

From the Beauty of Life to the Sublimity of Sacrificial Death

Every spring, cherry blossoms cover the entirety of the Japanese archipelago, appearing first in Okinawa and then all the way to Hokkaido, presenting a spectacular view. For the Japanese, it is the blossoms, not the fruit or the tree trunks, that are the source of the cherry tree's importance. Cherry blossoms, with their wide range of meaning, are an excellent example of how a polysemic symbol operates in practice and how it contributes to communicative opacity. Its polysemy demonstrates the fundamental nature of meanings, that meanings are relational — for example, women in relation to men — and processual — life leading to death. Also, the polysemy springs from the multiple structures of the Japanese Weltanschauung — the normative structure and the structure leading to an alternative imagination.

In addition, cherry blossom viewing (hanami), plays an essential role in establishing the collective identity of every social group within Japan as well as Japan and the Japanese as a whole, as it has been an important ritual/recreation at all levels of society. The historical development of the meanings of this symbol shows how different dominant meanings surfaced in different historical contexts, and that polysemy is not a timeless set of meanings set in stone.

Furthermore, the beauty of cherry blossoms was naturally transformed into the sublimity of patriotism as Japan's imperial ambitions heightened its militarism — the beauty of falling petals represented the sublimity of patriotic sacrifice. In this process the aesthetic played a key role in creating communicative opacity whereby the direct transference of the beauty of cherry blossoms to the sublimity of sacrifice was hardly recognized even by those who were to lose their lives.

Polysemy

HUMAN LIFE/REPRODUCTIVITY; AGRARIAN PRODUCTIVITY

Unambiguously, in Japanese culture the dominant meaning of cherry blossoms, seen as pink blossoms against the blue sky, is the celebration of life, youth, and vigor. In Japan's ancient agrarian cosmology, cherry blossoms were thought to be the symbolic equivalent of rice, the most sacred plant. Each spring, the Mountain Deity descends on a cherry blossom petal to rice paddies where he lodges (yadoru), becoming the Deity of Rice Paddies (Ta-no-Kami), in order to look after agricultural production. This most powerful of all deities offers his own soul, embodied in grains of rice, to humans, who raise the rice to full maturity under the warm rays of the Sun Goddess and, in the fall, give him in return a gift of a bounty of grains. The term sakura (cherry blossoms) is written with two characters: sa (the spirit of the deity) and kura (the seat); that is, it is the seat for the deity when he descends to the rice paddies. Farmers therefore have traditionally taken the appearance of cherry blossoms as a signal to prepare for planting rice seedlings (Figure 1 and Plate 1). In the fall, after being feted with offerings of food by farmers during the harvest ritual, the deity returns to the mountains (Miyata 1993; Sakurai 1976; Suzuki 1991: 6–9). Some scholars suggest that sa in sakura (cherry blossoms) has the same root as sa in such terms as "to prosper" (sakaeru), "to be prosperous" (sakan), "good fortune" (sachi), and "rice wine" (sake), reinforcing the symbolic association of cherry blossoms with the life force (Saito 1979 [1985]: 45–46; Yamada 1977: 21).

The belief in cherry blossoms as the abode of the deity gave rise to a practice of wearing the blossoms on one's head in order to receive his blessings (Yamada 1977: 116). This appears already in the Man'yoshu — the earliest collection of Japanese poems, dating from the eighth century. In one poem, the poet sings of the land of the emperor engulfed in the fragrance of cherry blossoms because men and women are wearing the flowers in their hair (Omodaka [1961] 1983: 39–40). The tradition continued until later periods, evolving into geisha wearing a rice stalk bearing grains.

Of the two major religions of Japan, Shintoism is generally in charge of matters related to life, such as birth celebrations and weddings. Buddhism, introduced to Japan during the sixth century, from India via China and Korea, takes care of most matters related to death, such as funerals and so-called ancestor worship. In Buddhism, flowers occupy important symbolic space, including lotus flowers, on which the Buddha sits or stands. The Pure Land denomination, which became popular among both the folk and aristocrats during the late Heian period (794–1185), when the ancien régime was crumbling, portrayed paradise (gokuraku jodo) as resplendent with flowers and birds all through the four seasons and music constantly floating in the air. Flowers are the major motifs of the designs of high-ranking monks' ceremonial robes. The association of flowers with death and the afterworld led to the custom of flowers as an important offering at the ancestral alcove in individual homes or at grave sites. Importantly, however, cherry blossoms are never used for these purposes. In earlier times, even though cherry trees grew only in the mountains, cherry blossoms were not symbolically associated in any direct way with the mountains, which were believed to be one of the spaces to which the dead departed (Miyata 1993: 3–4; Roubaud 1970).

THE HEIGHT OF LIFE/LOVE AND LOSS

Besides the celebration of life, another dominant meaning of cherry blossoms throughout history has been the celebration of love — an intense relationship between a man and a woman. In the aforementioned Man'yoshu, there are fourteen poems in which cherry blossoms appear, all with "sunny meanings," as Edwin Cranston notes: "aware [pathos over impermanence] — an important ethos in later history — has no place in these sunny glades" (Cranston 1993: 539).

Although the Chinese aesthetic of plum blossoms was embraced by the elite of the ancient period (250–1185 CE), by the time of the Kokinwakashu, a...