ヘ短調作品３４

The Cherry-Blossoms in Japan no.1

The Cherry-Blossoms in Japan

The season of cherry-blossom in Vancouver is over heralding the approaching high-spring. The blossoms added to the scenic beauty of the ever-green city, but did not call up my nostalgia for Japan. They looked slightly strange. Belonging to the familiar species in Japan, they visited and left Vancouver in a different manner.

Different surrounding landscapes may be a plausible reason. However, it seems to me that the most distinctive is in the manner of ending their lives. The blossoms in Vancouver remained fairly long on the branches and faded into pale color, mismatched with young leaves. In the least windy city, we enjoyed an even calmer Indian summer in April, which began and ended like a lamb. In Japan they fall from their branches with a storm in spring, before the tree begins to drink spring rain and to be luxuriant with green leaves.

The Japanese people’s attachment to the blossom is well-known. It is their favorite subject in art and literature, and highly regarded as the national flower. Why does it attract the Japanese so much? Lovely, it is surpassed by many other flowers. While a cluster of cherry-blossoms deserves to be ranked highly, it never threatens to rival a piece of rose in form and color even according to the authentic Japanese canon of floral beauty. So we cannot account for their attachment to the blossoms because of the visual beauty alone. The Japanese way of appreciating a flower is different from the Western way and characterized as literary. “Don’t appreciate a flower only in full bloom.” is a maxim accepted among not only amateurs but ordinary people and is representative of the Japanese exquisite beauty-consciousness. Such a feeling especially for the cherry-blossoms would provide a clue to finding the mental attitude unique of the Japanese.

They even appreciate falling blooms. Their taste for ephemeral beauty underlies this attitude. Short-life is essential for exalting beauty to its supremacy. Typical of this kind of beauty, fireworks lose their brilliant light in a moment and hence are beautiful. Otherwise, they are no more than a blaze of neon signs downtown. For the Japanese, the cherry-blossoms should not be long-lived but fall quickly. Blessed with seasonal varieties in landscape, they are happy to find an eternal life in anything ephemeral and evanescent.

Let’s look at a Japanese favorite scene. There is a hill, covered with a dense forest, which sprawls over the central part of an old city. In the mist of a morning, only the masonry of a mossy stone-fence that reflects on the water betrays a history of the city. This is an old castle surrounded with its moat, the origin of which is traced back to the age of shogunate Japan. Early in the morning, some petals of the cherry-blossoms begin to fall and slip into the mist. As soon as the sun sweeps away the mist, the old castle looms with its keep silhouetting against the blue sky. Fretted with petals, the moat mirrors cherry-trees on the rampart yielding to a blast of wind. The petals on the water form a cleanly beautiful pattern varying with a capricious breeze. When a spring storm visits, it whirls up petals high in the air and fiercely blows them against a passerby’s face. They are snow flakes dancing in the bright spring. The splendor of breathtaking beauty is what the Japanese people eagerly await every year. The moat have been fully carpeted with pinkish white petals until the eastern part of the city is overshadowed by the castle.

The Cherry-Blossoms in Japan no.2

The passer-by can indulge in a romantic sentiment, resigning himself to the blossom storm and realize his short and beautiful fate. He can taste a sentimental ecstasy watching petals dance, when he identifies himself with the blossoms. He wishes that his end would be beautiful like this. The fall of the blossoms suggests death. So, this emotion aroused by the scene is easily associated with beautiful death, the samurai’s philosophy, which is reduced to the problem how to prepare himself for his death in service of his lord. Therefore, the blossom of feminine appearance traditionally symbolizes the very masculine aesthetics.

The militarist-ruled government did not hesitate to exploit this feeling and to discipline recruits into determined soldiers of suicidal tendency. During World War II, the blossoms were unfortunate to play the leading role as an official militaristic emblem opposite the imperial crest of chrysanthemum, representing self-sacrifice for the divine emperor. The ephemeral beauty of the blossoms induced many soldiers to sacrifice themselves. A good cherry-blossom should fall quickly. Likewise it is un-Japanese for a good Japanese soldier long to survive his comrades. They overcame the horror of death through their identification with the blossoms. Every year, the cherry-trees in Yasukuni Shrine, dedicated to soldiers sung or unsung, bloom in memory of their valiancy. A piece of the blossom is a reincarnation of a soldier who fell in battle and was triumphantly received into the Shrine.

In spite of the sorrowful collaboration with the War, I love the literary sentiment that the Japanese hold for the blossoms and am proud of the unique delicacy of the Japanese. We know the glorification of death in terms of martyrdom for religious belief, self-sacrifice for love in Western country, where the glorious death is compensated with garlands. In my knowledge, however, there is no symbolic association between fallen flower and death in Western countries except The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde. In the last scene, the old giant meets again a boy under a tree covered with white blossoms, who now presents himself with stigmata on his palms and feet and invites the giant to his garden. In the afternoon, the giant is found “lying dead under the tree, all covered with blossoms”. Although the author did not utterly refer to blossoms in the falling process, it seems to me that the blossoms in the context are more than a shroud of his body, in celebration of his departure for Paradise. While Wilde’s sense may not be very parallel to the proper Japanese one, anyone who loves the scene can understand the Japanese way of appreciating the cherry-blossoms.


今から２５年前にカナダのバンクーバーに滞在中に英会話学校に通っていた。その学校に提出した英作文である。ネタがないというか、日本人はお粗末な語学力から、外国人の偏見に満ちた「日本人論」を結局支持してしまう。私も桜について書くことになった。芸者について作文は書かなかったことだけは誓える。桜、菊、天皇、神風とわれながらあきれるほど陳腐な日本人による日本人論であるが、今にして想えば、恥ずかしながらも懐かしい。

写真はバンクーバーの桜である。日系人の多いバンクーバーで、日本の文化「花見」を楽しむ会のサイトができた。私がいた頃にはそんな光景は見たことがない。カナダの Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Picnic 要するに hanami の会のものである。ゴザではなく、イスに座っている。こんな工夫で日本の花見文化がうまくカナダに移植されていくのかどうか。興味のある方は下をクリックされるとよい。

http://www.boardoftrade.com/sov_page.asp?pageID=1896

バンクーバーの「日本食」のイメージに興味のある方は下をクリックされるとよい。屋台がないのか、お届けにあがるという趣向であろうか。ベントウ・ボックスは１０カナダドルである。酢の物サラダ、カリフォルニア巻き寿司、エビの天ぷらが入っている。現在カナダドルはいくらだろうか。

http://www.vcbf.ca/site_assets/www.vcbf.ca/images/dynamic/Picnic.pdf