CHERRY-TREE AT KYOMIDZU
fast replacing the narrow streets and little wooden houses of old Yedo; the Yashiki or Daimios’ houses and gardens are gone, replaced by foreign houses,—Tokyo still retains her cherry-trees. No modern reformer has ever dared to sweep away her avenues of sakura, for to the Japanese the cherry is something more than an ordinary flower; it is difficult, if not impossible, for our Western minds to enter into their conception of it. To them the soul of the sakura, or cherry blossom, is the soul of Bushido (Chivalry), and the heart of Bushido is the heart of Japan. One of their songs says—
Hana wa sakura yo,
Hito wa bushi.
(Among flowers the cherry,
Among men the samurai.)
The precepts of Chivalry were started first as the glory of the élite, but grew in time to be the aspiration of the whole nation, and they found their ideal in the sakura. The phrase, Chitte koso sakura nari, meaning “It’s a cherry blossom, it falls when it must,” was taught in the old feudal days—how to die from loyalty as the cherry blossom,—the ethic of Death was the highest. So to this day their ethics remain the same, and Tokyo retains her cherry-trees, which in spring transform the town into a garden of blossom. The poet Bashio sang in his hokku poem—
Hana wo kumo
Kane wa Uyeno ka
Asakusa ka.
(A cloud of flowers!
Is it the bell from Uyeno
Or from Asakusa?)
It is true that wherever the clouds of blossom are low they will shut out the prospect in Tokyo, and one is unable to tell whether the bell which sounds from far away is that of Asakusa or Uyeno.
The number of different kinds of cherry-trees seems unlimited; Japanese authorities quote one hundred distinct varieties. The first, and almost the most beautiful, to flower, is the Ito sakura or drooping cherry, with pendent branches like a weeping willow, and so-called from ito, meaning thread. These trees attain to a great size and make magnificent specimens. Almost at the same time bloom the Higan Sakura—equinox cherries—with white single flowers or pale pink. Such are most of the trees at Uyeno, of majestic size, planted, it is said, by one of the Tokugawa Regents in imitation of the hills at Yoshino, though Asakusa yama, a hill in the suburbs of Tokyo, is more often spoken of as the new Yoshino. The Ukon sakura is very lovely, with its clusters of pale greenish-yellow double blossoms, but is rather scarce, and a variety known as Yaye hotoye has single and double blossoms on one tree,—yaye meaning single and hotoye double. The Yoshino cherry I have already described; Hi sakura has double blossoms, deep crimson in bud, and bright pink when open. There seems to be a never-ending list of these lovely trees, in bewildering variety—early and late kinds, single, semi-double and double, large and small, from pure white through every shade of blush pink to light crimson, and the one beautiful pale yellow blossom, its outer petals just flushed with pink, suggesting the colouring of a tea-rose rather than a cherry blossom. The double varieties of course bear no fruit, but even the single “equinox cherries” bear none, so the Japanese are satisfied with their splendid blossom and do not worry about the poor insipid little fruit, which is all a cherry represents to them; but they will salt the leaves and drink cherry-flavoured tea under the pink canopy of flowers during the time of the cherry blossoms, when, in the gladness of spring, all the world is making merry.
CHAPTER X
WISTARIA AND PÆONY
The last petals of the cherry blossoms have only just fallen, and Nature hastens to provide a new treasure for the flower kingdom, and the first blooms of the wistaria Fuji no hana will be opening at the base of the quickly growing racemes. Not the far-famed Wistaria multijuga, whose immense long sprays of delicate mauve flowers are so associated throughout the world with the name of Japan, but the early-flowering wistaria, Brachy botris, with its tufts of white blossoms completely covering the closely pruned branches before any trace of a leaf appears. It would seem as if this modest white wistaria had been allowed by nature to bloom so early, for fear she should be overlooked and not appreciated when her more showy successor flings her purple mantle over the land. The Royal Fuji, fancifully called Niki-so, meaning “plant of the two seasons,” because, appearing between the third and fourth months (old calendar), it belongs both to spring and summer, has rightly attained her high rank among the floral kingdom of Japan, for in no other country can be seen a restaurant set out for the entertainment of perhaps a hundred guests, who will all feast wrapped in the purple haze of a roof of wistaria blossoms, all from a single vine.