As cherry blossoms start blooming, the Japanese become restless. Some people travel Japan from south to north following the best of cherry blossoms.
Why Japanese people adore cherry flowers so much?
Old Japanese people likened the cherry blossoms to peoples’ lives.
Cherry blossoms bloom only for a short time. Just after they reach their best, they fall all at once. The flowering period is as short as a week.
For samurai warriors it has been ideal to flourish and, when the time came, be prepared to die.
Ancient poets created many poetries, in which they lamented the ephemeral of the cherry flowers. They found people’s way of life in the lifetime of cherries.
However, the cherry blossoms the ancient Japanese had appreciated were not the ones we are seeing now in towns and famous sights.
The cherry blossoms we see generally in Japan are mostly Somei-Yoshino species.
The Somei-Yoshino species is artificially produced in the Edo period by crossing indigenous cherry trees and produced by cloning . That’s why they bloom all at once in the same area.
Other than Somei-Yoshino species, we have a number of cherry species in Japan. You can enjoy them anywhere.
We also have yellow cherry flowers, called Ukon cherry.
In Tokyo we can enjoy cherry flowers from early March to the end of April.
