Why Do Cherry Blossoms Bloom All at Once? — The 'Sense of Spring Discomfort' Seen by Motojiro Kajii and Masahiko Shimura
① Anxiety toward full bloom, fiction after they scatter
Motojiro Kajii
is a novelist who occupies a unique position in modern Japanese literature. His work "Lemon", has long been included in high school textbooks, and many have likely read it. It is said to be particularly highly regarded by other writers.
Masahiko Shimura
is a musician who still enjoys strong support from hardcore music fans. He is also a figure whose legacy continues to be passed down, with his song "Wakamono no Subete" being included in music textbooks, increasing his social recognition.
They share two commonalities. First, the fact that they died young. Kajii was 31. Shimura was 29. Both passed away far too soon.
Another commonality is that they both left behind works about the plant known as the "cherry blossom".
"Under the Cherry Trees" (published in 1928)
"Sakura no Kisetsu (Cherry Blossom Season)" (released in 2004)
.
It is already intriguing that these two geniuses who died young chose as their theme the cherry blossom, a plant that symbolizes the beauty of a fleeting moment. But how did they depict the cherry blossoms? That approach is what is unique and stands out for each of them.
The discomfort Kajii felt toward cherry blossoms in full bloom
The opening of "Under the Cherry Trees" is shocking.
"Under the cherry trees, there are corpses buried!"
Why does such an opening hold up?
Generally, few people would imagine "corpses" when looking at cherry blossoms in full bloom. Hanami (flower viewing) is a banquet and a festival. It seems natural for one's eyes to be drawn to their beauty.
But Kajii felt the beauty of the cherry blossoms was "scary." It is too beautiful. It is too uniform.
Is it not because cherry blossomsbloom in an abnormally full state at the same time?
When spring arrives, cherry blossoms all over Japan bloom at once. With a force that seems to fill the sky.
In that sight, Kajii likely sensed anartificial will rather than the beauty of nature.
They bloom as if someone pressed a switch, and they scatter as if someone gave a signal.
Behind that regimented beauty, he read the signs of death.
The cherry blossoms after they scattered, as seen by Shimura
On the other hand, the cherry blossoms depicted by Shimura sing from the beginning of a world where the timing of the full bloom has shifted, with the lyrics "Will you go to a distant town after the cherry blossom season passes?".
His gaze is from the start onwhat remains after they scatter. Not the full bloom. It is the void left after the flowers have departed and the people have disappeared.
And the most characteristic part is a line from the chorus.
"oh, then I will pour my love into it, so I will write a letter, make flowers bloom in a made-up story, and I am moved every time I read it back!"
"Sakura no Kisetsu" does not depict the beauty, transience, or illusions of cherry blossoms.How can one accept the sadness after the flowers wither and make flowers called creativity bloom within oneself? It sings only of that question. This perspective is what stands out as his unique approach.
The reversal of the two men's gazes
Kajii wrote of the premonition of countless deaths behind the "blooming cherry blossoms."
Shimura made the "scattered cherry blossoms" bloom again himself.
Even though they should be looking at the same cherry blossoms, why did the gaze reverse in 80 years?
The man who saw death in full bloom, and the man who created life after they scattered.
Something has happened in between.
However, there is one thing common to the cherry blossoms of both men. It is that they did not use cherry blossoms as a general symbol. For them, cherry blossoms were something more precarious and more personal.
Then why do cherry blossoms all over Japan bloom in full at the same time, as if they had agreed upon it?
② The premise of 'non-uniform cherry blossoms'
To understand this reversal of the two men's gazes, it is necessary to go back in time and reconfirm the original state of the season called "spring."
To answer that discomfort, I will go back in time once. Until the Edo period, spring in Japan was not "all at once."
The standard of plum blossoms
From the Heian to the Edo period, the foremost spring flower that the Japanese loved was the plum blossom. Sugawara no Michizane composed, "If the east wind blows, send your fragrance, O plum blossoms."
Plum blossoms endure the harsh winter and bloom quietly. The fragrance is strong, but the appearance is modest. The greatest characteristic of plum blossoms is that they "shift."
Even plum trees in the same garden bloom on different days depending on the sunlight. Plum trees in the north and south differ by a month. Therefore, "plum viewing" was an individual experience. You wait for your own plum tree to bloom.
It is not a device for everyone to be moved at once. It is a device for enduring loneliness.
The "mountain cherry blossoms" of ancient times were the same. Depending on the mountain slope, altitude, and sunlight, the cherry blossoms bloomed in a scattered manner, like a gradient.
Even on the same mountain, the blooming differs by altitude. The cherry blossoms in the valley and the cherry blossoms on the ridge differ by two weeks.
When the monk Saigyo composed, "I wish to die in spring under the flowers," he must have been gazing at these individual cherry blossoms with individual differences. There, the phenomenon of "synchronization across the entire region" did not exist.
Spring in the past was an accumulation of phenomena that visited each at different times, and flower viewing was not "sharing," but an individual "choice" of which tree to look at.
Transition to visual impact
However, at a certain point, our view of nature was forced to transform.
Modern flower viewing assumes that news flows all at once at the same time, people gather in the same place, and the same scenery is shared. At this time, cherry blossoms cease to be mere plants and begin to function as a social "synchronization system."
The "sign of will" that Kajii felt may have been a sense of discomfort toward this way of nature where it became difficult to feel individual differences.
Also, the fact that Shimura made flowers bloom in a made-up story seems to capture the misalignment of the heart toward cherry blossoms that bloom all at once and scatter all at once.
What they saw were cherry blossoms blooming in an abnormally full state at the same time, as if to fill the sky.
They are cherry blossoms that bloom before the leaves, show no individual variation, and finish their role in about a week of full bloom.
Such cherry blossoms did not exist in the era of Saigyo.
Since when did the Japanese cherry blossom become 'simultaneous'?
From the 'aesthetics of waiting' for plum blossoms to the 'aesthetics of simultaneity' for cherry blossoms.
Where is the turning point?
3The revelation of an illegitimate child from the end of the Edo period, or a 'clone'
Why did cherry blossoms, which once 'did not bloom in unison,' transform into a 'device for simultaneous synchronization' by the time of Kajii and Shimura?
The trick of beautiful cherry blossoms
In fact, the true nature of what we admire today as 'cherry blossoms' in unison and weep over as they scatter is a completely new existence, different from the cherry blossoms Saigyo saw or the ones the residents of Edo loved.
It is the 'Somei Yoshino' which was created at the end of the Edo period and spread with what could be called national policy after the Meiji era.
This cherry blossom has characteristics different from the natural cherry blossoms of the past. It is the fact that they are all 'grafted' and are clones with the exact same genes.
Unlike mountain cherry blossoms that grow from seeds, all Somei Yoshino in Japan are 'copies' separated from a single parent tree. If the genes are the same, naturally, the moment a 'switch' of a specific temperature is turned on, all individuals bloom in unison as if they had agreed upon it.
The two men's perception of cherry blossoms
The true nature of those eerily beautiful, blooming cherry blossoms that Motojiro Kajii intuited were 'burying corpses' was not a natural providence, but 'artificial beauty through cloning technology'.
Kajii sensed the presence of 'corpses' deprived of the freedom of life deep within that controlled beauty.
And in Shimura's era, this cloning device became fully integrated into the infrastructure, coming to dominate even the emotions of the Japanese people. In the void after that 'device' fell silent, Shimura tried to bloom his own non-cloned, fictional story—a one-of-a-kind flower.
Conclusion: From 'Cherry Blossoms Given Meaning' to 'Cherry Blossoms That Create Meaning'
Motojiro Kajii attempted to reclaim individual sensation from the uniformity of the system by driving a wedge of "corpse" into a world that was too perfectly aligned. Masahiko Shimura revived individual narratives from the wreckage of symbolic beauty by blooming his own "
made-up story" in the silence that followed the system's festival. When we connect the trajectories of these two geniuses, we witness the spiritual transition that the Japanese people have undergone over the past hundred years. It is a shift from being "
the side killed by cherry blossoms (beings overwhelmed by externally imposed meaning)" to "the side that fabricates cherry blossoms (beings who continue to generate their own meaning)." The cherry blossoms before us now are not the whimsical nature that Saigyo once saw. They are a forest of beautiful clones, calculated and synchronized. But that is precisely why the question must be asked.
When that "
perfect synchronization" is broken, or when the season passes and the shared frenzy cools, what will remain in your hands? Cherry blossoms will continue to bloom with a cold, unwavering uniformity, as if no one's will were involved. But after we witness their falling, we must begin to write our own "
made-up story." Using the "
death" that Kajii perceived as nourishment, and the "fiction" that Shimura loved as water. Not just being moved by the spring we are given, but
blooming your own flower once again. That is the only way to continue living as an individual in this "world that is too perfectly aligned."