[Essay] The Plum Waiting for the Cherry Blossoms ~Aobura Literature Club~

I exchange the ten-thousand-yen bill I was handed for five-thousand-yen bills.
I tend to run out of five-thousand-yen bills.
Umeko Tsuda has come to occupy the majority, and Inazo Nitobe is rarely seen. I gently smooth out a crumpled five-thousand-yen bill featuring Inazo Nitobe that I encountered for the first time in a while on my desk. As I trace the paper fibers with my fingertips, I think of him vaguely.

When it comes to Inazo Nitobe, I cannot help but have the impression of him as a person of the "cherry blossoms."
In "Bushido," he takes up the cherry blossom as a symbol to convey the spirituality and aesthetics of the Japanese people to the West.

The scattering cherry blossoms.
Their appearance of scattering gracefully has often been spoken of as a symbol of a "noble death."

I feel as though only that one aspect has been emphasized. I wonder what he thought from beyond the grave as he watched many young people die with the image of cherry blossoms in the wars that followed.

For him, the cherry blossoms must have been more than just that.

A few years ago, when I traveled through the Tohoku region, I remembered the cherry blossoms I saw around Morioka.

Pale petals were blooming all at once on the riverside where a chilly wind still remained. Receiving the light from the sky, their appearance, blooming all over the branches, was surprisingly bright. It was as if spring had suddenly appeared in the world.

He composed a poem like this.

If you must break it,
the plum branch that is broken,
it is only by being broken
that the flower's color and fragrance
are added all the more.

I wish to become a bridge across the Pacific.
These are words that Inazo Nitobe often spoke.

He went to America to try to ease the worsening Japan-US relations. However, it is said that only cold reactions awaited him.
This is the poem said to have been composed around that time.

The spring that will eventually come after the plum blossoms bloom.
The cherry blossoms blooming in full glory under the sky of his hometown, Morioka.

Rather than a symbol of a noble death, it was a scene that made one feel the vitality of life and the richness of spring. I wonder if he was picturing that scene somewhere in his heart. When I think of that, this poem also feels somewhat like a poem about "the plum waiting for the cherry blossoms."

By the way, Inazo Nitobe and Umeko Tsuda are depicted on the five-thousand-yen bill. It is not widely known that these two were close.

Both were Christians, proficient in English, and studied abroad in America during the same era.
When Umeko Tsuda established a school for women's education, Inazo Nitobe actively cooperated. It is said that he called himself the "uncle of the school" and gave lectures, and even took over her classes when she was unwell.

I wonder what he was thinking as he watched the female students gathered in the classroom. Perhaps he felt the presence of cherry blossoms in full bloom in the figures of the young women who were learning and would eventually go out into society.

Today, March 8th, is International Women's Day.

Nitobe, who compared himself to a "plum" whose branches are broken, and "Ume"ko, who tried to raise the social status of Japanese women through a broad perspective and high education.

Are the "cherry blossoms" that the two of them were quietly waiting for blooming somewhere in this country now?

I realized that I have never read a book by Inazo Nitobe. I think I will read one next time.

I gaze for a while at the crumpled five-thousand-yen bill I just smoothed out. Then, I quietly put it away in the back of the safe.
Instead, I handed over a new five-thousand-yen bill featuring Umeko Tsuda, which still retained the scent of paper, to the register.

Outside, the plum blossoms must be blooming in some garden.
Quietly waiting for the spring that will come after that.

I would like to participate in this theme.
Thank you in advance.