Since the eighth century, the Japanese have heralded the start of spring with festivities under the flowering cherry blossom trees. The blooms’ arrival signifies the end of winter and that change is in the air. They serve as a symbol of the transience of existence and provide an excuse for a hanami party.
However, 2020 is different, given that novel coronavirus COVID-19 has unfortunately led to cancelled hanami parties and the suspension of almost all sakura light-up events in the city. The Tokyo government has advised against gathering en masse, which means no large-scale picnicking on blankets and getting drunk on the joy of life. It’s a major disappointment, especially to everyone who has to remain indoors and miss out on the gorgeous spring weather.
Some companies are taking advantage of the atmosphere of jishuku (voluntary self-restraint) by offering alternative ways to enjoy the cherry blossoms. For example, Nihon Kotsu, Tokyo’s largest taxi operator, is running a “hanami taxi”. From March 20 to April 10 passengers can experience a two-hour tour of famous sakura spots for ¥10,280. Tokyo-based Space Market, which offers a marketplace of unused or idle venues for on-demand rental use, has over 100 “indoor hanami” private rooms that can be rented by the hour, some with views of cherry trees and some with interiors decorated with artificial cherry blossoms and sakura wall projections!
However, these options still involve leaving the house. For those of you who want to enjoy the Cherry Blossom season from the comfort of your own home, here are some tips to enjoy hanami and reduce your risk of infection:
TV:
Japanese weather channel Weather News has released 50 virtual reality videos that explore the best cherry blossom attractions throughout Japan. Released a couple of years ago, these 360º videos have a soothing soundtrack underscoring the sounds of hanami. Click here to check them all out! Parks featured include Showa Kinen Koen in Tachikawa, the Nakameguro River and the Chidorigafuchi Moat near the Imperial Palace.
My company, Maction Planet, holds a hanami event each year. We have cancelled this year’s event following government guidelines. We made a video of the 2017 event which we put up on our YouTube. Grab a beer and join in the fun!
Sake:
Since rice is the lifeblood of sake, it owes a lot to cherry blossoms and their impact on early rice farming. The gods were thought to harbor themselves in cherry trees when they descended into villages; the blooming of the cherry blossoms heralded the arrival of the gods, and signaled the beginning of the rice-planting season. Furthermore, although beer, wine and chuhai are the current hanami tipples of choice, sake was undoubtedly the most popular in the early days of hanami.
Traditionally, sake uses a set of very specific yeasts, carefully chosen over centuries of experience for their ability to produce great sake. However, the Yamaguchi Brewery Association recently discovered a new type of yeast suitable for brewing sake – and that yeast lives inside cherry blossoms. With the help of researchers at the National Institute of Technology Ube College, this yeast was extracted and subsequently named Yamaguchi Cherry Yeast (Yamaguchi Sakura Kobo). It’s been used by breweries to create a number of different sake from the low-alcohol (5.5% ABV) Hana Nara Tsubomi by Sakai Brewery, to the karakuchi junmai Sakura No Shizuku (15% ABV). Sake made with Yamaguchi Cherry Yeast is said to be more mellow and sweet compared to conventional sake.
Now that we have the right sake for hanami, we need the right receptacles. Gifu-based Marumo Takagi, a company which makes a large variety of pottery, glasses, lacquerware, wood products, and ceramics has created a beautiful sake cup to which the addition of sake causes the cherry tree imprinted in the cup to bloom! A video says a thousand words, so watch here to see the effect in all its glory. The sake cup, which retails for 3,300 yen (US$31.05), can be ordered here.
Books:
Now is the perfect time to get to all those books that you have been intending to read. One I just finished is called “The Sakura Obsession”. It follows the pioneering work of an English eccentric, Collingwood “Cherry” Ingram. Without him, Japan’s beloved cherry blossoms could have gone extinct. Ingram fell in love with sakura when he visited Japan on his honeymoon in 1907. He was so taken with them that he brought back hundreds of cuttings with him to England. Years later, upon learning that the Great White Cherry had virtually disappeared from Japan, he buried a living cutting from his own collection in a potato and repatriated it via the Trans-Siberian Express. In the years that followed, Ingram sent more than 100 varieties of cherry trees to new homes around the globe. The amazing tale is recounted by Naoko Abe, a Japanese journalist and nonfiction writer. She was the first female political writer to cover the Japanese prime minister’s office, the foreign ministry, and the defense ministry at Mainichi Shimbun. The Japanese edition won the prestigious Nihon Essayist Club Award in 2016 and she has now rewritten the book with new material for English-language readers.
For younger readers, Sakura’s Cherry Blossom is a lovely tale exploring a little girl’s experience immigrating to a new country. Sakura’s dad gets a new job in America, so her family moves there from Japan. She misses her grandmother and the cherry blossom trees. One day she meets and slowly befriends Luke, her neighbor. When her grandmother becomes ill, though, her family takes a trip back to Japan. Sakura is sad when she returns to the US and reflects on all she misses. Luke does his best to cheer her up and tells her about a surprise he knows she’ll love, but she’ll have to wait until spring. No spoilers for the conclusion! Sakura’s Cherry Blossoms examines the power of friendship through Robert Paul Weston’s poetic text and Misa Saburi’s exquisite illustrations.
Bring the flowers to you:
Get rid of your “コロナ疲れ” (Corona Tsukare or the Corona Blues) by ordering flowers and cherry blossoms to your house. A number of flower shops are offering cherry blossom arrangements for those who want to enjoy some real sakura in their home. Call up your local florists, who could probably do with some support given the current crisis, and ask them to do a zero-contact drop off of some flowers to your home.
Look out the window:
The simplest solutions are sometimes the best. If you are lucky enough to have some cherry trees visible from your window or balcony, grab a drink and some snacks and enjoy.
Cherry blossoms aren’t just aesthetically beautiful. They represent finitude, the ephemerality of life and the interconnectedness of Everything. We need the spirit of hanami now more than ever. It can help put the pandemic, and our existence, into perspective. The sun always rises and sets. The seasons come and go. The sakura visit briefly each year. And the citizens of Earth will party under the blooms once again. We continue.
