Hanami

The last couple of days, we’ve been reliving scenes from Tanazaki Junichiro’s The Makioka Sisters, a novel about an old Osaka family in the twilight of its wealth and prestige (in a Japan experiencing the twilight of its traditional ways just prior to WWII). In the novel, the sisters, as do most Japanese, take part in “hanami,” or cherry blossom viewing. They visit certain famous sites in Kyoto each spring, including the Heian Shrine and Maruyama Park, where they appreciate a famous old weeping sakura in its own twilight years.

We also visited the Heian Shrine and Maruyama Park this week. The Heian Shrine boasts a dazzling array of weeping cherries in an arbor area. There, the air itself almost seems pink. We enjoyed green tea ice cream in a resting spot near a pond, perhaps where Tanizaki’s fictional Makioka sisters would have rested to enjoy the blossoms floating by on the breeze.

We waited until evening to visit Maruyama Park with its famous weeping cherry. Tanizaki notes, pre-WWII, that this stately tree is already declining, though it’s still today the centerpiece of the park. The experience of evening hanami was quite an adventure. We were there with thousands of other blossom enthusiasts, many who had gone earlier in the day and tarped off pieces of ground for picnics under the illuminated branches. Surrounding the picnic area were 50-60 food vendors selling everything from barbequed mochi (I’m sure there’s a real name for this delicious treat) to takoyaki (fried octopus) to fish on a stick (note that this isn’t fishsticks—it’s actually small fish ON a stick, like a corn dog with eyes). I’m guessing there were many, many blearly-eyed and hungover Kyoto business people the next day. Cherry blossom viewing in Kyoto can be quite a circus!

As the blossoms start to fade and fall like snow, I’m reminded of Tanizaki’s passage about the Makioka sisters’ own hanami experience: "The cherries in the Heian Shrine were left to the last because they, of all the cherries in Kyoto, were the most beautiful. Now that the great cherry in Gion was dying and its blossoms were growing paler each year, what was left to stand for the Kyoto spring if not the cherries in the Heian Shrine? And so, coming back from the Western suburbs on the afternoon of the second day, and picking that moment of regret when the spring sun was about to set, they would pause, a little tired, under the trailing branches, and look fondly at each tree--on the lake, by the approach to a bridge, by a bend in the path, under the eaves of the gallery. And, until the cherries came the following year, they would close their eyes and see again the color and line of a trailing branch."