Blossoms of Hope

The past weeks have seen an avalanche of images from Japan, a graphic trail of photos and video detailing the destruction and loss following the earthquake and tsunami. The people there have shown incredible fortitude and patience as they continue to search collapsed cities for lost family members, to live indefinitely in crowded shelters, many with no home, school or even city to return to. Added to that have come the nightmarish stories of radiation leaks from the nuclear power plants. Who can doubt that it’s time for something uplifting and unbroken in the pictures from Japan?

I got email yesterday from a friend in Tokyo and she included a few Friday photographs she had taken in the area of Akasaka-Mitsuke in Minato Ward. Tokyo was not badly hit by the earthquake and not at all by the tsunami, and fortunately damage there was minimal, apart from power disruptions. The photos below are evidence that spring has arrived with its symbols of rebirth, its budding fresh growth and its example of ongoing resilience. Just maybe the blooming cherry trees will give some hours and days of comfort and relief to the many still struggling.

In the photograph above the silvery building behind the flowering cherry trees is the Grand Prince Hotel where about 400 families from the hardest hit areas around Sendai are being housed until the end of June. The cost is being covered by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

The photo above is one of a flowering white Spirea, called Yukiyanagi in Japanese. This shrub blooms in spring around the same time as the cherry trees.

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In another topic unrelated to Japan, but something which also came to me in email is a short video from YouTube. Initially I feared it might be another of those ‘cute’ and tired film clips that travel on a constant orbit around the world via email forwards. I was way off on my guess about that. This is a good one.

The short film illustrates the POWER OF WORDS to radically change a message and its effect upon the world. The maker of the short film is Purplefeather. Homage to Historia de un letrero, The Story of a Sign by Alonso Alvarez Barreda; music by Giles Lamb; filmed by RedSnappa and directed by Seth Gardner.

A Special Affinity

One of those golden days in Tokyo, with hints of an invigorating spring now blowing our way, no more than two weeks over the horizon. Just the time for a walk along the Kanda River, through Inokashira Park and on to Kichijôji. A good stretch of the legs and a chance to see in trees and river how the season is growing toward bloom.

And so I get a close-up look at the many cherry trees that make the Kanda something more than unremarkable, and give it that touch of splendor with the harmony of blossoms and water. But mid-March is too early for that sweet combination, branches all a shiver with buds still not ready to reveal their countless pink faces.

The Japanese have a special affinity with the cherry blossom, something that is all but ancient in their culture and tradition. These days the appreciation of spring and the cherry blossoms has taken on a slightly different form, but the recognition of these immemorial flowers is probably buried deep in the soul of all but a scant few Japanese.

From Japan’s earliest literature the cherry blossom has been endowed with a special character that resonates with human experience. It was not only poets who elevated the flower’s qualities, but warriors of the feudal age as well held the cherry blossom to be the perfect symbol of life and death. With its exquisite transience this fragile blossom mirrored the warrior’s likelihood of sudden death in battle. Here one moment, gone the next, or in the words of Macbeth, “Out, out brief candle, life is but a walking shadow…”

Turning to a modern expression of meaning in the spring blossoms, poet Tawara Machi’s 31 syllable tanka puts a different slant on it:

As if in this park

nothing at all has happened

the cherry blossoms

have bloomed, blossomed, scattered;

sakura sakura sakura…

Tawara’s cherry blossoms are seemingly indifferent to her personal concerns. And that is perhaps how very many young Japanese today look at the blossoms of spring. These days hana-mi (flower viewing) parties revolve around chug-a-lug drinking, karaoke and attention more to cell phones than overhead blossoms.

Times change, yet I continue to look for the lost.