Beneath the Cherry Blossoms, There Was No Rank

When spring comes, everyone does the same thing, as if stamped from the same mold.

Under the cherry trees they spread out a mat, line up their tiered lacquer boxes, pour one another cups of sake, and make a cheerful racket. Hanami, flower-viewing, they call it. People from the office, people from the neighborhood, whole families with their children. When the cherries bloom, they drink beneath them, eat beneath them, laugh beneath them. It is all so utterly ordinary that no one thinks it the least bit strange.

But I know.

That anyone at all, high or low, might forget the order of rank beneath the cherry blossoms and carouse to their heart's content — that such a thing should ever have come to be permitted is, in the long history of this country, not old at all. No, not old.

To begin with, flower-viewing was once a most noble pastime. Long, long ago, the nobles of the capital would gaze at the cherry blossoms, compose their poems, and hold elegant, courtly banquets. That was the beginning of hanami. For common folk to shoulder a lunch box, to climb the cherry trees or lie sprawled beneath them — outrageous, an offense against heaven itself.

(While I am at it — in still older days, when people said "the flower," they did not mean the cherry at all, but the plum. It was much later that the cherry stole the plum's place as the flower above all others. …But that is a story for another time.)

So how did it ever become this pastime open to anyone at all?

The spark came from the authorities above. In Edo there was the eighth shogun. This lord had cherry trees planted in great numbers all about the city — at Asukayama, along the Sumida embankment, and elsewhere — and then threw the places open to the common people: here, he declared, anyone may come, and anyone may make merry. It was in the Kyōhō era, so I have heard.

Some say it was his gracious wish that the townsfolk, stifled under so strict an age, might at least in springtime stretch their wings a little. Others say his real design was to have the crowds tramp the embankments firm underfoot. Which of these was the truth of it, I could not say.

But what a great thing that "mercy" went on to bring forth — that, I saw with my own eyes, there at Asukayama.

◇ ◇ ◇

The spring of 1732 (Kyōhō 17). Asukayama, that day, was as though a cloud of cherry blossom had come down and settled upon the earth.

As far as the eye could reach — cherry, cherry, cherry. How many hundreds of mats must have been spread out beneath them. Here and there curtains had been strung up for the viewing, and some had slung their shed kosode — their outer robes — from branch to branch to serve as a folding screen. Lift the lid of a lacquer box and there was rolled egg, and kamaboko, the steamed fish cake, and vegetables simmered down dark and sweet. On every side the pop, pop of stoppers pulled from sake flasks. A shamisen. Hands clapping time. The shrill delight of children.

What astonished me was the company gathered there.

There were the well-heeled masters of the merchant houses, and there was a knot of peddlers in soot-blackened hanten work coats. Here and there, too, the figure of a samurai with a sword thrust through his sash. And all of them, beneath the same cherry trees, wearing the same flushed red faces, were laughing. On the hill at Ueno it was never like this. That is temple ground, and so: no music, please; no blossoms by night, please; nothing but to view them decorously, in hushed good order. But here at Asukayama it was bureikō — all rank set aside, no holds barred. Sing, dance, play the mummer's fool; no one minded in the least.

Sure enough, on a felt rug a little way off, a young fellow had thrown a woman's robe over himself, fixed an okame mask — the round, laughing face of a homely woman — over his own, and was setting his companions rolling with a hyottoko clown's dance. A niwaka, they called it: a bit of theater dreamed up on the spot. I too stopped in spite of myself and laughed out loud.

And at the very edge of that ring of laughter.

An old, old man sat by himself. It seemed a little girl, a granddaughter by the look of her, had led him there by the hand. Whether he looked at the niwaka or looked at the cherry blossoms, he only gazed vacantly about him, his mouth half open.

And from his eyes, a tear slid slowly down.

"Grandpa, what's the matter?" the granddaughter asked, peering worriedly up into his face.

The old man wiped the tear away with a wrinkled hand and laughed, in a cracked voice.

"No, it's nothing… it's only that I am so thankful, is all."

As I happened to be near, I held out my sake flask toward him. "A cup, old fellow? Tears don't suit a flower-viewing."

The old man gave a little nod, took the cup, sipped once, and then, with feeling, began to talk.

"When I was young, about your age… cherry blossoms were a thing you stole a look at in the garden of a samurai house, or of some very great shop. That the likes of us, who live hand to mouth from one day to the next, should come out into the open like this — drink our sake under the cherry trees, and dance… why, I never dreamed of it. Not in my dreams."

The old man looked up at the branches in full bloom.

"And now look. Samurai and peddler alike, under the same tree, wearing the same face, getting drunk together. That young one on the next rug over, dancing with a mask on his face. …It has become a good world. Long life — it is worth living, if only for this."

And just then.

A gust of wind swept through, and all at once the blossoms fell together. Petals came down like snow — onto the mats, into the sake cups, onto the old man's white hair. Someone let out a cry of "Ah!" On every side hands reached up. Children ran this way and that, chasing the petals.

The old man caught that snow of blossom gently in both his hands, and this time he laughed aloud — the tears spilling down his cheeks all the while, with a face on which you could not tell whether he was weeping or laughing.

On the sly, I slipped a slice of the finest rolled egg onto the little granddaughter's dish. The girl looked blank for a moment, and then broke into a smile.

◇ ◇ ◇

These days, flower-viewing has become an utterly ordinary thing.

When spring comes, everyone spreads a mat beneath the cherry trees with the face of one doing the most natural thing in the world. People even quarrel from early morning over staking out a good spot. That "no-holds-barred beneath the blossoms" the old man wept over and gave thanks for — not one soul thinks it anything to be thankful for any longer.

When you have lived a long time, it is a curious thing to watch. A pastime that had been so outrageous, so rank an offense against heaven, becomes within a mere handful of generations an ordinary spring scene, a thing simply taken for granted. The sense of its preciousness wears thin. And yet that is well enough, I think. For a thing to become taken for granted means only this: that it has taken root, and taken root deep.

Every year, whenever I watch the cherry blossoms all fall together, the face of that old man comes back to me of a sudden — there at Asukayama, catching the snow of blossom in both his hands, weeping and laughing at once.

He is long since gone. And yet every year, when spring comes round, beneath the cherry trees the length and breadth of this country, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people catch the snow of blossom in both their hands, just as the old man did that day, and narrow their eyes and murmur, "Ah — what a fine day." That one joy the old man savored so deeply that day — its faces exchanged entirely, one for the next — comes faithfully into blossom, year upon year, in the breast of yet another someone.

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