Japanese culture has always retained an air of mystery and confusion for the non-Japanese. Even in recent decades the country has maintained one foot in old traditions the other in a modern world. The duality of Japan is explicit in the hanami, the cherry blossom festival…..
…..Taro and I met under the statue of Saiko Takamori walking his dog. (Eventually the famous samurai disemboweled himself over a matter of honor. The fate of the dog remains unknown.) Taro argued that Takamori’s life was a parody of beauty and frailty, not unlike the aesthetic values of hanami, the festival he had brought me to share in Tokyo’s Ueno Park. Like many of his young compatriots Taro see-saws between the old and the new ways, between kendo and disco, sushi and pasta, the teahouse and the espresso bar, giggly girls and emancipated women, the kimono and the mini-skirt.
Hanami is his annual purification.
“This is the old Japan,” he explained. “This is what every gaijin (foreigner) likes to see.”
At the time we were being swept along in a tidal wave of cherry blossom pilgrims. Their pilgrimage to the trees begins with the first blossoms and ends when the last petal has dropped from the last tree. Around us the park was awash in picnic parties, all camped on blue tarps taped to the bitumen paths. Junior employees stake out the best spots before dawn and label the tarps with the company’s name. Around 1.5 million people come to Ueno Park for the festival. Millions visit parks all over Japan as the blossom period migrates up the islands from the warm south in late March to the cold north in May.
The bacchanalian pastoral pursuit is a legacy from the days when Japanese peasants believed the appearance of sakura -cherry blossoms- signaled the arrival of the god who ensured rich harvests. But credos change and adapt. Today hanami is an excuse for a good party, a spring carnival after winter, a chance to let one’s hair down in public, ostensibly venerating the old while embracing the new.
The hanami revelers are sprawled between sushi, sake and yakitori (skewered chicken), some tipsy, some in full song, the more poetic, on their backs, gazing rapturously into the dome of blossoms above. Some compose sonnets dedicated to the purity of the delicate petals and the translucent glow of the sake in their cups.
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Click, click went the cameras. “Kampai!” went the toasts.
On the fringe of the hanami parties the unwashed homeless - who live in the bowels of the park under blue tarp sheets held down with umbrella shafts and rocks - had their heads buried deep in the garbage disposal sacks, scavenging for leftovers.
“It’s the best time of the year. More food than we can eat,” said a middle-aged man with the soot of weeks on his face. He had moved into the park three years earlier after he lost his job as a car assembly worker. He said he did not wish to be a burden on his family. He was polite and erudite.
A group of Christian crusaders in white gowns, a Red Cross emblazoned on the chest, offered salvation to these scavengers in the next life - and a decent meal from their soup kitchen in the meantime. In the Japan of plenty the homeless are considered an eyesore, an embarrassment to prosperity and propriety. At the turn of the 21st century every Tokyo suburb turned down government plans to build homes for the wandering vagabonds whose numbers have grown in ratio to Japan’s economic woes. By 2,000 thousands lived under blue tarps in Ueno Park, tugged into nooks, existing on charity and the collection of cans and cartons sold for recycling. Everyone pretended the ragged ones were not there, especially when the cherry buds burst.
Some of the falling petals always drift into the sake cups.
Taro wore a pinstriped suit and demure blue tie, ready for his company’s annual picnic under one of Ueno Park’s 1,100 cherry trees. Japan Inc. goes to company picnics properly attired in a country where Hisayoshi Toda, 44, a municipal counselor in Osaka, faced disciplinary action for refusing to wear a tie in the Council chamber. Toda also liked to carry a paper bag instead of a briefcase, another violation of décor.
The cherry blossom picnics are also held at night, after work. Company members are seated in hierarchical order under the cherry trees, the Big Boss at the head, lesser lights fading into the distance. The sake, wine and beer are carried in leather briefcases. Employees take off their jackets only after the Big Boss has shed his. Ties are loosened after faces have turned crimson, thanks to sun, song or booze.
The office Shinmai (newcomer but literally New Rice) comes at dawn to stake out an idyllic spot under a tree. He also hands around the bottle and makes sure the main honcho has the best morsels and no one breaks into song before the honcho has sung a few lines. A Shinmai’s future in the company can depend on the success of a hanami party, especially his ability to procure a prime spot and his degree of obsequiousness.
“Office outings promote team spirit,” explained Taro.
Still, he admitted, if he had his way, he would prefer to wear jeans and a T-shirt. He would rather join the ribald private parties where girls in platform shoes and dyed blonde hair giggled, boys wore dunce’s hats, men sang soulful songs with the help of karaoke sets and people asked indelicate questions like: “Is your girlfriend pregnant or is she just putting on weight?”
“Company picnics are mandatory,” Taro explained: “They are part of our tradition and help us build ourselves into a work unit no one ever wishes to leave. That is the old philosophy.
“But,” he added: “Many younger people are looking for other ways today.”
Ueno Park is one of Japan’s most popular venues for the annual veneration of cherry blossoms, the strange love affair of a people who marvel at the pedals’ fragile beauty, born in a burst of color and buried in the mud by the first wind.
For the contemplative hanami remains synonymous with the swift passage between life and death; for the traditionalists it creates a moment of nostalgia for a way of life fluttering to the ground, borne by the winds of change.
(ends)
