Takeshi Asai's Japanese Newsletter - April in Japan

According to the ancient moon calendar, April was originally called "uzuki," literally meaning "the month of eggs" and symbolizing new beginnings. April has long been a month of renewal for the Japanese people.

In modern Japan, it's still true. The school year starts in April, as does the fiscal year for most Japanese organizations. Without exception, college students graduate from school in March and start working on April 1st. So in April you will see large numbers of nervous freshman looking uncomfortable in their brand new school uniforms or business suits.

April is also considered the most beautiful season of the year. Thanks to Japan's national flower, the Sakura (the cherry blossom), walking around some of the historical places such as temples and shrines in Kyoto, the Edo castle in Tokyo, or even the most modernized financial district in Tokyo is simply gorgeous. Wherever you go, you will see pink flowers all about you, and people are excited by the news on TV reporting the progress of the "sakura-zensen" (the front-line of sakura blossoms) as it moves north.

The way people treat the blossom season is an amazingly formal event in Japan. For instance, on the morning of April 3rd this year the Kyoto Regional Observatory issued, just like it does every year, the Declaration of Blossoms, and it announced that the blossoms are later than they have been in the past ten years.

A special event called "Hanami," another Japanese tradition, takes place wherever you find flowering cherry trees. "Hana" means flowers, "mi" means watching. People gather together, ideally under a cherry tree, to appreciate the beauty of the pink petals. Partiers drink sake, eat special sweets called "hanami-dango," sing songs (often accompanied by a karaoke machine), and even dance to show their highest praise for the coming of spring. Maruyama Park in Kyoto, one of the most well known sakura watching places in Japan, has torches at night to host hundreds of people who enjoy "yo-zakura," (night-time cherry blossoms). In fact, watching sakura flowers by torch fire is utterly enchanting.

If you have a chance to join a hanami party, you have to be very careful in allocating your time between watching the flowers and eating dumplings. There is an idiom, "Hana yori dango" (sweets are preferred to flowers), which means that the practical is preferred over the aesthetic. Japanese people are somehow very practical. But, at the same time, they adore nature and its beauty, especially once the cherry blossoms flower. This is because the life of a cherry blossom is very short--one hard rain can easily sweep them all away at once. (Samurai used to like symbolizing their fragile lives with the beauty of sakura flowers.)

A metaphor of new beginnings, hope for a new life, the beauty of fragility, praise for the coming of spring, -- a collage of these elements, that is April in Japan.

published as Japanese Monthly, April 2000 issue
edited by Marcia Allen

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