Thursday, 21 March 2013
Sepia Saturday 169
This week's prompt has an image of Photographers shooting cherry blossoms along the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. on April 4, 1922. The Cherry trees were given to the United States in the early 1900s and it has become an annual event to photograph the blooming each spring.
It is to Japan and Sakura (the cherry tree) that I've gone this week. Due to their brief blooming period, the Sakura cherry-blossoms have come to symbolise the transience of life. Cherry blossom season may only last a week or so depending on the weather. Cherry blossom time is a big thing in Japan and each year calendars are published of the expected time of the blossom in each city. The further south, the earlier the bloom.
A quick surf of the Net shows, that Cherry Blossom time happens all over the world and mostly with trees gifted by Japan. Unfortunately, in the UK, to my experience at least, cherry blossom has been limited to Eddie Calvert's rendition of "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White" and the Batsford Arboratum in Gloucestershire where they maintains the national collection of Prunus (sato-sakura Group). There is no celebration or festivity - just a few ooh aahs when the blossom appear in somebodies' garden.
The traditional method to capture the essence of the Cherry Blossom was the woodcut, often made with cherry wood.
There is, however, a dark side to the Cherry Blossom. So strongly is it to the Japanese psyche that it is often seen as a symbol of Nationalism and, prior to the end of the second World War, of Militarism. Poets compared the battlefield dead to the fallen blossom.
I'm not sure how much symbolism counts for today certainly in the West, and especially the UK. The Cherry and Blossom are more likely to be used as a euphemism rather than a symbol.