Hanami, Cherry Blossom Time in Japan

Posted:8 April 2019

The timing could not have been better as the Garden House visits Japan for the third year running with an amazing group of fellow gardeners and takes in the beauty that is April’s hanami (cherry blossom viewing).

The cherry blossom (sakura) has been celebrated in Japan for many centuries and holds a very particular place in Japanese culture, inspiring haiku poetry as early as 794 AD.

Basho Matsuo is the most famous poet of the Edo Era, and now the most well-known haiku poet of all time.  He writes of hanami:

A cloud of cherry blossoms;

The temple bell,
Is it Ueno, is it Asakusa?

How many, many things
They call to mind
These cherry-blossoms!

Very brief –
Gleam of blossoms in the treetops
On a moonlit night.

A lovely spring night
suddenly vanished while we
viewed cherry blossom.