CHAPTER VIII

TOKIO FLOWER FESTIVALS

With all its foreign sophistications, flower worship has not died out in the Japanese capital. The calendar is divided into the time of the camellia, the plum, the cherry, the wistaria, the lotus, the chrysanthemum, and the maple. Orange blossoms and tea blossoms alone are omitted among the special flower festivals, and the Japanese as naturally refer to the time of the cherry blooming or of maple-leaves, as we to spring or autumn. They infuse into these festivals a sentiment and feeling, a spirit and gayety, inherited from generations of flower-loving ancestors, who made their æsthetic pilgrimages year after year to see the acres of wonderful flowers in the different suburbs of each city. By the old calendar, the first unfolding of the plum-trees, the true awakening of the seasons, marked the new year. In the change from the Chinese method of reckoning to the Gregorian, the Japanese January fell to a churlish mood of nature, when only late chrysanthemums, camellias, and in-door dwarf -trees can bloom. But every door-way is then ​arched with evergreens and flowers; pine and bamboo, bound with braided straw ropes, are set before the house; tassels of rice straw are festooned across the eaves, and lanterns hang in rows. The emblematic rice-cake, prawn, orange, and fern-leaf are fastened above the lintel, the handsomest screen is brought forward, and more emblems and a large bowl for cards are set out at the entrance. This is the season when all debts are paid, while general visiting and feasting occupy three days. Everybody says to everybody else, Shinen ome deto, “I wish you a happy New-year;” or, Man zai raku, “Good-luck for ten thousand years.” Everybody sends his friend a present—a basket of fruit, or a dumpling of red beans or rice dough, wrapped in ceremonial paper. The streets of Tokio, crowded with merrymakers and lighted at night by thousands of lanterns and torches, hold out-of-door fairs without number, and from palace to hovel run sounds of rejoicing; yet this joyous homage to the spirit of life is paid in mid-winter, when snow-flakes may shroud the blooming camellia-trees, though the clear, bright Indian-summer weather often lasts until after the new year. Winter, a long calamity elsewhere in the same latitude, is only the disagreeable incident of a few weeks in Central Japan. A fortnight, a month, of melting snows, cold rains, and dull skies, and lo! the branches of the withered, old black plum-trees are starred with fragrant white flowers. For a few days a hazy calm hushes the air, sounds are veiled, light is softened, and spring has really come, no matter how many sullen relapses it may suffer before the glorious April cloud-burst of cherry blossoms decks the empire in wreaths of white and pink, and fills the people with joy. And this linked sweetness long drawn out, this gentle season of delight, lasts from the bursting of the plum blossoms in February to the end of the nyubai, or rainy season of June.

The veriest Gradgrind could not be indifferent to the poetic charm of the Japanese spring-time, wherein the setting of the buds, their swelling, and the gradual unfolding of sakura, the cherry blossoms, are matters of great public concern, the native newspapers daily printing advance despatches from the trees. Even more beautiful than the plum-tree festival is the Tokio celebration of the blossoming of the cherry, and gayer than the ​brilliant throngs are the marvellous trees. From the wild, indigenous dwarf seedling of the mountains have been developed countless varieties, culminating in that which bears the pink-tinged double blossoms as large as a hundred-leafed rose, covering every branch and twig with thick rosettes. A faint fragrance arises from these sheets of bloom, but the strange glare of pinkish light from their fair canopy dazzles and dizzies the beholder. The cherry-blossom Sunday of Uyéno Park is a holiday of the upper middle class. One week later, the double avenue of blossoming trees, lining the Mukojima for a mile along the river bank, invites the lower classes to a very different celebration from that of the decorous, well-dressed throng driving, walking, picnicking, and tea drinking under the famous trees. No warning to keep off the grass forbids their wandering at will over the great park, every foot of whose ground is historic, whose trees are ancient, whose avenues are broad and winding, and whose woods are as dark as the forest primeval. Temple bells softly boom, ravens croak, and happy voices fill the air.

Later in the season the carefully tended trees in the palace grounds put forth their blossoms, and sovereign and courtiers hang poems on their branches, while the spring garden party gathers the whole court circle under the aisles of bloom in the palace grounds of Hama Rikiu. Every citizen who has a garden gives an out-door fête, and flower-bordered cards invite guests to see the native sakura, or the cerisiers of the diplomatic set.

The celebration of the Mukojima, an avenue along the east bank of the Sumidagawa, lined for more than two miles with double rows of cherry-trees, belongs to the lower ten thousand. On Sunday, which is officially a day-of rest, the water is dotted with hundreds of boats, and solemn little policemen keep the holiday-makers moving along the shore. Friends recognize each other in the crowd by some distinctive article of clothing. One procession of jinrikishas will land a group with heads tied up in gayly-figured towels all alike, or bits of figured cotton folded as collars around the necks of their kimonos. Boat-loads of men, partly disguised by their queer head-dresses, are sculled and poled along the banks, shouting and singing, clapping and strumming the samisen, with an entire abandon that is the wonder and envy of the Anglo-Saxon. Every reveller has his ​saké gourd, or tiny tub slung over his shoulder, which he empties and refills, as long as his money and consciousness last. Every man offers friend, neighbor, and stranger a cup of the cheering spirit. One booth in three is a saké stand, and pyramids of straw-covered saké tubs stand before every tea house. This saké, or rice brandy, tastes and looks like the weakest sherry, although it scents the air with alcoholic fumes. Made everywhere in Japan, the saké distilled from the rice of the broad Osaka plain is most esteemed by connoisseurs for a peculiarly delicate flavor. As it is the one liquor that does not improve with age, the newest is the best, and is kept in wooden tubs closed with spigots, and drawn off into open-mouthed porcelain bottles, which are set in hot water if warm sake is desired. The Japanese drink it from little shallow porcelain or lacquer cups that hold barely a tablespoonful, but by repetition they imbibe pints. Its first effect is to loosen the tongue and limber the joints; its second to turn the whole body a flaming red.

For a week in June, jinrikishas spin up this leafy tunnel to the iris fêtes at Hori Kiri, where in ponds and trenches grow acres of such fleur-de-lis as no Bourbon ever knew. Compared with the cherry-blossom carnival, this festival is a quiet and decorous garden party, where summer-houses, hills, lakes, armies of royal flowers, and groups of visitors seem to be consciously arranging themselves for decorative effects.

After the season opens, flower festivals crowd one another, and the miracles of Japanese floriculture presently exhaust the capacity of wonder. One of the most superb of their productions is the botan, or tree peony, whose fringed and silken flowers, as large as dinner-plates, show all delicate rose and lilac shades, a red that is almost black, and cream, pale yellow, straw color, and salmon hues of marvellous beauty. At the Ikegami temples, the Nichiren priests display with pride their botan, now three hundred years old, whose solid trunk and wrinkled bark uphold a multitude of stately blossoms. Azaleas, fire-red, snow-white, salmon-pink, and lilac, crowd every garden, and the mountains and wild river-banks are all ablaze with them in May.

Then, also, the wistaria, the fuji, is in bloom, and at the Kameido temple makes an eighth wonder of the world. Every householder has his wistaria trellis, generally reaching out as a canopy over some inlet, or, as at Kameido, forming the roofs of the open air tea-houses edging the lake. The mat of leaves and blossoms overhead casts thick, cool shadows, and the long, pendent purple and white flowers are reflected in the water. Blossoms two and even three feet long are common, and ​only a great swaying tassel four feet in length draws a “Naruhado!” (wonderful) from the connoisseurs. Whole families come to spend the day on the borders of the little lake, sipping amber tea, tossing mochi to the lazy goldfish, or sitting in picturesque groups on the low platforms under the canopies of flowers fluttering with poems and lanterns. The temple is ancient, and the grounds are full of tiny shrines, stone lanterns, tablets, and images, and dwarfed and curiously trained pine trees, with a high, hump-backed little bridge, over which, in the old days, only priests and grandees might walk. Golden carp, venerable old fellows, three or four feet in length, show an orange nose now and then above the surface of the pond. The people call these pets by clapping their hands, and the golden gourmands swim from one horn of plenty, filled with mochi, or rice-cakes, with which they are fed, to another. At Kasukabe, on the Oshukaido, north-east of Tokio, is the most famous wistaria in the empire. The vine is five hundred years old, with pendent blossoms over fifty inches long, and trellises covering a space of four thousand feet, and thither poets and pilgrims reverently go.

In November, with the brilliant maple-leaves, the floral year ends. The coquette sends her lover a leaf or branch of maple to signify that, like it, her love has changed. Both the tea-plant and camellia are in bloom, but there is no rejoicing in their honor, and flower-worshippers count the weeks until the plum shall bloom again.