PLUM BLOSSOM
In Japan the flower year begins earlier than in Europe, and while the
snow is still lying deep on the ground in the northern provinces, in
warm and sheltered districts the _Ume_ or plum blossom will clothe
the trees with flowers as white as the snow. But in the country round
Kyoto or Tokyo it is not until the end of February or the first days
of March that the pale pink buds of the plum blossoms will be opening,
and there will come a whisper through the air that in a few days the
beloved _ume-no-hana_ will be in all its glory. The plum is one of the
favourite, perhaps _the_ favourite tree of the Japanese, so in early
March, when the sunny days will remind us that spring is coming, though
the cruel frosts and snow showers at night will warn us that winter is
not yet gone, every passer-by seems to be talking of _ume_, discussing
[Illustration: VIEWING THE PLUM BLOSSOMS]
probably where the earliest blossoms are to be found, and when the
first flower-viewing excursion of the year is to take place.
The Japanese are essentially a flower-loving people; in no other
country would you find whole families, old and young, rich and poor,
tramping for miles in the hot sun or through the drenching rain to
indulge in their favourite pastime of flower-viewing. Showing how
universal is this custom of special flower-viewing excursions, there is
even a phrase in the Japanese language, _hana miru_, meaning to view
flowers.
The earliest plum blossom, known as the _no-ume_, is a somewhat
uninteresting little white flower, not unlike the wild sloe in our
English hedgerows, and I was beginning to think the celebrated plum
blossom of Japan was an overrated flower, when gradually its full
beauty dawned upon me. The deep pink buds of the later varieties
opened into pale blush coloured blossoms, and the crimson buds of the
_kobai_--the most cherished of all--burst into a cloud of brilliant
pink flowers; others there were, pale lemon coloured or large pure
white, in great variety. The plum-tree is especially valued for its
age, and a venerable tree, its stems covered with grey lichen, though
its flowers may be poor in quality, will be more prized than a young
tree with the most brilliant coloured blossoms.
Tsukigase, in the province of Shima, a little village famous for the
beauty of its plum-trees, is one of the first places to be visited by
that large proportion of the inhabitants of Kyoto who seem to spend
most or all their days during the spring months in a never-ending
round of sight-seeing and flower-viewing. In the month of March the
village is made gay for the reception of these holiday-makers, and
undaunted by the bitter winds and vicious scuds of snow which mingle
with the falling petals of the _ume_, they will spend long hours in
quiet admiration of the mass of blossom which appears to fill the whole
valley with a pink and white haze; for over two miles the trees clothe
the banks of the river Kizu. Countless tea-stalls are prepared for
the guests, light bamboo structures adorned with a few printed linen
curtains in soft harmonious colouring, and innumerable paper lanterns
suffice for the preparation of a flower feast. Each night, or at the
approach of rain, the little maids will carefully pack away the matted
benches and these frail decorations under the thatched roof, to be
brought forth on the
[Illustration: THE GATE OF THE PLUM GARDENS]
morrow or when the storm has cleared. The Japanese regard the flower
of the plum with a peculiar reverence, and their feeling for it
always seems to be touched with some mysterious sense of sorrow,
which perhaps accounted for the fact that these plum-blossom feasts
never seemed to attain to the same merry boisterous revels held at
the time of the cherry blossom. The people were more quiet and sober
in their demeanour; at first I thought their spirits were frozen
by the cold, but even the endless drinking of tea and tiny cups of
_saké_ did not seem to thaw them, and often whole parties, wrapped in
their outer winter kimonos, would sit in silent contemplation of the
blossoms, warming their hands over that Japanese apology for a fire--an
_hibachi_--consisting merely of a pot of charcoal.
In old days the plum blossom was their ideal of purity, an ideal which
some attempted to emulate in their lives. The same feelings prevail
in China, if we may judge from the poets. This, to be sure, is not
surprising, inasmuch as Japan took her literature, like most other
things, from the Chinese. The early poems of both countries are much
alike, and among them both are many _ume_ poems, as the Japanese call
them, extolling the beauty and charm of the plum blossom, which ranks
as the poet’s own flower. Mr. Kango Uchimura has written an ode to it
in prose, which contains the following passage:----
While Spring was still cold I knew that it was at hand by your
flowering. You are not Spring, but the prophet of Spring. The
cherry blossom is Spring, the iris and the wistaria; but, as each
of these has its own season, the gods sent you to keep green our
hope of Spring.
I do not say I love you, rather I fear you; you are too dignified;
you blossom alone on the branches with no green leaves to bear
you company. I do not call you beautiful; your scent is too keen,
your petals too stiff. No one will ever sing or dance beneath your
boughs. You are the prophet Jeremiah; you are John the Baptist.
Standing before you I feel as though in the presence of a solemn
master. Yet by your appearance I know that Winter has passed, and
that the delightful Spring is at hand. The herald of Spring, you
denounce the tyranny of Winter. Your face is stern, but your heart
is soft. It is easy to misunderstand you, for, though the daughter
of Spring, you wear the garb of a man the man ordained to break the
power of cruel Winter.
Two famous men in olden days were particularly associated with the
flowers of the plum. One of these was Kajiwara Genda Kagesuge, a great
warrior of the twelfth century, who always went into battle carrying
in his quiver fresh branches of the blossom, to which, so says the
legend, he was indebted for his splendid courage. The other was
Sugawara No Michizane, the minister of the Emperor Ude. The Kwampaku
Tokihira, wishing to be quit of the sage’s wisdom, sent him into a sort
of honourable exile in the island of Kyushu, where he died in 903.
After his death came a great reaction in his favour. He was canonised
under the name of Tenjin, or the Heavenly god, and to this day he is
venerated by all men of letters as their patron saint; in every school
the twenty-fifth day of each month is kept as a holiday, and every year
on the twenty-fifth of June a great festival is held in his honour.
His life is dramatised in the popular play _Sugawara Tenjin Ki_, and
all over the land shrines dedicated to his memory rise from groves of
plum-trees.
One of the most famous and beautiful of these is the temple of Kitano
Tenjin at Kyoto, which has provided subjects for several of the
illustrations in this volume. In the inner court of the temple near
the splendid two-storied gateway of the Sun, Moon, and Stars stands
a large tree of the bright pink blossom, and it would be difficult
to find a more beautiful setting for the tree than the background of
grey wooden buildings, of which the decorations have been toned by the
hand of time into soft mellow hues. In the outer grounds the trees
have a background of giant cryptomerias, with long avenues of stone
lanterns--votive offerings of every conceivable shape and size--small
shrines, and two great granite _torii_, the plain yet majestic gateways
which guard the entrance to all Shinto temples. When the trees are
in all their glory the flower-viewing parties wander through the
grounds in silent admiration, down to the little ravine outside the
temple grounds, where the snow-white blossom fills the little valley
and clouds of petals fall into the brook below, to be carried away
down the stream like drifts of foam. Here may be seen a poet of the
old school rapt in thought composing an ode to the blossom and the
nightingale. It is a pretty fancy much honoured in Japan, the plum
blossom, the poet, and the nightingale making, they say, the world of
beauty complete. For no Japanese ever thinks of the plum blossom apart
from the nightingale--which, it should be observed, is not the bird of
Keats’s poem, singing of summer in full-throated ease, but a little
light-winged creature whose favourite haunt is among the flowering
branches of this tree.
In Japanese legends the plum blossom and the nightingale are
inseparable companions, and represent
[Illustration: THE TIME OF THE PLUM BLOSSOMS]
the two spirits of the awakening spring when the mists of winter first
begin to roll away. There is a story, for instance, of the daughter
of the poet Kino Tsurayuki, who lived in the days of the Emperor
Murakami, in the tenth century. From time immemorial a single plum-tree
had always stood before the south pavilion of the Imperial Palace at
Nara, and when at some period of this Emperor’s reign the tree died,
messengers were despatched in hot haste to find one worthy to replace
it. One was found in the garden of the poet aforesaid, a fine tree with
crimson blossoms belonging to his daughter, who was most reluctant to
part with her favourite. However, there was, of course, no help for
it, and the tree was sent off to the palace grounds with some verses
fastened to it, which run thus in Mr. Brinkley’s translation----
Claimed for our sovereign’s use,
Blossoms I’ve loved so long,
Can I in duty fail?
But for the nightingale,
Seeking her home of song,
How shall I find excuse?
The Emperor, struck with the graceful sentiment of the verses, made
inquiries as to the writer, and finding that she was the daughter of
his favourite poet, ordered the tree to be returned to her.
Throughout Japan there is scarcely a district to be found without
orchards and groves or temple grounds where the flower-seeker can go
to greet spring and the _ume_, but the people of Tokyo are singularly
fortunate in their plum orchards. One of the most famous and beautiful
is at Sugita, a charming little village nestling by the bluest of
waters, near Yokohama, where a thousand trees have stood for upwards of
a century, displaying their blossom every spring to admiring eyes from
all the country round. Here there are six special kinds of the tree,
and their fancy names mark the different characters of the flowers, the
Japanese being very clever at finding characteristic names for flowers
and trees. The Gwario Bai, or Recumbent Dragon Tree, is the most famous
of these, being indeed the most notable thing in the outskirts of
Tokyo. Some fifty years ago there grew a wonderful tree of vast age and
strange shape, its branches having ploughed up the ground and thrown
out new roots in no fewer than fourteen places, thus naturally covering
an extensive area. The name of Gwario Bai was given to the tree by old
Prince Rekko, who planted the groves in Tokiwa Park in 1837, a piece
of forethought highly appreciated by many visitors to this day. The
Shogun (or Generalissimo) of that day also paid a visit to the spot,
and made the tree _Goyobaku_ or the Tree of Honourable Service, in
return for which gracious act of condescension the fruit was presented
to him every year. All these honours, however, could not save it from a
natural death when its time came; in its place now flourish a number of
much less interesting trees, which nevertheless bear the same name, and
apparently the same reputation, as their predecessor the Dragon of the
prime.
Not far from the Gwario Bai is the orchard of Kinegawa, which can
boast an honoured name too, for here the poets come, and you may
see perhaps a hundred slips of paper, containing _uta_ or _hokku_
(seventeen-syllabled) poems, fluttering from the branches. Perhaps
here, too, we may find a family party, the mother with the youngest
child tightly strapped on her back, its tiny shaven head hardly
showing above the wadded quilt which is wrapped closely round it; a
little mite of a very few summers, tottering unsteadily on its clogs,
clasping a branch of the natural tree adorned with paper blossoms,
from which floats a streamer with some strange device, or any of the
countless toys which go towards the making of a holiday; and only a
few years older a little solemn-faced maiden, whose black beady eyes
will glisten with wonder when she is told that she is called _Ume san_
after the snow-white blossom at which she has been gazing with awe and
admiration. Ume is a common name among Japanese women; they connect it
with the ideas of virtue and sweetness, and they are taught to keep
the name unspotted during life and to leave it fair after death, even
as the scent of the plum blossom smells sweet in the darkness. The
following verses are from Piggot’s _Garden of Japan_:--
Home friends change and change,
Years pass quickly by;
Scent of our ancient plum-tree,
Thou dost never die.
Home friends are forgotten;
Plum-trees blossom fair,
Petals falling to the breeze
Leave their fragrance there.
Cettria’s fancy, too,
Finds his cup of flowers,
Seeks his peaceful hiding-place,
In the plum’s sweet bowers.[1]
Though the snow-flakes hide
And thy blossoms kill,
He will sing, and I shall find
Fragrant incense still.
[1] Cettria, the nightingale.
Ginsekai is yet another orchard in the neighbourhood of Tokyo, its name
signifying Silver World, and on a moonlit night in spring you would say
that never was a place more aptly named, if you saw the forest of white
blossoms rising out of the snow-clad landscape. There are some pretty
verses on the sight, which run thus in English:--
How shall I find my _ume_ tree?
The moon and the snow are white as she.
By the fragrance blown on the evening air
Shalt thou find her there.
It is true that the white varieties of plum blossom have nearly all
a most delicious and delicate scent, but the red varieties are quite
devoid of any fragrance. The plum is known as one of the Four Floral
Gentlemen, the others being the pine, the bamboo, and the orchid. It
has flourished in China from time immemorial, where it is known as
the Head of the Hundred Flowers, because it is the first to bloom,
and it was probably imported from that country through the medium of
Korea into Japan. Even that learned botanist the late Dr. Keisuke Ito
could not say where the plum-tree first flowered in Japan, nor can any
one say with certainty whether _ume_ is a Chinese or a Japanese word.
Kakimoto no Hitomaro, who lived about the end of the seventh century,
was probably the first to celebrate the plum blossom in his verse;
and it may be said to have taken rank as a national flower when the
Emperor Kwamaru (782-806) planted it before his palace when he moved
his capital from Nara to Kyoto.
In those days the word _flower_ meant the flower of the plum, just
as the word _mountain_ meant Hiei san, but it was dethroned from its
pride of place when the Emperor Murakami planted the cherry-tree in its
stead, and though the plum still stands first with the men of mind,
the cherry-tree has ever since been the popular favourite. That the
latter is most beautiful cannot be disputed; but for purity of outline,
fragrance, and that touch of sadness, which the Japanese profess to
find in it, the bloom of the plum is still unrivalled.
There are upwards of three hundred and fifty specimens of the plum,
white, pale and bright pink, or even red in colour, single or double in
form. Of these the more important are: _Yatsu buse ume_, which derives
its name from bearing eight fruits, the blossoms having from two to
eight stamens, the word signifying eight tassels; only two or three of
these, however, ripen fully, and they are unfit for eating. The _Bungo
ume_ grows in the Bungo
[Illustration: PLUM BLOSSOM AND LANTERNS]
province of the island of Kyushu; its fruit is large and can be eaten
uncooked, though the Japanese prefer it pickled or candied. The fruit
of the _Ko ume_, celebrated for the beauty of its bright pink blossom,
is no bigger than the tip of one’s thumb, but has a delicious flavour.
_Toko no ume_ is a late fruit, clinging to the branch even when fully
ripe, whence its name _Toko_, meaning eternal. The flowers of _Suisen
ume_ have six petals, round or long in shape. _Hava ume_, or the early
plum, blooms at the winter solstice.
In no other country does the culture of plants go hand in hand with
art as it does in Japan; not only in the case of their dwarf trees,
marvels of horticultural art, but even the trees which are necessary
for the scenery of their landscape gardens have to conform to the rules
which govern the entire art of the country. I remember being shown with
great pride by the owner of a tiny garden his one solitary plum-tree,
the pride of his garden in those cold March days. It stood leaning
over a miniature rocky precipice, down which tumbled a diminutive
cascade; old and venerable it looked, having endured ruthless pruning,
and only a few large single blossoms clothed its branches. I expressed
surprise and some regret that it did not bear more blossoms, and
then it was explained to me that many of the buds had been removed,
as otherwise the thick cloud of flowers would have hidden the outline
of the branches; this was a flight of æstheticism to which I could
not rise, and I felt I should have preferred to see the tree bearing
its full burden of blossom. This practice of disbudding is also
occasionally carried out with old specimens of dwarf plum-trees when
it is considered that a wealth of blossom would hide the growth of the
little tree, which by careful training has after years of patience
rewarded the owner by conforming to the desired shape laid down by the
canons of art. These little trees are in great demand at the close of
the year, for hardly a house in the land is without a tiny tree of
_ume_, to bring luck at the opening of another year; so during November
and December, when their pale-pink buds are fast swelling, they are
tended with the greatest care, brought into the sun during the day,
plentifully watered at sundown, and sheltered from all cold winds.
Thus they flower sometimes as early as New Year’s Day, to the intense
pride and joy of their owners. The hearts of the plum-trees, say the
Japanese, are a thousand years old, and yet young as the hopes of
Japan.