Spring in the Garden or Seeing Japan Without Cherry Blossoms, a Column by Patricia Almarcegui

I have returned to Japan for work. This is my third trip, and this time I tried to time it with the cherry blossoms; but of course, they bloom when they want to and when they can. In 2018, it was different; they were there, and I hadn't sought them out. Now they were delayed. From March 21 to March 23; from March 23 to March 25; from March 25 to March 27, and later I had to go back. The trip is also a matter of perspective and another way of seeing (or rather blossoming, as the sensitive and sensory spirit of Japan would say).

The first cherry blossom I found was in Kyoto in the Gion district, on my way to the Yasuikonpiragu Temple. It was hopeful. It peeked out from an interior courtyard and covered the corner of a street, very close to the alleyways where the maikos (apprentices of geishas) walk before going to classes in singing, dance, music, and theater. The second one, a century-old tree, was at the Kitano Tenmangu Temple. It hadn't even bloomed yet, and I noted on my phone, "Come see it when I return to Kyoto in a few days." The Korakuen Garden in Okayama was still hibernating. However, at the back, in the area dedicated to spring, there were flowering plum trees. I took out my notes and reread the writer Yasunari Kawabata and his Nobel Prize speech in 1968: "When we come into contact with the four seasons is when we think most about those we love and wish to share that happiness with them."

A heron flew over a flowering plum tree in Hiroshima, and I saw two spindly cherry trees on Miyajima Island on my way to the Daishoin Temple. The river passing through Arashiyama in Kyoto was filled with small boats carrying visitors. Coming down from the bamboo forest, I crossed paths with one and recognized in the landscape the imagery of 19th-century ukiyo-e prints.

The Philosopher's Path (one of the legendary places to view the blossoms) was still filled with numbered cherry trees, and there I found. Buds, shoots, knots, petals, effort, and violence. As the philosopher Suzuki Teitarō Daisetsu says, the universe and life should be experienced just like the flowers of a tree: always on the verge of perishing.

A week had passed since my arrival, and the cold was increasing. The sakura was delayed, although sometimes it gave a brief respite. I saw a giant cherry tree outside the Ryoanji Temple, and a woman to my right cried out of emotion. The spiritual center of Buddhism in Japan, Koyasan, was snowy, and the cherry trees were mere shadows; in Ise, the spiritual center of the country's Shintoism, they did not seem to be awaited. There was only domestic tourism, and they looked and listened to the pebbles of the Isuzu River of the Inner Shrine, which they say are deities or kami. A group was waiting in a small estuary for the sunset to arrive.

Upon reaching Tokyo, I went to Ueno Park. It was Saturday, and the Ameyoko second-hand market was crowded. Some idols sang on an almost makeshift stage. From the Tokyo National Museum, one could follow the path of the 800 cherry trees in the park. And there they were at last: two, three, four dazzling cherry trees, fully in bloom, almost pornographic. A line formed to take photos with them. The branches fell like willows towards the ground and extended into the hands of national and international tourists who held them in their palms. As if, at last, the blooming had arrived. Four days later, I returned home. The almond tree was in bloom, and so was the peach tree. Spring was in the garden, and I almost missed it.