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Flowers that Kill
Communicative Opacity in Political Spaces
By Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-9594-4
CHAPTER 1
Japanese Cherry Blossoms
From the Beauty of Life to the Sublimity of Sacrificial Death
Every spring, cherry blossoms cover the entirety of the Japanese archipelago, appearing first in Okinawa and then all the way to Hokkaido, presenting a spectacular view. For the Japanese, it is the blossoms, not the fruit or the tree trunks, that are the source of the cherry tree's importance. Cherry blossoms, with their wide range of meaning, are an excellent example of how a polysemic symbol operates in practice and how it contributes to communicative opacity. Its polysemy demonstrates the fundamental nature of meanings, that meanings are relational — for example, women in relation to men — and processual — life leading to death. Also, the polysemy springs from the multiple structures of the Japanese Weltanschauung — the normative structure and the structure leading to an alternative imagination.
In addition, cherry blossom viewing (hanami), plays an essential role in establishing the collective identity of every social group within Japan as well as Japan and the Japanese as a whole, as it has been an important ritual/recreation at all levels of society. The historical development of the meanings of this symbol shows how different dominant meanings surfaced in different historical contexts, and that polysemy is not a timeless set of meanings set in stone.
Furthermore, the beauty of cherry blossoms was naturally transformed into the sublimity of patriotism as Japan's imperial ambitions heightened its militarism — the beauty of falling petals represented the sublimity of patriotic sacrifice. In this process the aesthetic played a key role in creating communicative opacity whereby the direct transference of the beauty of cherry blossoms to the sublimity of sacrifice was hardly recognized even by those who were to lose their lives.
Polysemy
HUMAN LIFE/REPRODUCTIVITY; AGRARIAN PRODUCTIVITY
Unambiguously, in Japanese culture the dominant meaning of cherry blossoms, seen as pink blossoms against the blue sky, is the celebration of life, youth, and vigor. In Japan's ancient agrarian cosmology, cherry blossoms were thought to be the symbolic equivalent of rice, the most sacred plant. Each spring, the Mountain Deity descends on a cherry blossom petal to rice paddies where he lodges (yadoru), becoming the Deity of Rice Paddies (Ta-no-Kami), in order to look after agricultural production. This most powerful of all deities offers his own soul, embodied in grains of rice, to humans, who raise the rice to full maturity under the warm rays of the Sun Goddess and, in the fall, give him in return a gift of a bounty of grains. The term sakura (cherry blossoms) is written with two characters: sa (the spirit of the deity) and kura (the seat); that is, it is the seat for the deity when he descends to the rice paddies. Farmers therefore have traditionally taken the appearance of cherry blossoms as a signal to prepare for planting rice seedlings (Figure 1 and Plate 1). In the fall, after being feted with offerings of food by farmers during the harvest ritual, the deity returns to the mountains (Miyata 1993; Sakurai 1976; Suzuki 1991: 6–9). Some scholars suggest that sa in sakura (cherry blossoms) has the same root as sa in such terms as "to prosper" (sakaeru), "to be prosperous" (sakan), "good fortune" (sachi), and "rice wine" (sake), reinforcing the symbolic association of cherry blossoms with the life force (Saito 1979 [1985]: 45–46; Yamada 1977: 21).
The belief in cherry blossoms as the abode of the deity gave rise to a practice of wearing the blossoms on one's head in order to receive his blessings (Yamada 1977: 116). This appears already in the Man'yoshu — the earliest collection of Japanese poems, dating from the eighth century. In one poem, the poet sings of the land of the emperor engulfed in the fragrance of cherry blossoms because men and women are wearing the flowers in their hair (Omodaka [1961] 1983: 39–40). The tradition continued until later periods, evolving into geisha wearing a rice stalk bearing grains.
Of the two major religions of Japan, Shintoism is generally in charge of matters related to life, such as birth celebrations and weddings. Buddhism, introduced to Japan during the sixth century, from India via China and Korea, takes care of most matters related to death, such as funerals and so-called ancestor worship. In Buddhism, flowers occupy important symbolic space, including lotus flowers, on which the Buddha sits or stands. The Pure Land denomination, which became popular among both the folk and aristocrats during the late Heian period (794–1185), when the ancien régime was crumbling, portrayed paradise (gokuraku jodo) as resplendent with flowers and birds all through the four seasons and music constantly floating in the air. Flowers are the major motifs of the designs of high-ranking monks' ceremonial robes. The association of flowers with death and the afterworld led to the custom of flowers as an important offering at the ancestral alcove in individual homes or at grave sites. Importantly, however, cherry blossoms are never used for these purposes. In earlier times, even though cherry trees grew only in the mountains, cherry blossoms were not symbolically associated in any direct way with the mountains, which were believed to be one of the spaces to which the dead departed (Miyata 1993: 3–4; Roubaud 1970).
THE HEIGHT OF LIFE/LOVE AND LOSS
Besides the celebration of life, another dominant meaning of cherry blossoms throughout history has been the celebration of love — an intense relationship between a man and a woman. In the aforementioned Man'yoshu, there are fourteen poems in which cherry blossoms appear, all with "sunny meanings," as Edwin Cranston notes: "aware [pathos over impermanence] — an important ethos in later history — has no place in these sunny glades" (Cranston 1993: 539).
Although the Chinese aesthetic of plum blossoms was embraced by the elite of the ancient period (250–1185 CE), by the time of the Kokinwakashu, a collection of some 1,100 poems compiled in either 905 or 914 CE, cherry blossoms were decisively at the center stage of love and aesthetics. In the Kokinwakashu, dubbed the collection of poems of cherry blossoms and love, this most frequent poetic motif symbolizes the beauty of women and the Imperial Palace in Kyoto. The poem by Monk Sosei, often cited to convey the splendor of the capital when the cherry trees are in full bloom, reads: "Seen from a distance/willows and cherry blossoms/all intermingled/the imperial city/in truth a springtime brocade" (Kojima and Arai, eds., 1989: 34; McCullough 1985: 24; Kubota 1960 [1968]: 180).
In The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (c. 978–1014), cherry blossoms appear more often than any other flower. It is commonly assumed that The Tale of Genji gives pride of place to monono aware, the aesthetic of pathos, because the story focuses on the ephemeral beauty of the fleeting world, where nature and humans enjoy but a short life (Field 1987: 211; Morris 1964 [1979]: 207–8). However, cherry blossoms are rarely associated with aware. Even in Genji they are predominantly "sunny," with blooming cherries representing youth, love, and courtship.
On the other hand, from early on opposite meanings — the loss of the life force, power, wealth, and love — have also been an integral part of the polysemy of cherry blossoms. Already in the eighth-century myth histories, short life as a characteristic of the flower is noted. The short life span of humans is explained as a result of the marriage of the Sun Goddess's grandson to a female deity, called "Blossom on a Tree" (Konoha-no-Sakuya-Bime), identified by some scholars as cherry blossoms. At the time of the marriage, the woman's father warns the grandson that his life will be short like that of the blossoms. Nevertheless, the marriage produces a son, which symbolizes the birth of rice, that is, deities qua emperors, who in turn represent Japan and the Japanese.
There are some instances in The Tale of Genji where the ephemeral nature of love and life is symbolized by phenomena of nature, including cherry blossoms. For example, after the death of the Shining Prince and his wife, Murasaki, the world is described as "The cherry blossoms of spring are loved because they bloom so briefly" (Yamagishi, ed., 1962: 222; Seidensticker 1977b: 736). The Heian period was the last hurrah of the ancien régime in Japan (Kitagawa 1990). Aristocrats enjoyed pomp, gaiety, and a lavish lifestyle at the court in Kyoto, but their lives were also ridden with power struggles, as depicted in The Tale of Genji. Its central figure, Hikaru Genji, epitomizes "unparalleled glory and unparalleled sorrow" (Field 1987: 215), like the gorgeous blooms, which fall to the ground usually after about two weeks. In other words, cherry blossoms represent both the life force and its loss.
In the early tenth-century Kokinwakashu, of the seventy poems with cherry blossoms as their theme, fifty focus on blossoms between their peak and their fall, whereas only twenty are about blossoms from budding to full bloom (Noguchi 1982: 78). Some poems link falling cherry petals not only to the impermanence of life but also directly to death. In Tales of Ise (Ise Monogatari), compiled by an anonymous person most likely before 950 CE, falling cherry blossoms are foregrounded, and they were increasingly linked to pathos over the impermanence of life and of love in Heian high culture; yet they are not directly associated with death itself. Along with the sunny Tale of Genji, these collections of poems indicate that falling cherry petals symbolized the loss of love, life, power, and wealth.
If men used the metaphor of cherry blossoms for women, women too used the flower in their expressions of love. As records from ancient times show, young women wore a cherry branch with its blossoms on their head and placed it atop a bamboo pole in their yard. During the Edo period (1603–1868) a woman would tie her kosode, a type of garment, to a cherry tree as a sign of her willingness to accept her lover (Miyata 1987: 123–24).
These literary pieces tell us that during ancient and medieval times (1185–1603), cherry blossoms stood for the life force, but also its loss, especially after a short period. This symbol denoted the entire process of life and death, but not exclusively death itself.
CELEBRATION OF ALTERNATIVE IMAGINATIONS
The polysemy of cherry blossoms presented so far belongs to the normative world of Japanese culture. The same polysemy, if not even more accentuated, appears in the Japanese depiction of alternative imagination. Every society institutionalizes and often celebrates the forces and ideas that oppose and subvert the norm. Ritualized forms include carnivals, charivaris, and a number of folk festivals, such as May Day (see Chapter Six). In Japan, cherry blossoms, central to the normative social structure and its values, are also the master trope for the celebration of an alternative universe.
During medieval times, the term kuru'u meant both "to become insane" and "to dance," and dancing in turn was an act of communicating with the deities (Ohnuki-Tierney 1987: 78–81, 104, 150, 227). Thus, those who "lost their mind" and those who "danced" acquired a special religious power, thereby gaining another identity beyond the one in society. The two major traditions of the performing arts, noh and kabuki, are called kyogen kigyo, meaning "the world of make-believe" (tsukurimono no sekai), reminding us of existential instability, posing basic questions about the order of the universe, and offering provocative alternatives for imagination.
The loss of self through madness is another phenomenon associated with cherry blossoms (Watanabe Tamotsu 1989: 181), as expressed in a well-known phrase, "The flower [cherry blossoms] turns people's blood crazy." Expressions of this association are found in some of the best-known plays in the performing arts and literature. For example, in the noh play Cherry Blossom River by Ze'ami Motokiyo (1935a), a woman loses her mind when her daughter, named Cherry Blossom Child, sells herself to a merchant in order to help her mother out of dire poverty. The mother goes in search of her child. In a famous scene, the daughter finds her mother, who had lost her mind, scooping cherry petals — that is, her daughter — out of a river, so as not to lose her (Matsuoka 1991: 228–35; Nakanishi 1995: 259–70).
Nullification and destabilization of the socially constructed self through the use of masks is a practice found in many festivals worldwide. The use of masks and masquerade has also been a quintessential feature of cherry blossom viewings among both the elites and the folk, in the past as well as today. A popular form of masquerade is cross-dressing, most often men wearing a wig and a woman's kimono with face painted white and lips red. Slapstick (chaban), ubiquitous in cherry blossom viewings, also emphasizes changing identities (Ono 1992: 168–69).
In the noh play, a classical theater form of Japan since medieval times, actors always wear a mask, taking on the identity of the character they represent. The noh theater thus institutionalizes the impermanence of self-identity through this obligatory use of masks. A highly complex system of symbolism characterizes noh and involves cherry blossoms in a number of well-known plays. Stylized cherry blossoms are a major motif on noh robes, fans, and lacquerware containers used on stage.
Kabuki also abounds with plays in which cherry blossoms are associated with madness. In Takeda Izumo's Branches of Cherry Blossoms Deep in the Mountains Beyond One's Reach (Gunji et al., eds., 1970: 121–24), Abe-no-Yasuna, a handsome young man, loses his mind upon the death of his love. He movingly dances on the stage under a blooming cherry tree while trying to capture a butterfly, which symbolizes his soul, departing from his body. Cherry blossoms here represent and aestheticize madness.
The institutionalization of an alternative universe is also marked by cherry blossoms. An example is the medieval practice at powerful and wealthy temples where a number of young men, called chigo, who stayed for an average of four to five years, underwent a temporary change of gender. During this period the youths applied cosmetics like women and learned flower arrangement and other forms of art to simulate idealized court ladies. In paintings they are often depicted with cherry blossoms, and in literature metaphors of cherry blossoms are used in reference to them (Haruyama 1953: 211; Umezu 1978: 5).
Another example of the institutionalization of an alternative universe, marked by a symbolic equation with cherry blossoms, is geisha and the geisha quarters. Though culturally sanctioned, the institution of geisha, nonreproductive members of society, was outside, or an antithesis to, the society whose continuity depends on women's reproductive capacity. Yet they were celebrated in visual and performing arts and romanticized by the folk. Along Nakanocho, the main street of Yoshiwara, the former geisha quarters in Tokyo, a long, rectangular bamboo-fenced platform is built, filled with dirt, and then planted with cherry trees on February 25 of the lunar calendar each year (Ono 1983: 34–35; Shibundo Henshubu 1973: 84). Guests are invited to view the cherry blossoms on March 3, the day of the Doll Festival, when families with girls celebrate with a replica of the imperial court in Kyoto, with dolls representing the emperor, empress, and imperial court officials, and with a miniature artificial cherry tree and tachibana citrus tree.
Woodblock prints of the Edo period depicting the idealized world of geisha, called ukiyo-e and originally derived from Buddhist cosmology, treat the "floating world" as an expression of the ephemerality of life in general. Cherry blossoms began to be associated with the pathos of evanescence during the medieval period, and they were summoned to represent the floating world as well. The aesthetic of these representations has a dual quality — threatening and enticing at the same time (Nishiyama 1985: 11). The effect of duality is produced by depicting blossoms in the dark of night, but always highlighted by the full moon or lanterns from the windows of geisha houses to attract clients. The universe represented by cherry blossoms, then, is full of paradoxes that become a generative power operating at both the individual and the collective level — simultaneously subverting and upholding received wisdom and the normative social structure. These antitheses keep in check the hegemony of the normative world and its grip on the individual.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Flowers that Kill by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney. Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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