Wednesday, 4/16/97 Lohmann head
by Robert P. Lohmann New York Times When I was studying Japanese
in San Francisco, I wondered what they did in Japan for Ohanami,
the spring festival that takes place with the flowering of the
cherry trees. Ohanami means ”flower-viewing,” and before I came
here, I could only imagine crowds of serene, kimono-clad Japanese,
sedate under the cherry trees, their eyes closed in fruitful
meditation. It was only after living in Japan that I realized the
true significance of Ohanami on the cultural calendar. I learned
the vernacular used in weather forecasts to describe the blossoming
process — terms such as ”30 percent” or ”80 percent” and
”full-bloom” — as the entire nation witnesses the daily
procession of spring from Kyushu in the south to Hokkaido in the
north. Plans are made as flowers open in parks and on riverbanks.
Junior workers are sent to favored parks early in the day to
reserve prized locations for the entire staffs from their
workplaces. Monumental traffic jams snarl circulation on April
weekends as nearly all of the people in many regions move en masse
to the cherry orchards. But still I wondered: What do they do for
Ohanami? I sensed major movement in the air every spring, but it
took years of living in Japan before I would accept an invitation
from some friends, the Konos, to have a personal look at Japanese
observing Ohanami. The Konos are married. He is an engineer and
professor of design, natty in tweeds, and she is a tax-season
accountant. To needle her, I call her Madame Takahashi, since she
often expresses the opinion that the French are much too snooty
about their culture. On the big day, we drove toward Sakura from
Ichikawa in Chiba Prefecture, a peninsula that extends south from
Tokyo much like New Jersey does from New York, with a similar mix
of petrochemical complexes in the urban north and a pastoral
landscape to the south. Sakura is about 20 miles from Tokyo. It is
the site of the National History Museum, where we were heading,
with The Eagles cranked up on the car stereo. ”What do you do for
Ohanami,” I asked and asked. They did not pay much attention.
Around mid-morning, we arrived on the grounds of the long-gone
castle of the Hotta clan, who ruled in Sakura till 1868. Not much
more than some earthen walls and a few old photographs of
outbuildings remain of the castle; it is now a festival site, a
park on the grounds of the museum. We walked along in the warm hazy
air, drinking beer in paper cups. Crowds picnicked underneath trees
flowering pinkypink. Around them were stacks of supplies and piles
of empty beer bottles. A flute and percussion combo was playing
traditional music on instruments unrecognizable to me. At one
point, the flautist lost his place and started riffling through his
sheet music. One of the drummers laughed, but nobody seemed to
notice. The Carpenters provided background music from a portable
tape player, turned up loud. Maybe that is why the embarrassed
flautist went unnoticed. Other Japanese were playing shuttlecock.
Seniors were clapping and singing old songs in a wooden shelter. A
chorus of Bible-toting Christians, dressed in neat, conservative
suits and dresses, was singing ”Amazing Grace” in Japanese. Many
people were gathered under the cherry trees, although the crowds
were sparse compared to those in Yoyogi and Ueno parks in downtown
Tokyo, where the grass is beaten to a faint green smear in the dirt
by the tree-to-tree weekenders. There was food on sale in tents:
rice, pickled vegetables, yakitori and yakiniku (grilled chicken
and beef on skewers), gyoza (fried dumplings), yakisoba (fried
noodles) and other great stuff, and, of course, the beer. Then
there were the 5-foot mounds of garbage at long intervals. We
finally settled under a cherry tree in copious bloom and I repeated
my question: ”What do you do for Ohanami? Look at the cherry
blossoms and daydream? Do you DO anything?” Madame Takahashi
looked at me and said, ”There’s no purpose at all. Not to have a
purpose is good.” Then she smiled, added, ”I’m feeling a little
tipsy,” and lay down and took a nap. Her husband, the professor,
looked at me and said, ”Ohanami is having a picnic in the park,
singing and dancing and drinking beer. Don’t Americans drink beer
in the park in springtime?” I replied that they do. Then the
professor lay down and closed his eyes. I took the hint, stopped
asking questions and rested myself. Maybe what you do on Ohanami is
lie under a flowering cherry tree and look up serenely at the pink
blossoms. It seems that way to me, although another friend of mine
said with a laugh, ”In Japan, it’s the beer that’s
important.”