Sakura Flower Earrings in 925 Silver and Zircons

In Japan, the cherry blossom (sakura) is the unofficial national flower.

Starting from the Heian period (794-1185), every year in spring, on the occasion called hanami (literally it means "to look at the flowers" but the term is used exclusively in reference to the cherry blossom), the Japanese celebrate the ephemeral beauty of the sakura , one of the symbols of Japan, so strongly present in the culture of the Land of the Rising Sun.

The call of the cherry blossom goes beyond its evident beauty, what is striking is its transience, its being in full bloom for only a few days.

The true sense of the hanami tradition does not consist in looking at the spectacle offered by the beauty of the flowers on the tree but in observing with a touch of sadness and emotion how they fall from the tree, transported by the spring breeze in the short journey that separates them from the still earth cold. A sweet and at the same time melancholy way to remember that every life is destined to end.

Despite this, it's not a sad anniversary, quite the contrary! Under each flowering tree a blue plastic sheet is spread and the joy of food and company is added to the aesthetic pleasure of remaining under a delicate rain of petals.

Hanami is a chance to get together with friends, organize picnics and enjoy plenty of food and sake.

In fact Hanami is celebrated in April and spring also symbolizes a moment of rebirth and generating strength. Cherry blossoming has always been seen as a premonitory sign of the richness of the rice harvest, as a wish for prosperity.

As such, the custom of offering cherry blossom infusions at weddings should be interpreted.

Thus the students, who begin a new school year in April, and the recent graduates who enter the world of work every year, in the same month, see cherry blossoms as an auspicious sign for their future.

Most cherry trees in Japan are of the Somei Yoshino and Yamazakura varieties, but there are over 100 different varieties across the country.

Among the distinctive features, the main one is represented by the number of petals of the cherry blossoms. Most wild cherry trees but also cultivated ones have flowers with five petals, some species have flowers with ten, twenty or more petals.

In symbolism we find more frequently the five-petal sakura with clear references to the five orients of Japanese esoteric Buddhism (the four cardinal points and the centre), to the five sacred Japanese elements (earth, water, fire, air and emptiness) to which the famous samurai Miyamoto Musashi titled the five "books" that make up his work, the Gorin No Sho (book of five rings). Still in five parts, according to Japanese cosmogony, the god of fire was cut by Izanagi, after Izanami's death and from the five parts Oyamatsumi was created, one of the oldest and most revered mountains...

But the cherry blossom is also closely linked to Bushidō, the chivalrous ideal of the Japanese warrior ( Bushi ). The sakura embodies and symbolizes the qualities of the samurai: purity, loyalty, honesty, courage.

Like the cherry blossom, ephemeral and fragile, in its full splendor dies leaving the branch, so the samurai, in the name of the principles in which he believes, is ready to lay down his life in battle.

It is the image of an ideal, pure death, detached from the transience of life and from earthly goods.

We find the symbolism of the sakura in the Second World War, the image of the falling cherry blossoms often recurs in the last letters written by the Kamikazes to their families before their suicide mission.

The cherry blossom was also reproduced on the sides of ohka , rocket-guided bombs used against American ships in Okinawa.

At the controversial Yasukuni-jinja Shinto temple in Tōkyō, a shrine that houses the national museum in memory of the Japanese fallen, cherry blossoms still symbolize the rebirth of soldiers who fell in war.

Poetry and painting have also celebrated the cherry blossom for centuries. And dedicating to all of you a beautiful haiku written by the poet and painter Yosa Buson (1715-1783) seems to me the best way to conclude this article:

Cherry blossoms fall

on the stretches of water of the paddy field:

stars, in the light of a moonless night

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