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Hananokumo
Why does my heart rise when the cherry blossoms bloom? I ask myself, but I can’t find an answer. I can’t say that it rises because my heart rises. Some people say that it’s built into my DNA, and that may be true.
A few years ago, I went out early in the morning to sketch the cherry blossoms on the hills of Sone Hills. I went there several times to sketch them from the bud stage until they were in full bloom.
As I went there, I began to think that the spirits of cherry blossoms reside in the cherry blossoms. The spirits that had been hiding in the earth during the winter gathered at the base of the cherry blossoms in spring, and as if waiting for the right time, they filled the cells of the trunk of the cherry blossoms, ran up, and reached the tips of the branches, waiting patiently for the time to be released. The spirits that resided in the buds are released into the sky all at once as the flowers bloom, and they dance away. The cherry blossoms in full bloom are with the spirits. The spirits fill the spring air of the basin. They will surely return to the earth and hibernate again someday. When I started to think like that, my sketches seemed so tiny that they were not worth drawing.
The cherry blossoms with the moon were also bewitching. They were with spirits after all. I tried to somehow make a print of them, carved them, printed them, but it didn’t work out as I had hoped.
When you think of cherry blossoms, Yoshino is the place to be. I had always wanted to see and encounter the cherry blossoms of Yoshino. Fortunately, I have seen them in full bloom three times.
The first time I saw them was at the entrance to Yoshimizu Shrine in Nakasenbon, where the cherry blossoms seemed to creep up the ridge from Nakasenbon to Kamisenbon. “What a rich harmony of cherry blossom colors,” “What soft, deep colors.” I was struck by an experience I had never had before.
The second time, I was in the middle of a cherry blossom storm. My heart was ecstatic. I pressed the shutter of my camera, hoping to somehow preserve the shape. Sadly for an amateur, it did not capture what I wanted at all. But the memory is still firmly etched in my mind.
The third time was when I visited my son in Osaka with my wife. We went on a little cherry blossom pilgrimage and enjoyed the cherry blossom passage at the Osaka Mint Bureau. The next day, we headed to Yoshino.
We walked downhill from Okusenbon to Kamisenbon, Nakasenbon, and Shimosenbon. It was the time when the cherry blossoms of Kamisenbon and Nakasenbon were in full bloom. As I walked, I thought about the cherry blossoms that have been planted, nurtured, and prayed for since the Heian period. I thought that I could never portray the profound depth of the cherry blossoms at my current state.
After returning home, while looking at the sketches, I began to want to make a print of the view of Nakasenbon that I had seen at the rest area on the way down from Okusenbon. Even if I can’t portray the profound depth of the cherry blossoms, I want to preserve that scene, I want to record the serene spring scenery that spread out at my feet at that time. I thought how wonderful it would be to go down while dancing like a heavenly maiden in the soft air, and I wanted to somehow capture that feeling in a print.