Photos & Poems
Sakura Blossoms: Photos and Haiku II
Spring in Tokyo Part Two
The perfect blossom is a rare thing. You could spend your life looking for one, and it would not be a wasted life. — The samurai Katsumoto, in The Last Samurai
To put it mildly, 2024’s hanami cherry blossom viewing season was a disappointment this year. Between Tokyo’s second-warmest winter on record and an unseasonable springtime cold snap, many trees never really fully bloomed — including my favourite, the famous shidarezakura “weeping cherry tree” — or blossomed and bloomed only briefly.
So this year, along with the seasonal photos I’ve already posted, I’ve decided to tap into my reserve of cherry blossom photos taken over the last 20+ years of living in Tokyo.
The following photos were originally shot on film or, later, succeeding generations of digital cameras (Sony R1; Canon G9; various iterations of Olympus m43s PENS and E-M1s).
The haiku, of course, come from some of the greatest masters of the craft: (written in the traditional Japanese style of surname first, in allcaps) BASHO Matsuo; BUSON Yosa; ISSA Kobayashi; SHIKI Masaoka.
