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emwhitney 's review for:
What a beautiful book, and in more ways than one! This book is part biography of Collingwood "Cherry" Ingram, who was a British naturalist who helped save different species of Japanese cherry trees (including reintroducing the beautiful Taihaku variety, which nearly went extinct), and part history of flowering cherry trees in Japan and how their role and symbolism in society evolved over time, even shifting to become a major political tool during World War II.
I had never heard of Cherry Ingram before reading this book, but this man has impacted so many people's daily lives! Most of the flowering cherry trees across England are descendants of the ones he grew, and the "Great White," or Taihaku, tree, which had gone extinct in Japan due to a singular focus on the somei-yoshino variety, was reintroduced to the country thanks to his work.
One of my favorite stories in the book was that of the Fujimi tree, which exemplifies resilience and rebirth. The Fujimi cherry tree was a particular cherry tree that was very old and large, and it snapped in half and fell over, leading everyone to believe it had died. However, a new sapling began to grow out of the original trunk, and the Fujimi tree began a new life.
While the sections about Ingram were super interesting, the part that I found the most intriguing was Part Five: Falling Blossoms, which detailed the rise of Japanese nationalism leading up to World War II and how the government crafted this cherry ideology that was used to promote dying for the emperor, and it even helped to lead to kamikaze warfare (Interesting fact: this idea of Japanese lives needing to be ready to "fall" at the right time for the emperor, similar to the cherry blossom petals, even led the Japanese army to paint cherry blossoms on the front of kamikaze planes). I really enjoyed learning as well about Masatoshi Asari's "conciliation cherries" - cherry trees he donated to England to atone for the pain Japanese soldiers from his hometown caused British POWs during WWII. Learning more about how ordinary people across cultures showed each other compassion after such horrifying ordeals was very special.
One thing that is super interesting to me is that Naoko Abe originally wrote this book in Japanese, but instead of hiring a translator to produce the English version, she just rewrote the book in English - and added even more material! That's so cool!!! The book also features beautiful spreads of pages created by Ingram's own botanical sketches, photos by and of Ingram and his friends, and what I argue is the perfect weight per page.
A quote on page 118, "Many of the varieties would undoubtedly have been lost to Japan... were it not for his loving vigilance," prompted me to think about how, across the world, people developing seemingly niche interests can help to preserve little pieces of our planet. They all fit together like a puzzle - librarians, specialized doctors, farriers! In Joan Didion's essay "Alicia and the Underground Press," she says, "Alicia probably doesn't know anything about anything outside of Ann Arbor. But she tells me all she knows about that." The Alicias and the Ingrams of the world know a lot about one thing that, on the surface, may seem unimportant. If you imagine our world as a forest, with each tree representing one of these niches, it can be easy to think that if just one tree falls, it won't affect the forest too much. However, if you (allow me to invert a common phrase) lose the trees for the forest and allow too many to fall, you end up with a pretty sad forest.
Some quotes I liked:
"In our search after differences, we often forget that the Earth is round and the so-called farthest East touches the farthest West." - Japanese ambassador to America Hiroshi Saito, April 1934
"If you stick with singularity, you may get results quickly... But neither a flower nor a society can evolve with richness or vitality if everything and everyone is the same." (307)
I had never heard of Cherry Ingram before reading this book, but this man has impacted so many people's daily lives! Most of the flowering cherry trees across England are descendants of the ones he grew, and the "Great White," or Taihaku, tree, which had gone extinct in Japan due to a singular focus on the somei-yoshino variety, was reintroduced to the country thanks to his work.
One of my favorite stories in the book was that of the Fujimi tree, which exemplifies resilience and rebirth. The Fujimi cherry tree was a particular cherry tree that was very old and large, and it snapped in half and fell over, leading everyone to believe it had died. However, a new sapling began to grow out of the original trunk, and the Fujimi tree began a new life.
While the sections about Ingram were super interesting, the part that I found the most intriguing was Part Five: Falling Blossoms, which detailed the rise of Japanese nationalism leading up to World War II and how the government crafted this cherry ideology that was used to promote dying for the emperor, and it even helped to lead to kamikaze warfare (Interesting fact: this idea of Japanese lives needing to be ready to "fall" at the right time for the emperor, similar to the cherry blossom petals, even led the Japanese army to paint cherry blossoms on the front of kamikaze planes). I really enjoyed learning as well about Masatoshi Asari's "conciliation cherries" - cherry trees he donated to England to atone for the pain Japanese soldiers from his hometown caused British POWs during WWII. Learning more about how ordinary people across cultures showed each other compassion after such horrifying ordeals was very special.
One thing that is super interesting to me is that Naoko Abe originally wrote this book in Japanese, but instead of hiring a translator to produce the English version, she just rewrote the book in English - and added even more material! That's so cool!!! The book also features beautiful spreads of pages created by Ingram's own botanical sketches, photos by and of Ingram and his friends, and what I argue is the perfect weight per page.
A quote on page 118, "Many of the varieties would undoubtedly have been lost to Japan... were it not for his loving vigilance," prompted me to think about how, across the world, people developing seemingly niche interests can help to preserve little pieces of our planet. They all fit together like a puzzle - librarians, specialized doctors, farriers! In Joan Didion's essay "Alicia and the Underground Press," she says, "Alicia probably doesn't know anything about anything outside of Ann Arbor. But she tells me all she knows about that." The Alicias and the Ingrams of the world know a lot about one thing that, on the surface, may seem unimportant. If you imagine our world as a forest, with each tree representing one of these niches, it can be easy to think that if just one tree falls, it won't affect the forest too much. However, if you (allow me to invert a common phrase) lose the trees for the forest and allow too many to fall, you end up with a pretty sad forest.
Some quotes I liked:
"In our search after differences, we often forget that the Earth is round and the so-called farthest East touches the farthest West." - Japanese ambassador to America Hiroshi Saito, April 1934
"If you stick with singularity, you may get results quickly... But neither a flower nor a society can evolve with richness or vitality if everything and everyone is the same." (307)