FestivalEast Asia · Japan
Hanami
No rule yet
Nobody has written a rule for this observance yet, so the calendar does not put it on a day. A name with a made-up date beside it would be worse than a name on its own.
In short
Sitting under the cherry blossom for the fortnight it lasts.
The story
Sitting under the cherry blossom for the fortnight it lasts, which is the whole of it. The flower is admired because it does not stay: the tradition has spent a thousand years saying so, and the forecasts on the news each spring are of the front moving north. It is a fortnight of blossom, not a date, so this app carries no rule for it.
Retold from the Gujarati household practice
Why it matters
Sitting under the cherry blossom because it is about to end. The flowering lasts a week or so and the aesthetic that grew up around it is explicitly about transience - the blossom is admired for falling, not for lasting. Offices, families and schools take a sheet and a meal beneath the trees.
What people do
A sheet is laid under a tree in a park and the day is spent there with food and drink, often with the office. Bento boxes are made for it. Night viewing under lanterns is yozakura. The petals falling on the food is the point rather than a nuisance.
Retold from the Gujarati household practice
Told differently elsewhere
There is no fixed date: the blossom front moves from Okinawa in January to Hokkaido in May, and the forecast of its arrival is issued nationally and followed closely. Any date shown for hanami is an average for central Japan, not an event.
This text has not been checked by a reviewer yet.
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