While leading my Cherry Blossom Photo Tours, I mention to participants and friends when they join me that there’s more than one type of hanami experience. Even though ‘hanami’ has become synonymous with cherry blossom viewing exclusively, hanami in its actual meaning is simply flowered viewing. Still, if you go back to one of Japan’s oldest novels, the Tales of Genji, written by a Japanese empowered woman, Murasaki Shikibu, a wisteria flower viewing was also mentioned alongside a cherry blossom viewing. Even in centuries past, the peoples of Japan broadened their enjoyment to include several different types of flowers. In truth, the entire country has countless flower species blooming for all flower lovers twelve months a year. In either my main office in Kanagawa or my Niigata satellite office, I have access to amazing flower viewing all year round. At this moment, Niigata is enjoying tulips and a variety of other species; currently, in Tochigi prefecture, it's wisteria Hanami time.
Ashikaga Flower Park is the most famous repository of Wisteria trees in Japan, possessing nearly 400 trees on the 23-acre plot that makes up the park. The peak hanami season for wisteria varies with the weather, and the researcher Yasuyuki Aono at Osaka Prefecture University observed that sakura has begun to bloom earlier;
a phenomenon I witnessed on my private Cherry Blossom Photo Tour this year, and Wisteria blooms have started earlier in the season than in previous years. This year was the earliest cherry blossom in the 1,200 record due to climate change, and it seems the Wisteria are experiencing the same effects.
I have spent entire days strolling through Ashikaga flower park and taking in all the beautiful floral photo ops on Japan Private Photography Workshops and for my own personal photographic adventures with the family. The park's de resistance piece is at the center of the Ashikaga Flower Park, as all roads must lead to the most magnificent Wisteria tree in the park and in all of Japan. In all its majesty, the tree is between 140 - 160 years old (reports differ on the actual age of the tree). Such a marvel of nature always gives me pause as I fall into a state of natural Zen. Everything falls away from my view except the tree, and I feel as if I am touching the genuine spirit of Japan preserved in the breathtaking blossoms.
The road to the oldest Wisteria tree is a lavender tunnel of wisteria blossoms, enclosing everyone in a fantasy realm, seemingly separating you from the outside world. Beyond the tunnel, the wisteria blossoms hang and sway with the wind, similar to the ebb and flow of an ocean’s tide. Sometimes I close my eyes and listen to the rustle of the flowers in the spring breeze, and I sense I’m adrift in a craft just beyond the breaking waves hearing them crash to the beach, and then I open my eyes quickly, and as the image fades, I experience the fusion of the fading vision of ocean waves and the shimmering lavender blossoms of the wisteria. It’s a magical experience that I hope to share with as many people as possible in 2022 when social distancing has eased, and I can introduce participants to the true essence of Japan again.