ISLAMABAD/TOKYO: Japan announced the official start of Tokyo’s cherry blossom summer season on Tuesday, ten days earlier than usual, and tied with an early record start seen only twice before.
In the previous years, the country’s meteorologists have linked the increasingly early blooms to climate change, and temperatures in Tokyo have been unseasonably mild recently.
According to the weather agency, Tokyo’s official cherry bloom records go back 70 years, and the delicate white-pink flowers appeared early in 2021 and 2020.
Japan’s cherry blossom season is feverishly anticipated by locals and visitors alike.
The announcement of the Tokyo summer season start was alerted by main news agencies and covered live on television.
Cherry Blossoms
The blooms are traditionally celebrated with hanami, and viewing parties, with picnics — and sometimes boozy festivities — organized beneath the trees. But the people had been asked not to throw parties during the pandemic, and the tourists that usually flood into Japan for the season were kept out with strict border closures.
Borders reopened the previous October, and Tokyo parks have announced blossom revellers would be allowed to gather freely for the first time since 2019.
The summer season is announced underway based on the progress of blossoms on a signal tree at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, where the official from the Japan Meteorological Agency stood before media and onlookers to make the announcement.
“Today, (Tuesday) on March 14, we at this moment declare the sakura blossoming in Tokyo,” he said in an announcement six days earlier than the previous year.
“We have seen several warm days in March,” the official said, adding: “climate change may have played a part.”
The blooms of the ubiquitous somei-yoshino strain, which accounts for more than 90% of the cherry planted in the country, last only around a week and tend to emerge simultaneously in a given region because the cherry trees are clones of a single specimen.
“Congratulations on the blooming!” the onlooker shouted after the official announcement to a round of enthusiastic applause.
