The National Flower

The National Flower  国花

The flower that is most beloved by the Japanese people and that symbolizes Japan is the cherry blossom.
日本人に最も愛好され、日本を象徴する花といえば桜です。


From the cherry blossom which falls only within a week or so, the Japanese sense beauty, as well as transience, melancholy, and perhaps honor of graceful resignation.
日本人は、１週間ほどで散ってしまう桜から、美しさとともに無常感や物悲しさ、あるいは潔さを読みとります。

The lyricism of the Japanese people has been closely connected with this flower from ancient times; since the Heian Period(794-1185), it has been often included in classical Japanese poems.
この花と日本人の叙情は昔から深く結び付いていて、平安時代（794-1185）以来、和歌にもよく詠まれています。

From the early years of the Showa Period (1926-1989) until the Second World War, the way that the cherry blossom quickly and gracefully falls was appropriated into militarism to beautify the deaths of the suicide units.
昭和時代（1926-1989）初期から第２次大戦までの間は、この桜の散りぎわの潔さが軍国主義に利用されて、特攻隊の死が美化されたりしたのです。

Today, Japan has sent cherry trees with their beauty overseas as the symbol of peace, and their light pink flowers bloom every spring, for example, beside the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., and on the remains of the Berlin Wall.
今ではその美しさが平和のシンボルとして、日本から海外に贈られ、アメリカのワシントンD.C.のポトマック河畔やベルリンの壁跡に、その薄桃色の花を春ごとに咲かせています。