Japan in Spring

About this book

Spring in Japan is not just a flower — it is a season of beginnings. Dolls are displayed and floated out to sea, sweet tea is poured over the infant Buddha, paddies are flooded until they mirror the sky, the first tea is picked, breweries open their yards, and a whole nation starts school and work on the same April morning under the blossom. Two hundred spring-only festivals, flower culture, farming rites and new beginnings in one uniform, practical format: 60 spring festivals and cultural events, 60 entries of blossom and flower culture, 40 rice-planting, farming and new-beginning entries, and 40 experiences, foods and markets you join with your hands. Every entry gives the typical window, the place, what makes it possible only in spring, and how to plan around it.

The Hina Matsuri and its hanging ornaments. The Takayama floats and Nagahama's child kabuki. Carp streamers over the Sagami River. Sakura mochi in both its regional forms, the blossom forecast read properly, wisteria and iris seasons that follow the cherry. Rice planting at Sumiyoshi and Mibu, new tea around the 88th night, bamboo shoots dug at dawn, and the April restart — graduations, entrance ceremonies, randoseru backpacks and moving trucks — that makes spring Japan's true New Year. Every window is given honestly as the typical year, and every entry carries its check date — because spring moves, and a good guide says so.

Companion to Hanami & Momiji (blossom and autumn-leaf viewing spots, ranked with best-time guides), Matsuri (the festivals themselves, across the year), Japan Through the Year (annual customs) and Japan in Winter, Japan in Summer and Japan in Autumn: those books cover where Japan watches the blossom and what it celebrates across the year. This one — the volume that completes the four seasons — covers what spring itself does: the events held, the flowers lived with, the fields planted and the lives begun.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.