Cherry blossoms, a.k.a. Sakura in Japanese, are religiously indigenous in Japan with rice-farming tradition. Etymologically, Sakura means the place where rice spirituals dwell. When cherry blossoms are in full bloom, the Japanese people gather under the trees to share sake with the spirituals and pray for the rice harvest. And they start rice planting. Scientifically, this is pretty much rational.
Rice planting begins when the air temperature gets about 15 degrees Celsius; if it is below 10 ºC, the rice plants will not grow well. In those days, the blooming of cherry blossoms had been empirically a marker for annual fertility.
The spirit of rice paddies has been believed to come down from mountains every spring. The Japanese have offered sake under the cherry blossoms, and the spirituals have been solemnly welcomed. That’s a ceremony. And then, everyone drinks sake and gets into wild merrymaking.
