The cherry blossoms are out! One spring around 330 years ago, Bashō was watching them and wrote:

世に盛る花にも念仏申しけり
yo ni sakaru hana ni mo nembutsu mōshi-keri

in full bloom
to the cherry blossoms
we give thanks
—Bashō

(trans. David LaSpina^[1])

^{"Holiday of Cherry Blossoms" by Hiroshige}

The thanks being given is specifically the nembutsu, which is a kind of chant some Buddhist sects teach to repeat as often as possible. The most well known of these is the Pure Land (Jodo-shu and Jodoshin-shu) nembutsu which is Namu-Amida Butsu (南無阿弥陀仏) "Hail Amida Buddha", Amida being the universal Buddha in their view. Another well known one would be for the Nichiren Sect and it is Namu-Myōhōrengekyō (南無妙法蓮華経), "Hail Lotus Sutra", the Lotus Sutra being the most important sutra to them. Back in the day people might have used these more or less constantly. Some Pure Land teachers give a number of times one needs to chant it in their lifetime in order to be reborn in the Pure Land (paradise, basically), still other teachers just say do it often.

Bashō was a Zen Buddhist and neither of the two main Zen sects do any chanting beyond the Heart Sutra, so he probably wasn't joining in the nembutsu chanting in this haiku, but was just observing others doing it while watching the blossoms. It might have the feeling of giving thanks for such beauty, hence my translation above.

Watching the cherry blossoms (called hanami) often involves a picnic with plenty of sake. In a time before all the modern ways we have for keeping in touch, hanami was the social event of the season. After the long and hard winter, it was not only a chance to enjoy the warmer weather and the beautiful flowers, but also a chance to be social, catch up on gossip, and meet old friends. Even today hanami is still a big deal, but it was so much more back in Bashō's time. We can imagine him sitting and enjoying not only the blossoms, but enjoying people watching as well.

Today the most popular kind of cherry blossom is someiyoshino (染井吉野) and that is probably the kind you picture in your head when you think of cherry blossoms, but this kind didn't actually exist in Bashō's day (despite what samurai dramas show); in his day Yamazakura (山桜) was the most popular kind. It has a more natural and rustic appearance as it is a wild species of cherry blossom, whereas the someiyoshino is a cultivar that was specifically bred to look the way it does (it was first bred around the mid-19th century in the village of Somei by a gardener named "Yoshino Goro").

The kigo (season word) for this haiku is hana, flower/blossom. When used alone in haiku it always refers to the cherry blossoms. As I have written before haiku in Japanese are much much shorter than in English, so they need all the shortcuts they can get.

❦

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.

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1. That is, me! If you like this translation, feel free to use it. Just credit me. Also link here if you can. ↩