The Flowers Celebrated in Festivals Across Japan

14.11.2024 - 14:13 / nytimes.com

Azaleas, a more compact member of the rhododendron family, grow throughout the Japanese archipelago. The shrub, with its often fuzzy evergreen leaves and funnel-shaped flowers, is a fixture of private gardens, shrines and national parks. In spring, when the blossoms are at their most vivid — in saturated shades of pink, purple or orange, striped or speckled — dozens of azalea festivals crop up, from subtropical Fukuoka to temples in the middle of Tokyo to the mountains of Hokkaido.

Over the centuries, Japanese horticulturists have developed some 2,000 varieties, many derived from the wild species that thrive in the mountains of Kyushu. The hardiest kind, Rhododendron kiusianum, is found along the slopes of that island’s active volcanoes. Though Japan is more closely associated with other flowers such as the camellia, the chrysanthemum and the cherry blossom, Wybe Kuitert, the landscape architect and author of “Japanese Gardens and Landscapes, 1650-1950” (2017), notes that azaleas appear in Japanese literature as early as the eighth century, recorded “blooming thick on the rocky margin of the meandering stream,” as one poet wrote. Long considered symbols of nature’s resilience, the blossoms were often picked as temple offerings.

A 15th-century garden manual by Buddhist priests in Kyoto advised planting azaleas as undergrowth along the sides of ponds or rocks. By the 17th century, many of the azalea bushes that carpeted the estates of wealthy landowners had begun to take on tidier, rounder shapes. At Hôtel de Yama, an industrialist’s early 20th-century villa turned resort in Hakone, 60 miles southwest of Tokyo, an undulating path winds around 32 acres of grounds planted with 84 varieties of azalea. All are immaculately pruned into cloudlike formations. But come early May, the azalea’s wild streak is on full display even here. “The azalea bush sits there all year round — green and perfectly trimmed,” says the British garden designer Sophie Walker, the author of “The Japanese Garden” (2017). “Then suddenly, out of nowhere, it becomes completely covered in flowers. It’s a good analogy for enlightenment.”