Throughout the spring season, cherry blossom trees, known as sakura, burst into bloom across Japan. They blanket mountainsides, parks and gardens in shades of pink and white—a phenomenon that attracts an estimated 63 million people each year to behold the nation’s beloved blossoms, according to an estimate by Kansai University.

In a country where the indigenous Shinto religion teaches that deities inhabit trees, rivers and other elements of the natural world, the cultural importance of sakura can’t be overstated. One leading theory suggests the “sa” in sakura derives from sagami, the God of Rice Fields, while “kura” comes from the word for “seat” or “vessel,” making the cherry blossom a likely dwelling place of the all-important rice field deity. From ancient times, farmers viewed the blooms as a divine signal to start planting rice seedlings. And the earliest hanami, which literally translates to “flower viewing,” were held in the hopes of a bountiful harvest.

Over time, hanami evolved beyond its spiritual and agricultural roots to become a cherished national tradition, where loved ones gather for festivals and picnics beneath the delicate blooms. However, hanami is more than just a celebration of the flower’s transient beauty—and an opportunity to reflect on the fleeting nature of life itself. The history of hanami connects to the broader history of Japan, reflecting key shifts in the country’s national identity, social structure and political power. And the blossoms are deeply embedded in its artistic and ceremonial traditions.

One of the earliest mentions of hanami appears in the 8th-century record Hitachi-no-Kuni Fudoki, which documents the tradition as an annual event observed by all social classes. When cherry trees bloomed on Mount Tsukuha (now called Tsukuba), some 35 miles northeast of Tokyo, people gathered with food and drinks, exchanged poems and danced, according to Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, author of Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms.

Cherry blossom viewing soon became a favorite pastime of Japan’s elite. Moved by the beauty of a cherry tree at Kyoto’s Jishu Shrine, Emperor Saga in A.D. 812, hosted the first imperial cherry blossom viewing in the city, prompting aristocrats to begin planting the trees in their own gardens.

The trend coincided with a time when the Japanese had begun seeking their own unique identity, separate from long-standing Chinese influences. “Until then, China’s cultural and political influence was paramount, and aristocrats admired plum blossoms just like in China,” says Naoko Abe, author of The Sakura Obsession. “Cherry blossoms eventually replaced plum blossoms and became the national flower.”

During Japan’s Heian Period (794-1185), hanami often inspired poetry about the cherry blossoms. In the Kokin Wakashū, a 10th-century anthology of more than 1,000 poems, cherry blossoms in full bloom symbolized the beauty of women and of Kyoto (then Japan’s capital), says Ohnuki-Tierney. And in the 11th-century literary masterpiece The Tale of Genji, the blooms represented youth, love and courtship. At one point, the book describes the main heroine Murasaki as a “mountain cherry tree in perfect bloom, emerging from the mists of a spring dawn.”

As Japan shifted from an aristocratic society to a military-ruled feudal system during the Kamakura Period (1185-1333), the cherry blossom found new admirers. “Cherry blossoms were status symbols of aristocrats,” says Abe, “and later of the samurai [warrior] class after they rose to power in the 12th century.” During this period, powerful upper-class shoguns (top military commanders) and daimyos (landowning feudal lords) organized lavish hanami as occasions to demonstrate their cultural refinement, wealth and power.

One powerful daimyo, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, hosted two of the era’s most extravagant hanami celebrations. In 1594, he threw a five-day cherry blossom viewing extravaganza at Yoshino, Nara Prefecture, for some 5,000 guests. Attendees participated in lavish sake banquets and enjoyed Noh plays, a traditional form of Japanese costume theater characterized by slow, highly choreographed symbolic movements. The spectacle also included renga, collaboratively created poetry verses that were structural precursors to haiku.

Four years later, Hideyoshi invited 1,300 guests to admire the blooms at Kyoto’s Daigo Temple, where he had planted 700 additional cherry trees. A devoted enthusiast of Japan’s tea ceremony—a Zen-derived ritual of mindfulness and harmony centered around the preparation and sharing of matcha—Hideyoshi constructed multiple tea houses around the temple grounds, connecting two of the nation's most important cultural expressions. The lavish affair, during which noblewomen were said to change their fancy outfits twice, was immortalized in the sumptuously painted six-panel “Shihon chakushoku daigo hanamizu,” a prized example of a Japanese folding screen, or byōbu.

After 150 years of near-constant civil war, the daimyo Tokugawa Ieyasu rose to become shogun in 1603, unifying the country under his government in Edo (now Tokyo). Japan entered a two-centuries-long period of peace and seclusion—as well as its “golden age of cherry blossoms,” according to Abe. “The arrival of a peaceful era contributed to the rise of a merchant class," she says. "As merchants became more affluent and had more time for leisure, gardening and flower viewing were enjoyed by a wider population.”

As hanami flourished during the Edo period, so too did Ukiyo-e, colorful, inexpensive woodblock prints, often made with wood from the Japanese mountain cherry, that depicted scenes from everyday Japan. Cherry blossom landscapes were a common theme, with a noted example being Fuji from Gotenyama on the Tokaido at Shinagawa, part of the famous Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji series by Ukiyo-e master Hokusai.

Successive shoguns planted thousands of wild cherry trees (mountain cherries) in Edo and surrounding areas, and these became hanami spots for the general public, says Abe: “This marked the beginning of the mass hanami tradition seen in present-day Japan—friends and families partied together under the blossoms, eating, drinking and singing, sometimes dancing as well.” Some of the most famous hanami spots from the Edo era remain popular today. These include Tokyo’s Ueno Hill, the banks of the Sumida River (now boasting more than 1,000 cherry trees) and the Asukayama area in Oji, sites where the eighth Tokugawa shogun planted more than 1,200 trees. 

After the Tokugawa government fell in 1867-68, successive governments co-opted the cherry blossom as a tool of state symbolism, integrating its imagery into both diplomatic efforts and military propaganda.

The most notable example of cherry-blossom diplomacy came in 1912 with the gift of some 3,000 trees to the U.S. government, planted along the Potomac River’s Tidal Basin, in East Potomac Park and on the White House grounds.

The most tragic adaptation of the trees as state symbols came during World War II. That's when the Japanese military, desperate to reverse the growing Allied advantage in the Pacific, deployed kamikaze suicide bombers against the American fleet at Leyte, an island of the Philippines. According to Abe, cherry blossoms were painted on the fuselage of many kamikaze planes. And before the first group of pilots embarked on their fatal mission, Admiral Takijirō Ōnishi, credited with devising kamikaze tactics, recited the following poem: “Today, in blossom / Tomorrow, scattered by the wind / Life is so like a delicate flower / How can one expect its fragrance to last forever?”

At the end of the war, most cherry trees died out or were pulled from the ground to make space to grow food, says Abe. Or they were burned in the American bombing raids. 

Within a few short years, the cherry blossom shed its wartime associations, and a comeback took root. In 1948, 1,250 trees were planted in Tokyo’s Ueno Park. In 1952, budwood from Washington’s cherry trees was sent back to Japan in an effort to help restore the original grove along the Arakawa River near Tokyo. By the 1960s, hundreds of thousands more trees had been planted across the country, both to beautify the bomb-scarred landscape and to revive the hanami tradition.

Hanami continues to flourish in Japan, while the country’s cherry blossom diplomacy—which has included gifts to the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, Sweden, Turkey, China and other nations—has fostered goodwill, strengthened cultural ties and expanded hanami traditions through cherry blossom festivals far beyond its original borders.