The season of renewal has begun to arrive here in our corner of Southern California. If you’re not from SoCal, you might be one of many who think we don’t have spring—or any “real” seasons, for that matter. I can tell you that we most certainly do. Since returning to this part of the world over two years ago, I’ve learned to appreciate the subtleties of seasonal emergence and transformation. If one pays attention, the signs are everywhere. The air is softer and the light takes on a different cast. A songbird is once again building her nest in the abandoned hanging planter under the eaves. Having soaked up our precious and all-too-brief winter rains, the foothills are blanketed in new green and the large shade trees lining the avenues bud and leaf out. Plum, apple, pear, and citrus trees are blooming, as are camellias. The shadows of rain clouds pass over the shoulders of the San Gabriels. Our valley is cleansed and smells sweet again. Summer’s prolonged heat blast is still a distant mirage.
With the arrival of spring, my mind is also across the Pacific, in my uncle’s garden in Kamakura—a historic seaside city less than an hour by train southwest of Tokyo and strategically situated between sea and mountains (to avoid invasion by warring feudal clans at the time of the city’s founding in the 12th century). My uncle and his family live next to Engaku-ji, the second of Kamakura’s five major Zen temples, on the same land where he grew up with my mother and their family. I try to visit Japan every other year or two, and in the spring, the hopeful season. This year I can’t manage a trip, so my Kamakura spring unfolds from memory.
The roubai (wintersweet in English) that we planted for my mother in 2004 usually blooms in late January, putting forth its waxy yellow flowers with their sweet, spicy fragrance. The Japanese consider roubai to be a harbinger of spring. This year’s winter was so cold that no roubai blossoms appeared, my uncle told me. In late February or early March, depending on the weather, the plum (ume) trees’ pink and white blooms and the showy, broad-faced camellias emerge. By late March my uncle’s Japanese magnolias have flowered and the cherry trees have stepped out in their frothy dresses of palest pink; in their transient fullness they are glorious to behold. My favorite stage is not full bloom, but when the tissue-thin petals begin to drift down like snow, covering everything. The intermittent liquid cry of the Bush Warbler (uguisu) cascades through the branches. Also in March, young bamboo shoots (take no ko) begin to nudge above the earth and are harvested for their tender, sweet meat; to eat fresh bamboo shoot is a seasonal ritual and a spiritual experience (once you’ve tried it, plain or prepared in a myriad ways, you can never go back to canned). As the days warm, purple daikonsoh (radish blossoms), wild iris, and spidery forsythia line the roadsides and footpaths. By late April the hills are laced in a tangle of wild wisteria and the hydrangeas at Meigetsui-in—another Zen temple located a few doors down from Engaku-ji—begin to bud. By June throngs of visitors will clog Meigetsu-in’s grounds to photograph its famous garden’s hundreds of meticulously maintained hydrangea plants covered in hat-sized blooms.
My visits to Kamakura are quiet, shaped around simple, familiar activities. We share meals and sit in the garden in fair weather. My uncle and I take daily walks into town to shop, rewarding ourselves afterward with steaming bowls of tempura soba at our favorite soba shop. More than fifteen years ago we hiked the forested hills together; now he walks slowly, and with a cane—more time to admire the flowers, he says. We visit my favorite temples: Zuisen-ji, sparsely visited and tucked away up in the hills of northeastern Kamakura, and Hokoku-ji with its stunning bamboo garden. Tohkei-ji, which once provided sanctuary to women fleeing abusive husbands, has a lovely graveyard and a dimly lit, cozy teashop surrounded by verdant foliage. I like to visit Engaku-ji just before I leave Japan, entering from the west along the Philosopher’s path (Tetsugaku no michi). The great Japanese film director Ozu Yasujiro is buried at Engaku-ji, his black marble tombstone unmarked but for the single kanji character mu (無—emptiness, nothingness). It’s the temple where my mother and her siblings played under the great wooden main gate (Sanmon), which dates from 1783. They played like all children do: in the present moment, innocent of a great war that was brewing on a faraway continent—a war that would change Japan, and our world, forever.
Mari L'Esperance 3.3.15
