falling cherry blossoms

[waterscroll]

Just came across this article in the New York times about different meanings of cherry blossoms in Japanese literature and art, and also the political implications of the image:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/t-magazine/japan-cherry-blossoms.html

It got me thinking because in Hakuouki falling cherry blossoms definitely have political implications, but I think they are different in Hijikata's route and in Saito's route.


In Hijikata's route *he* is the falling cherry blossom, dying for a regime that had long ago lost any hope, in a place that he helped conquer (from people who hadn't necessarily wanted to be involved in this war) more or less in order to die there. So when the article describes the image of falling cherry blossoms used to encourage soldiers to give their lives for their country in (ultimately futile) wars of conquest, well, you can sort of see the connection.

In Saito's route, the falling cherry blossom is the thing that he serves: the things that always endure. Cherry blossoms fall but grow again, year after year, and so although they are fragile and changing they symbolize eternity. Saito uses them to explain why he is (or seems to be) following the Itou faction and leaving the Shinsengumi - although this looks like change, it is loyalty to the things that don't change. Towards the end of the route, when he sees that Chizuru has kept a petal from that day, it convinces him that her love for him is equally enduring, although the nature and expression of it is changing. By the end of the route Saito has found a way to live by understanding how he can hold on to his identity as a warrior and still give up his sword.

What about other routes? I am not sure. But interesting to think about.

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, interesting, as I recall I read them as a bittersweet symbol of change in both routes. It was just that which change they were (ostensibly) sad about was different, since the civil war was basically one form of conservatism versus another, in the face of external forces they both didn't like, but couldn't agree on how to deal with.

His political cover story aside, Saito's route is all about coming to terms with the end of the ideal of the samurai, and Hijikata's with the end of...well, everything he's aligned with (samurai, the Shinsengumi, the shogunate etc)

I played Saito then Hijikata, and after that was inclined to see the blossoms in the opening credits as a symbol of the Shinsengumi in general: beautiful in their short lived intensity. And the white and red colours match those of a Fury, which is an especially intense and short lived state of being. I don't remember them being especially significant in any of the other routes, unless they came up in Kazama's as part of the general Tragedy Of The Shinsengumi arc.

I feel like there was also something about the loss of Japanese culture as it existed before European contact, too, but am too tired to untangle it. Also like...spring turns into summer, and blossoms fall as the herald of fruit. Or something.

That said, it's been a while since I played, and I am currently awake at 5am with insomnia, so I am not sure my reading was neccesarily the best supported by the text. But that's how it felt to me.

[waterscroll]

Yeah I wouldn't have thought of the cherry blossoms having different implications in different routes until I read the above article and in particular the different political meanings it can have. But as usual I might be overreading here :).

There also might be something in that Saito manages to adapt to the changing world - he ends the game as part of a community, with a plan for his life. Hijikata, well, in his good end he survives but we don't really know anything beyond that, and the game never gave me a convincing picture of what his life might look like post-canon. So it makes sense that falling cherry blossoms would mean different things to them.

I agree there's also a piece about all the Shinsengumi being falling cherry blossoms, the last remnant of the Samurai warrior culture.

And the white and red colours match those of a Fury, which is an especially intense and short lived state of being.

I hadn't noticed that! So all the things that the cherry blossoms can represent connects to all the different things the furies can represent. Interesting.

[alias_sqbr]

I didn't think of Furies either, until I was writing my comment and started thinking about the different the ways the game uses cherry blossoms, and remembered the corruption screen. Which now that I think about it also list whether the LI's feelings are "closed"/"in bloom" etc as well.