At the end of March bloom the early flowers of the cherry called the _higan_-cherry; but it is in the first half of the following month that the real cherry season is in full swing. The birthday of Sakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, is celebrated on the eighth of April, when an infusion of the _hydrangea thunbergii_ is poured over a small statue of the Buddha and the liquid is sold in small green-bamboo tubes to the votaries. It is said to be an effective charm against the breeding of maggots in summer. This ceremony of the washing of the Buddha, as it is called, is soon forgotten in the universal merriment of the cherry-flower season. The lovers of the plum-blossom may dwell upon the superior grace and delicacy of their favourite, but the darling of the nation is the cherry-flower; the former has been lauded by many a poet, but the latter is considered to be peculiarly Japanese, for no other land can boast the magnificent clusters without a leaf to break their continuity, which look in the distance like a bank of pale clouds, and when they fall, the scattering petals come down as lightly as flakes of snow. When we speak simply of _the_ flower, or of the flower-time, flower-view, or flower-season, we allude invariably to the cherry-flower. The high esteem in which the cherry-blossom has always been held in Japan is exemplified in the saying, “Among men the samurai, among flowers the cherry,” which was, in the days of military ascendancy, the highest praise that could be bestowed. Again, how closely the flower is identified with the country, may be seen from the famous ode of Motoori, which runs; “Should a stranger ask what is the spirit of Japan, to him I would show the wild-cherry blossoms glinting in the morning sun.” That spirit is delicate and tarnished by dishonour as readily as the flower is scattered by the wind. The cherry-flowers bloom but for a few days; and that fact gives the motive to a celebrated _haiku_, or verse of seventeen syllables, which may be lamely translated:— Ah, this world of ours! But three days are gone; and where Are the cherry-flowers? The lightness and allusiveness of the original bring home the evanescence of life even more vividly than the snows of yester-year.