Month’s Heading: April, the memory of China and Japan’s blossoms

April is the first month of the year that’s completely within the Spring’s furious celebration to life, and we could even say that it is the proper beginning of this placid season, which delicately begins the climb towards Summer after the violent and tumultuous changes of March. Originally the second month of the year in the Monarchic Roman calendar, it was devoted to Venus, the minor protector of family gardens who eventually left the humble allotments of the simple Roman people to mirror Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty and sex. Venus was, however, a bit less playful and a lot more matronly than her Greek counterpart, and that’s why she was also regarded as the source of Spring’s fertility: many festivals were held in her honour during the whole month, but the most spectacular one, the solemnly-named Festum Veneris et Fortunae Virilis (Feast of Venus and The Good Luck of Men) was held the very first day. Theoretically, it’s from here that the name of the month comes: a corruption in genitive case of the foreign name Aphrodite, aphrilis.



After Christianity razed all apparent signs of Pagan tradition, April went from the month in which life was celebrated, to the month in which death was conquered with the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday. Curiously enough, in the month in which life proudly emerges from the paralyzing snows of winter, Christianity goes from mourn to celebration in one week, and in some places it does so with rather unsettling displays of gory morbidity and fanatical devotion.



However, not all cultures view the season under such an ominous light; the Chinese open the month with the beautiful Qingming or Clear Brightness festival, in which people cheerfully remember their ancestors by going to their tombs and cleaning them – by doing so, they rescue their memories by polishing and carefully adorning the graves, giving new life to those who are long gone. But the most beautiful festival of all takes place in Japan. Hanami, or Viewing of the Flowers, is a 1,500 years old tradition imported from China, which celebrated the joys of Spring as soon as they were announced by the blossoming of the trees. Nowadays, the cherry blossom season (which, curiously enough, only lasts one week) in Japan is widely celebrated, especially at night, when paper lanterns are hung from the branches of trees so that people can enjoy eating under a light shower of pink and white petals.



Finally, I come to the song that opens the month! Ayumi Hamasaki’s Hanabi/Fireworks comes in two parts, being the first a lovely melancholic ballad that I’m sure will tug at your heart’s strings with its sad, almost pleading chorus and sweet, distant atmosphere. It was a huge million seller single in 2002 (the last million-selling single by any Japanese female singer), and comes from the album Rainbow. The second part is also a ballad, but it has a very aggressive rock background that manages to both highlight the melody’s beauty while giving the song greater intensity, and a heightened sense of frustration, in comparison with the first part’s boundless despair. It was also released as a single in 2003, as part of the mini album Memorial Address, from 2003. Let me remind you to buy them at Amazon.

Hanabi ~episode I~
Hanabi ~episode II~