Adorning the cover of the latest issue of Rekishi Kaido (April), a monthly magazine for history buffs, are drawings of army general and wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and Iwo Jima defender Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi. Titled ¡°Light and shadow of the army of Showa,¡± the cover story seeks to demonstrate how the military influenced other Japanese organizations.
Further inside, in a section titled ¡°It looks like you know it, but you don¡¯t,¡± is a history of flower viewing in Japan.
According to Yuichiro Ando, who holds a doctorate in literature, up to the middle part of the Edo Period (1603-1868), the term hanami (flower viewing) originally referred not to cherry blossoms, but to plum blossoms. Japanese first began going out to view ume (plum) blossoms during the Nara Period (710-794), an era that partially overlapped with China¡¯s Tang Dynasty (618-906).
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