Naoko Abe

The remarkable 1,200-year history of the Japanese cherry blossom tree--and how it was saved from extinction by an English gardener. Collingwood "Cherry" Ingram first fell in love with the sakura, or cherry tree, when he visited Japan on his honeymoon in 1907. So taken with the plant, he brought back hundreds of cuttings with him to England, where he created a garden of cherry varieties. In 1926, he learned that the Great White Cherry had become extinct in Japan. Six years later, he buried a living cutting from his own collection in a potato and repatriated it via the Trans-Siberian Express. In the years that followed, Ingram sent more than 100 varieties of cherry tree to new homes around the globe, from Auckland to Washington. As much a history of the cherry blossom in Japan as it is the story of one remarkable man, the narrative follows the flower from its adoption as a national symbol in 794, through its use as an emblem of imperialism in the 1930s, to the present-day worldwide obsession with forecasting the exact moment of the trees' flowering.

The Incredible Story of the Plant Hunter Who Saved Japan's Cherry Blossoms

The Sakura Obsession

This translation simultaneously published as "The sakura obsession: the incredible story of the plant hunter who saved Japan's cherry blossoms" in the USA by Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

The Englishman who Saved Japan's Blossoms

'Cherry' Ingram

"Cherry" Ingram i jego historia

Anglik, który ocalił japońskie wiśnie

Passione sakura. La storia dei ciliegi ornamentali giapponesi e dell'uomo che li ha salvati

Juan Manuel Salmerón Arjona

El hombre que salvó los cerezos

Each year, the flowering of cherry blossoms marks the beginning of spring. But if it weren't for the pioneering work of an English eccentric, Collingwood "Cherry" Ingram, Japan's beloved cherry blossoms could have gone extinct. Ingram first fell in love with the sakura, or cherry tree, when he visited Japan on his honeymoon in 1907 and was so taken with the plant that he brought back hundreds of cuttings with him to England. Years later, upon learning that the Great White Cherry had virtually disappeared from Japan, he buried a living cutting from his own collection in a potato and repatriated it via the Trans-Siberian Express. In the years that followed, Ingram sent more than 100 varieties of cherry tree to new homes around the globe. As much a history of the cherry blossom in Japan as it is the story of one remarkable man, The Sakura Obsession follows the flower from its significance as a symbol of the imperial court, through the dark days of the Second World War, and up to the present-day worldwide fascination with this iconic blossom.

Die berührende Biographie des Engländers Collingwood »Cherry« Ingram, der Japans Kirschblüte rettete Ihr Blick auf die Kirschblüte, im Japanischen »sakura«, wird nach der Lektüre ein anderer sein: Collingwood Ingram (1880-1981), ein junger Botaniker, reist 1902 von Großbritannien nach Japan, um dort neben Tokyo auch Berge und Wälder, geheime Palastgärten und Klöster zu erkunden. Vor allem aber ist er auf der Suche nach wilden Kirschbäumen, denen seine ganze Leidenschaft gehört. In der überhasteten Modernisierung Japans im 20. Jahrhundert werden diese jedoch rücksichtslos abgeholzt. Ingram gelingt es, eine einzigartige Sammlung von Japans wertvollstem Kulturgut zusammenzutragen und nach England zu schmuggeln, um die Kirschblüten dort in einem bezaubernden Garten in Sicherheit zu bringen. Er schwört, diese Bäume einst ihrer Heimat zurückzugeben – ein Unterfangen, das ihn bis an das Ende seines hundertjährigen Lebens umtreibt. In »Hanami« verbindet Naoko Abe kunstvoll die Biographie des englischen Exzentrikers mit der Geschichte Japans und der kulturellen Bedeutung der Kirschblüte, die sich in Kirschblütenfesten auf der ganzen Welt spiegelt. Ein faszinierendes Abenteuer der Reiseliteratur und ein spannendes Stück Zeitgeschichte für alle Fans des Naturewriting!

Die wundersame Geschichte des Engländers, der den Japanern die Kirschblüte zurückbrachte

Hanami

Jean-Paul Laumond

How and why to write a movement? Who is the writer? Who is the reader? They may be choreographers working with dancers. They may be roboticists programming robots. They may be artists designing cartoons in computer animation. In all such fields the purpose is to express an intention about a dance, a specific motion or an action to perform, in terms of intelligible sequences of elementary movements, as a music score that would be devoted to motion representation. Unfortunately there is no universal language to write a motion. Motion languages live together in a Babel tower populated by biomechanists, dance notators, neuroscientists, computer scientists, choreographers, roboticists. Each community handles its own concepts and speaks its own language. The book accounts for this diversity. Its origin is a unique workshop held at LAAS-CNRS in Toulouse in 2014. Worldwide representatives of various communities met there. Their challenge was to reach a mutual understanding allowing a choreographer to access robotics concepts, or a computer scientist to understand the subtleties of dance notation. The liveliness of this multidisciplinary meeting is reflected by the book thank to the willingness of authors to share their own experiences with others.

Naoko Abe

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