Hanami, or parties to view cherry blossoms, first became popular among the aristocracy during the Heian period (8th to 12th centuries), and reached extreme heights with Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the late 16th century. The practice spread among the common people during the Edo period.

It is not possible to exaggerate the connection between cherry blossoms and the Japanese imagination. They have continued to occupy a prominent role in Japanese music, literature, and dance. Some Japanese even think the old song Sakura, Sakura (sakura means cherry blossom) should replace Kimi ga Yo as the national anthem. People flock to parks and hold parties underneath the cherry blossoms every spring. Television and radio give daily updates on the “cherry blossom front” as the location of areas with newly-blooming trees moves gradually northward. This is easy to understand if you live in Japan; a park with cherry blossoms in full bloom is a lovely and moving site.

One reason the cherries have such a hold on the poetic imagination is that their period of full beauty is so brief. Even relatively mild breezes are enough to send a spray of petals fluttering to the ground, and the flowers last for little longer than three weeks from beginning to end. For the Japanese, the cherries are a symbol of the impermanence of beauty and life. In fact, the verb chiru, used to describe the scattering of the flower petals, in some cases can be used to mean death, as in the multitude of young lives that chiru on the battlefield.

Our age is not so poetic, alas. This article in the Daily Times of Pakistan explains that the lighting company Ryoko has launched sales of an artificial cherry tree whose blossoms will last year round. The tree has 40 branches with 7,680 light-emitting diodes, using the same technology used in cell phones.

Despite the popularity of cherry blossoms, I’m not sure how well the artificial trees will sell. Though the tree consumes only 410 watts of electricity, it weighs 500 kilograms. (That’s more than half a ton!) They’re a bit pricey, too. The model with white and red flowers sells for the equivalent of $25,400, and the price jumps to $33,500 for the model with white flowers only.

There is one problem they will solve, however. Three weeks after arriving in Japan, some people took me to a hanami at night in the largest park in the city. Words cannot describe that experience. I was new to Japan and marveled at everything I saw. The park is large and has a lot of trees, and that night they were all in full bloom. The grounds were filled with people enjoying themselves. It was one of the few times in my life where I felt like pinching myself to see if I was dreaming.

After a couple of hours, a group of young guys next to us had gotten ripped on sake. One of them decided to climb a cherry tree. The trees are not sturdy enough to bear the weight of an adult, so of course he fell, snapping off a couple of large branches to peals of drunken laughter. My hosts were very embarrassed that I had to witness this. (It didn’t bother me. People are people wherever you go.) But people are not about to try climbing an artificial tree, no matter how drunk they get.

In passing, a comparison of Japanese and Korean “national flowers” reveals a fascinating difference. While they don’t occupy the same place in the Korean imagination as cherries do in Japan, the Rose of Sharon (mukuge in Japanese, mugunhwa in Korean) serves as a similar symbol. The cherry, as I’ve noted, is a fragile blossom that soon reaches its peak and disappears. The Rose of Sharon is the opposite. It is a very hardy plant that continues to bloom throughout the hottest periods of summer. They say it is this hardiness that appeals to the Korean imagination.