Hanami all'Orto Botanico

The Museo Orto Botanico of Rome celebrates the blossoming of the cherry trees of the Japanese garden: two days to admire the splendid cherry trees of the Botanical Garden and to get closer to a millenary culture that has always drawn inspiration from nature.

In the contemplation of the blossoming cherry trees and of that beauty that is as surprising as it is ephemeral is in fact enclosed one of the concepts that most deeply runs through Japanese thought, that of the impermanence of existence. Hanami, a poetic spectacle that renews year after year, is just that: a lesson on the fleetingness of beauty and a perpetual ode to nature and its extraordinary power.

Understanding the ancestral capacity of the Japanese to enjoy and accept the transience and impermanence of existence, their sensitivity to embrace in the poignant beauty of the hic et nunc the melancholy of the end, helps to explain why the ‘Sakura culture’ is so widespread and beloved.

Hanami 花見, literally ‘watching the flowers’, refers to the traditional Japanese custom of enjoying the beauty of the spring blossoming of trees, especially cherry trees.

‘Doing Hanami’, on the other hand, means gathering in parks and gardens, lying under Sakura trees, welcoming spring, organising parties and elaborate picnics lying on blue cloths, spending the day eating, singing and contemplating the cherry blossoms.

The delicate and ethereal blossoming of the sakura 桜 marks the beginning of everything: from the school and tax calendar to the opening of the academic year at universities to new life experiences in a culture where nature is mother and teacher, guide and origin of everything, including man.

Hanami at the Botanical Garden is a way to approach the concepts of mono no aware, aesthetic sensitivity, emotional participation and awareness of fleeting beauty, and wabi sabi, acceptance and appreciation of the transient, imperfect and incomplete nature of all things. But also to test the strength of the profound relationship with the natural world and the seasons that characterise Japanese civilisation along a free path made up of exhibitions, moments of sharing and dialogue, bathing in the forest, guided tours, and children's workshops.

Event in collaboration with the Festival del Verde e del Paesaggio.