Cherryblossoms and Seder Plates

When you hear a good story, you rarely check out the validity. Even in a world filled with wireless encyclopedias and snopes.com, if the story is interesting people are content to let the story lie. This is not that kind of story. I insist you check out details and get to the bottom of the story. Assuming you can. With that proviso, let the conscious streaming begin.

This week sees two events occurring in my life. As a Jew, we got Passover. A festival commemorating the enslavement of the Jewish people in Egypt, and celebrating the freedom of said slavery. The other event is the blooming of the Cherryblossom in South Korea celebrating a bunch of trees having flowers for about a minute.

If you're Jewish, to know the festival of Passover is to know the Four cups of wine, the four questions, the dry mouth hell of matzah crackers and the ridiculously long service hours with nothing more than parsley in salt water and an egg to keep us going. Truly, we are a people that suffer.

I cannot believe I just typed in 'Jews Crying' My rabbi was SO right about me..

If you're an expat in Korea, welcome to the Hellmouth. The long walks down Cherryblossom Lane, Your Town will be filled with thousands of other people. Your loved one will want to Instagram the shit out of every bloody branch. It will last far too long. There will not be parsley nor egg. Truly, as a people expats suffer. Then, the blossoms will drop and get mushy and cake your shoe and it will be AWFUL. 

Gah!

 Not slavery in Egypt awful, or bondage to Japanese oppressors awful but still, I mean, it's gross.Hang on, how am I segue-way ing into the Japanese? Because, as we all know in our hipster, geek glasses nose pushing way, the Japanese planted the cherry blossom in Korea.

"I believe the debate is about  Prunus × yedoensis. No Big Deal."

The Japanese as part of their colonialist process would plant cherry blossoms. They did so all over the country and often in key, sacrosanct locations. They went on to introducing watching the cherry blossom to the ROK.I mean, while they did other, more terrible things. Ask your co teacher.

"Wait, wait, WAIT! The Japanese did WHAT to Korea?"

The cherry blossom has been used in the past a massive symbol of Japanese Militarism. Souls of soldiers were compared to the blossom and kamikaze pilots would have the flower painted on the side of the plane. Between the Rising Sun logo and the cherry blossom, the Japanese military had more choices than the Nazis and their swastikas.

I looked up Google images of Nazi uniforms to make a joke. I couldn't do it. Here's a puppy though. PUPPY! The safety net of blogger journalism.

My perspective as a Western Jew to this process is fairly knee jerk. When you are raised to 'never forget' a phrase that Autocorrect just changed to 'beer fur get' incidentally, it's good to be reminded. It's good to be reminded just how many different groups of people have suffered through the hands of another race. How their occupation and enslavement was not thousands of years ago but decades or even less.

I'm talking to you, World.

As the Jews have their Seder Plate, rites and rituals carefully handed down, so too the Koreans with their trees. So, enjoy your walk. Just Never Forget.
 

And again, puppy.Also, the next one will be less sanctimonious. I promise.