Research Catalog

Title

The sakura obsession : the incredible story of the plant hunter who saved Japan's cherry blossoms / Naoko Abe.

Author

Abe, Naoko

Publication

• New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.
• ©2019

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xix, 380 pages, 12 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), map; 22 cm

Summary

"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"--

Uniform Title

Cherī inguramu. English

Alternative Title

Cherī inguramu.

Subjects

• Ingram, Collingwood, 1880-1981
• Botanists
• Flowering cherries
• Japanese flowering cherry
• Great Britain
• Ingram, Collingwood, 1880-1981 > Travel > Japan
• Biographies
• Biography
• Travel
• Japan
• Botanists > Great Britain > Biography
• Japanese flowering cherry > History
• Flowering cherries > Great Britain > History
• History

Genre/Form

• Biographies.
• Biography.
• History.

Note

• "Translated by the author"--Dust jacket.
• "This is a Borzoi book published by Alfred A. Knopf"--Title page verso.
• "Originally published in Japan in different form as 'Cherry Ingram : the English saviour of Japan's cherry blossoms' by Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo, in 2016. This translation simultaneously published as '"Cherry" Ingram: the Englishman who saved Japan's blossoms' in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Vintage Publishing, a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., London"--Title page verso.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 359-362) and index.

Language (note)

• In English, translated from the Japanese.

Contents

part 1. The birth of a dream: Family ties ; Mayfair-by-the-Sea ; Triumphs and tragedies ; Enforced seclusion ; Japan beckons ; The rising sun ; The birds and the bees ; Ingram's war ; Birth of a dream -- part 2. Creation and collection: Twin quests ; The Dejima doctors ; Hunting plants ; Creation and collection ; The Hokusai Collection -- part 3. Saving the sakura: Pilgrimage ; Twin pines ; Cherry Meccas ; Guardian of the cherries ; Wild-cherry hunting ; Saving the sakura ; Ingram's warning -- part 4. Taihaku's homecoming: The restoration quest ; Taihaku's homecoming ; Gambling with success ; A fairy-tale garden ; "Obscene" kanzan ; The cherry evangelist ; Darwin versus the Church ; The sounds of war -- part 5. Falling blossoms: Cherry blossom brothers ; Flowers of mass destruction ; Emperor worship ; The sakura ideology ; The Somei-yoshino invasion ; 100 million people, one spirit ; The cherry and the kamikaze ; Falling blossoms ; Tome's story -- part 6. Dark shadows: Children at war ; Black Christmas ; Protecting Benenden ; Ornamental cherries ; Dark shadows ; Cherries of a "traitor" ; Britain's cherry boom ; Ingram's "royal" cherries ; The Somei-yoshino renaissance -- part 7. Cherries of reconciliation: A garden of memories ; A peaceful death ; The Grange after Ingram ; Home and abroad ; The next generation of sakuramori -- Cherries of reconciliation -- Epilogue: Millennia trees ; The great wall of cherry blossoms -- Appendices: A: Key cherry varieties and wild cherry names ; B: Cherry blossom viewing locations.

Call Number

JFD 19-2844

ISBN

• 9781524733575
• 1524733571

LCCN

2018967548

OCLC

1042098724

Author

Abe, Naoko, author.

Title

The sakura obsession : the incredible story of the plant hunter who saved Japan's cherry blossoms / Naoko Abe.

Publisher

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.

Copyright Date

©2019

Edition

First United States edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 359-362) and index.

Language

In English, translated from the Japanese.

Research Call Number

JFD 19-2844