The Sakura Problem

So it's cherry blossom season in Japan. This means congregating in parks, laying out large blue tarpaulins and lazing around drinking sake until evening with friends and family. Conveniently, Shukugawa where I live happens to have one of the Kobe-Osaka area's best spots for watching the 桜 (sakura) blossom. Thusly, I've been thinking of throwing a 花見 (hanami, flower-viewing party) for exchange students and various and sundry Japanese friends. And in discussing this with my homestay brother Kenta I ran into a curious linguistic obstacle.

I kept saying, "桜は咲いています" (sakura ha saiteimasu), with the meaning "the sakura are blossoming", and he kept saying, "桜はまだ咲いていません" (sakura ha mada saiteimasen), which I interpreted as "the sakura are not yet blossoming yet." Which is a false statement, since if you go to Shukugawa there clearly are blossoms on the trees.

The misunderstanding was this: Japanese doesn't have seperate conjugations for the perfect, progressive, and perfect-progressive tenses. Generally one relies on context to distinguish between the different usages. (much the same way English distinguishes between the perfect tense and the idea of "having the experience of something" by context*)

In English we tend to say, "the sakura are blossoming," which covers a period from when the first flowers appear on the tree right up to the time when they all fall off.

But Japanese is different because Japanese is always different. They say, "the sakura have blossomed," meaning not that the process has started, but that the blossoms have matured, and that the tree is laden with little, pink blooms. Of course, these two sentences are exactly the same in Japanese.

There is an entire vocabulary surrounding different stages of bloomage, beginning at 一分咲き (ichibuzaki, one-minute-blossoms) and moving all the way to 満開 (mankai, entirely-open). Don't take my word entirely on that vocab though, because I'm still a little shaky on it. It is only when that final stage has been reached that the Japanese will say "the sakura have blossomed."

Having said all that, they should have blossomed by Friday. I will put up pictures!


*For example, I ask you, "where is Pierre these days?" and you respond, "Pierre has gone to France." Then I ask you, "has Pierre ever gone to Turkey?" and you respond, "he has."