At 94, Hokkaido man still sends cherry trees of peace to world
MATSUMAE, Hokkaido—A cherry tree at a convent in Poland had bloomed pale pink flowers every April for nearly three decades before Masatoshi Asari, a Hokkaido-based researcher, learned about the blossoms.
He immediately thought the tree was a 'miracle.'
The cherry tree is a Yae-zakura variety called Beni-yutaka, which is vulnerable to cold temperatures, like those in the East European country.
And it was Asari who had sent that cherry tree to the Polish convent.
But the tree represents much more than just resilience to frigid temperatures.
The tree symbolizes Asari's abhorrence of blind obedience displayed in Japan during World War II and reflects his deep admiration of a priest who made the ultimate sacrifice in the Holocaust.
The cherry trees that Asari, 94, produces and sends overseas have become international messages of peace.
CONNECTED THROUGH FATHER KOLBE
Asari, who lives in Nanae, Hokkaido, has long been selectively breeding cherry tree varieties that can grow in cold regions.
In 1987, he received a request from a Japanese Catholic who said she wanted to plant cherry trees at a convent in Poland founded by a priest whom she deeply admired.
The priest was Father Maximilian Kolbe, who was killed by the Nazis after volunteering to die in place of another prisoner at the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was canonized after World War II ended.
Asari was only happy to oblige and sent more than 300 seedlings to the Niepokalanow monastery near Warsaw.
He received a similar request to send trees to Poland from the Franciscan Sisters of Militia Immaculata in Isahaya, Nagasaki Prefecture, whose members follow the teachings of Kolbe.
Asari delivered 40 seedlings, many of which were wild species native to Hokkaido, to the St. Maximilian convent in Strachocina in southeastern Poland.
The convent is located farther north than Wakkanai, the northernmost municipality in Japan.
One of the seedlings was the surviving Beni-yutaka cultivar.
CHILDHOOD DURING WAR
Asari was born the second son of a farming family in the village of Ono, present-day Hokuto, near Hakodate, Hokkaido.
Back then in Japan, dying for the emperor was likened to the graceful falling of cherry petals.
'At the time, I didn't think cherry blossoms were beautiful because they were used to promote the idea of dying for the country,' Asari recalled.
After the war ended, Asari's image of cherry blossoms changed when he studied under botanist Shigezo Sugawara at college. Sugawara gave him cherry samples and told him to thoroughly study the plant.
Asari started his research into cherry tree breeding while working as an elementary school teacher in Matsumae. Although the town is located on the southern end of Hokkaido, it is severely cold in winter.
Still, Asari found Yae-zakura varieties among Oyama-zakura and other wild cherry species that had apparently been brought over from the main Honshu island.
Asari determined the characteristics of each variety and created more than 100 cultivars.
'Cherry blossoms are cherished across borders and help people relate to one another,' Asari said.
Out of remorse for World War II, he has been giving cherry seedlings to Asian and European countries.
He sent them to Poland in the late 1980s so that he would not forget Japan's alliance with the Nazis, who invaded and tormented the Polish population.
However, he had no idea what happened to his cherry trees until autumn 2021.
He received word through Naoko Abe, a British-based nonfiction writer who has been covering Asari's work. She visited Strachocina and found three cherry trees were still standing at the convent.
Asari received leaf samples from the trees and confirmed they were from wild species Chishima-zakura and Miyama-zakura cherries, in addition to Beni-yutaka.
PLANS FOR UKRAINE
In April last year, Sister Klara Maria Machulska, 40, head of the convent, met a group of pilgrims from neighboring Ukraine in front of the Miyama-zakura tree.
When she told them about the origins of the cherry tree, the group said they also wanted a tree symbolizing peace.
Ukraine, which continues to battle Russian invaders, contains regions at higher latitudes and with colder weather than Strachocina.
Still, Asari said, 'I'd like to give (cherry seedlings) once peace is restored in Ukraine.'
This year, Hana-temari, a Yae-zakura variety that Asari developed that is said to be resistant to severely cold temperatures, bloomed again in his garden.
He hopes it will serve as a messenger of peace in Europe.
'Asari has been delivering messages of peace and friendship to the world through cherry trees,' Abe said.
The Japanese edition of her new book, 'The Martyr and the Red Kimono,' will be published in Japan in July from Iwanami Shoten.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Asahi Shimbun
2 days ago
- Asahi Shimbun
At 94, Hokkaido man still sends cherry trees of peace to world
MATSUMAE, Hokkaido—A cherry tree at a convent in Poland had bloomed pale pink flowers every April for nearly three decades before Masatoshi Asari, a Hokkaido-based researcher, learned about the blossoms. He immediately thought the tree was a 'miracle.' The cherry tree is a Yae-zakura variety called Beni-yutaka, which is vulnerable to cold temperatures, like those in the East European country. And it was Asari who had sent that cherry tree to the Polish convent. But the tree represents much more than just resilience to frigid temperatures. The tree symbolizes Asari's abhorrence of blind obedience displayed in Japan during World War II and reflects his deep admiration of a priest who made the ultimate sacrifice in the Holocaust. The cherry trees that Asari, 94, produces and sends overseas have become international messages of peace. CONNECTED THROUGH FATHER KOLBE Asari, who lives in Nanae, Hokkaido, has long been selectively breeding cherry tree varieties that can grow in cold regions. In 1987, he received a request from a Japanese Catholic who said she wanted to plant cherry trees at a convent in Poland founded by a priest whom she deeply admired. The priest was Father Maximilian Kolbe, who was killed by the Nazis after volunteering to die in place of another prisoner at the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was canonized after World War II ended. Asari was only happy to oblige and sent more than 300 seedlings to the Niepokalanow monastery near Warsaw. He received a similar request to send trees to Poland from the Franciscan Sisters of Militia Immaculata in Isahaya, Nagasaki Prefecture, whose members follow the teachings of Kolbe. Asari delivered 40 seedlings, many of which were wild species native to Hokkaido, to the St. Maximilian convent in Strachocina in southeastern Poland. The convent is located farther north than Wakkanai, the northernmost municipality in Japan. One of the seedlings was the surviving Beni-yutaka cultivar. CHILDHOOD DURING WAR Asari was born the second son of a farming family in the village of Ono, present-day Hokuto, near Hakodate, Hokkaido. Back then in Japan, dying for the emperor was likened to the graceful falling of cherry petals. 'At the time, I didn't think cherry blossoms were beautiful because they were used to promote the idea of dying for the country,' Asari recalled. After the war ended, Asari's image of cherry blossoms changed when he studied under botanist Shigezo Sugawara at college. Sugawara gave him cherry samples and told him to thoroughly study the plant. Asari started his research into cherry tree breeding while working as an elementary school teacher in Matsumae. Although the town is located on the southern end of Hokkaido, it is severely cold in winter. Still, Asari found Yae-zakura varieties among Oyama-zakura and other wild cherry species that had apparently been brought over from the main Honshu island. Asari determined the characteristics of each variety and created more than 100 cultivars. 'Cherry blossoms are cherished across borders and help people relate to one another,' Asari said. Out of remorse for World War II, he has been giving cherry seedlings to Asian and European countries. He sent them to Poland in the late 1980s so that he would not forget Japan's alliance with the Nazis, who invaded and tormented the Polish population. However, he had no idea what happened to his cherry trees until autumn 2021. He received word through Naoko Abe, a British-based nonfiction writer who has been covering Asari's work. She visited Strachocina and found three cherry trees were still standing at the convent. Asari received leaf samples from the trees and confirmed they were from wild species Chishima-zakura and Miyama-zakura cherries, in addition to Beni-yutaka. PLANS FOR UKRAINE In April last year, Sister Klara Maria Machulska, 40, head of the convent, met a group of pilgrims from neighboring Ukraine in front of the Miyama-zakura tree. When she told them about the origins of the cherry tree, the group said they also wanted a tree symbolizing peace. Ukraine, which continues to battle Russian invaders, contains regions at higher latitudes and with colder weather than Strachocina. Still, Asari said, 'I'd like to give (cherry seedlings) once peace is restored in Ukraine.' This year, Hana-temari, a Yae-zakura variety that Asari developed that is said to be resistant to severely cold temperatures, bloomed again in his garden. He hopes it will serve as a messenger of peace in Europe. 'Asari has been delivering messages of peace and friendship to the world through cherry trees,' Abe said. The Japanese edition of her new book, 'The Martyr and the Red Kimono,' will be published in Japan in July from Iwanami Shoten.
Japan Today
2 days ago
- Japan Today
Bone collectors search for WWII remains in Okinawa
According to official estimates, only 2,600 bodies from the Battle of Okinawa are yet to be recovered, but residents and long-time volunteers say many more are buried under buildings or farm fields, or hidden in jungles and caves By Hiroshi HIYAMA Trekking through mud and rocks in the humid Okinawan jungle, Takamatsu Gushiken reached a slope of ground where human remains have lain forgotten since World War II. The 72-year-old said a brief prayer and lifted a makeshift protective covering, exposing half-buried bones believed to be those of a young Japanese soldier. "These remains have the right to be returned to their families," said Gushiken, a businessman who has voluntarily searched for the war dead for more than four decades. The sun-kissed island in southern Japan on Monday marked the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa. The three-month carnage, often dubbed the "Typhoon of Steel", killed about 200,000 people, almost half of them local civilians. Since then, Japan and the United States have become allies, and, according to official estimates, only 2,600 bodies are yet to be recovered. But residents and long-time volunteers like Gushiken say many more are buried under buildings or farm fields, or hidden in jungles and caves. Now rocks and soil from southern parts of Okinawa Island, where the bloodiest fighting took place, are being quarried in order to build the foundations for a new U.S. air base. The plan has sparked anger among Gushiken and others, who say it will disturb the remains of World War II casualties, likely killed by Americans. And while Okinawa is a popular beach getaway these days, its lush jungles have preserved the scars of combat from March to June 1945, when the U.S. military stormed ashore to advance its final assaults on Imperial Japan. Walking through meandering forest trails in Itoman district, on the southern end of Okinawa, Gushiken imagined where he would have hidden as a local or a soldier under attack, or where he may have searched if he were an American soldier. After climbing over moss-covered rocks on a narrow, leafy trail, Gushiken reached a low-lying crevice between bus-size boulders, only big enough to shelter two or three people. He carefully shifted through the soil strewn with fragmented bones, shirt buttons used by Japanese soldiers, a rusty lid for canned food, and a metal fitting for a gas mask. At another spot nearby, he and an associate in April found a full skeleton of a possible soldier who appeared to have suffered a blast wound to his face. And only a few steps from there, green-colored thigh and shin bones of another person laid among the dried leaves, fallen branches and vines. "All these people here... their final words were 'mom, mom'," Gushiken said, arguing that society has a responsibility to bring the remains to family tombs. Gushiken was a 28-year-old scout leader when he was first asked to help search for the war dead, and was shocked to realize there were so many people's remains, in such a vast area. He didn't think he could bring himself to do it again, but over time he decided he should do his part to reunite family members in death. 'Every last one' After the war ended, survivors in Okinawa who had been held captive by U.S. forces returned to their wrecked hometowns. As they desperately tried to restart their lives, the survivors collected dead bodies in mass graves, or buried them individually with no record of their identity. "They saw their communities completely burned. People couldn't tell where their houses were. Bodies dangled from tree branches," said Mitsuru Matsukawa, 72, from a foundation that helps manage Okinawa Peace Memorial Park. The site includes a national collective cemetery for war dead. Some young people have joined the efforts to recover remains, like Wataru Ishiyama, a university student in Kyoto who travels often to Okinawa. The 22-year-old history major is a member of Japan Youth Memorial Association, a group focused on recovering Japanese war remains at home and abroad. "These people have been waiting in such dark and remote areas for so many decades, so I want to return them to their families -- every last one," he said. Ishiyama's volunteering has inspired an interest in modern Japan's "national defense and security issues", he said, adding that he was considering a military-related career. The new US air base is being built on partly reclaimed land in Okinawa's north, while its construction material is being excavated in the south. "It is a sacrilege to the war dead to dump the land that has absorbed their blood into the sea to build a new military base," Gushiken said. Jungle areas that may contain World War II remains should be preserved for their historic significance and serve as peace memorials to remind the world of the atrocity of war, he told AFP. "We are now in a generation when fewer and fewer people can recall the Battle of Okinawa," Gushiken added. "Now, only bones, the fields and various discovered items will remain to carry on the memories." © 2025 AFP
Japan Times
2 days ago
- Japan Times
Battle of Okinawa 1945: Memories of fire, flight and loss
The town of Nishihara, at the center of Okinawa Island, lost half of its residents in the 1945 Battle of Okinawa. Yoshiko Goya, 88, who was born in the town's Kohatsu area — the site of fierce fighting between Japanese and U.S. forces during World War II — has never forgotten the days when she desperately tried to flee the ravages of war with her family and relatives. Then age 8, Goya saw her younger sister killed by the bombings right before her. Her other sister, who was a baby, died in her mother's arms while they were trying to get away from the carnage. Nishihara, which was then a village, was at that time an important base that aimed to prevent the U.S. forces from invading Shuri, where the headquarters of the Imperial Japanese Army's 32nd Army was located. Japanese soldiers were stationed in the village from around August 1944, and many of the residents' homes were used as their living quarters. They included the house of Goya's male relative, Kame Kohatsu, who was then 48. Five or six soldiers stayed in each of the small houses with thatched roofs. They also set up tents under the trees. Due to her young age at the time, Goya is not sure exactly when the soldiers took Kohatsu's house, but she remembers fleeing along with the Kohatsu family around the end of March 1945 when the U.S. military's prelanding air raids grew fierce. They moved south in April when bombings from U.S. warships at Nakagusuku Bay increased. Goya's great-grandmother — Kohatsu's mother — did not go with them. 'Some older people couldn't walk so we had to leave them behind,' Goya said. 'There was nothing we could do about it.' She barely remembers how they got away during the night. They arrived at the Yonagusuku area of the village of Kochinda — currently the town of Yaese — in the southern part of the island, which had been bombed but had suffered less damage than elsewhere. They spent nights in a large house provided by a resident and stayed in a trench in the garden during the daytime. Around late May that year when Japanese soldiers started to arrive, they moved to a small thatched-roof house nearby. Soon after, the large house in which they initially stayed in, which the Japanese soldiers went on to occupy, was bombed and completely destroyed. Goya's 4-year-old sister Fumiko was struck by a log during the explosion, which killed her. It also caused the trench where the family took refuge in to collapse, resulting in Goya's grandmother and Kohatsu's wife, Yoshiko, suffering serious wounds to their legs. Because they could not walk, the rest of the family was forced to leave them behind in a nearby house as they rushed for safety. When they reached the village of Makabe — currently the city of Itoman — in the southernmost part of the island, they saw evacuees everywhere. When they tried to seek refuge at a large house, they found it was already overcrowded, so Goya, her mother, her 3-month-old sister Kazuko and Kohatsu's eldest daughter decided to take shelter in a nearby livestock shed instead. Then a bomb directly hit the house. They never saw Kohatsu again. They thought he was in the house when it was bombed but they couldn't find any trace of him in the aftermath of the explosion. In the ensuing firefight, they gave up on looking for a place to flee to, and, a few days later, they were captured by the U.S. forces. By then, of the seven family members and relatives who fled together to the southern part of the island, only three were still alive — Goya, her mother and Kohatsu's eldest daughter. Kazuko was found dead in her mother's arms. The remains of Goya's grandmother and Kohatsu's wife were discovered lying side-by-side at a house in Yonagusuku, where the family had left them. The house had been burned down to ruins. 'I don't know if they had been burned alive or caught in a fire after they died,' Goya said, with a lump in her throat. The members of the family could not find the remains of Fumiko, whom they had buried at the back of the house. 'She was a bit chubby,' Goya said, fondly recalling her sister. 'She always frolicked in the trench and made everyone laugh.' Her father, who had been called into the local defense corps comprising reservists, survived, but her mother died following the end of the war, after giving birth to another daughter. The baby girl also died soon after. A stone wall that Kohatsu had built around the family home in Nishihara still stands. Every time Goya sees the bullet holes on the wall, she is reminded of the horrors of the war. 'I can't believe we lived through such suffering,' Goya said. 'I don't want my children and grandchildren to go through such an experience.' This section features topics and issues from Okinawa covered by The Okinawa Times, a major newspaper in the prefecture. The original article was published May 30.
