Photo/Illutration A sunflower in Inuzako, Kagoshima Prefecture (Masatoshi Machida)

Every summer, I buy cut sunflowers from a florist in my neighborhood.

When I was a child, I grew sunflowers from seeds. The flowers grew tall and large.

Nowadays, sunflowers come in many sizes and colors. I usually buy varieties that are on the small side and brightly colored. Arranged in a vase, they remind me of round, smiling faces that invariably do my heart good.

According to “Sunflowers” by Stephen A. Harris, the flower is native to North America and was already being cultivated for its seeds about 5,000 years ago. In other words, it was grown as food, but was also used at times in medicine and dye.

After arriving and propagating in Europe in the 16th century, the plant became a much-loved ornamental flower, while oil was extracted from its seeds.

Its binomial name of “Helianthus annuus” means “annual flower of the sun.” For this reason, this plant is often associated with the sun.

One symbolic example of that was a ceremony held 28 years ago in southern Ukraine.

In 1996, defense ministers of the United States, Russia and Ukraine gathered at the site of a former Soviet-era underground missile hangar and planted sunflower seedlings.

The U.S. defense secretary at the time said something along the lines of, “We planted sunflowers here and the sun started shining again.”

Hearing his words, I thought about the possibility of progress of nuclear disarmament in the post-Cold War world.

During the Soviet era, about 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads were deployed in Ukraine. An agreement was reached to scrap them after Ukrainian independence, and the last 40 units were removed from the site prior to the sunflower planting ceremony.

The sunflower thus became a symbol of nuclear disarmament and peace.

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, the modest hope I once embraced in 1996 is now gone.

The flower that looks like the sun is shouting, “Light, not darkness. Hope, not fear.”

—The Asahi Shimbun, July 31

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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