Photo/Illutration The Kawazu-zakura cherry blossoms (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

I may be frowned upon for choosing an out-of-season topic here.

I want to write about sakura, flowering cherry trees.

Touemon Sano, the famed professional gardener known as the “sakura keeper of Kyoto,” suggests in his book that if you love cherry trees, you might choose one “special” tree of your own to watch and cherish.

Instead of admiring it only when it blooms in spring, Sato wants you to also see it as it is in summer, autumn and winter—throughout the year, in other words.

“That way, we humans, too, can feel one with nature, which I am sure will delight the sakura,” he writes in the gracious dialect of Kyoto, the ancient Japanese capital, where his family has run a gardening business since the Edo Period (1603-1867).

Sano himself is the 16th-generation owner.

After the blossoms fall, the sakura tree becomes cloaked in lush, young green leaves. And upon surviving the heat of summer, the leaves turn yellow and dark red in autumn, until they fall to the ground as the days begin to grow shorter.

But by then, the branches have already sprouted little buds, which are protected from the rain, wind and snow by a tough shell of leaves.

In the depths of winter, the sakura stops growing and rests. And when spring comes, the sakura senses it in the air, and its buds start swelling—a process that Sano calls “waraikake” (literally, flashing a smile).

“You need to look at the sakura when it’s like that,” Sano notes. “The sakura isn’t only about its blossoms.”

Heeding his advice, I gazed up at a Somei-Yoshino cherry tree in my neighborhood, and realized that I had indeed paid next to no attention to it except when it was in bloom.

From this year on, I am going to enjoy it thoroughly through every season.

Jan. 20 was “Daikan,” the “coldest day” on the traditional 24-season calendar.

I thought about trees in the deep chill, silently awaiting spring. And I also thought about people who watch over them with loving eyes, as if they were family.

—The Asahi Shimbun, Jan. 20

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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.