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Title details for The Sakura Obsession by Naoko Abe - Available

The Sakura Obsession

The Incredible Story of the Plant Hunter Who Saved Japan's Cherry Blossoms

by Naoko Abe
Ellen Archer
Audiobook
1 of 2 copies available
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1 of 2 copies available
The incredible—and improbable—story of how an English eccentric saved Japan’s beloved cherry blossoms from extinction.
Collingwood Ingram—known as “Cherry” for his defining passion—was born in 1880 and lived until he was a hundred, witnessing a fraught century of conflict and change. Visiting Japan in 1902 and again in 1907, he fell in love with the country’s distinctive cherry blossoms, or sakura, and brought back hundreds of cuttings with him to England, where he created a garden of cherry varieties.
On a 1926 trip to Japan to search for new specimens, Ingram was shocked to find a dramatic decline in local cherry diversity. A cloned variety was taking over the landscape and becoming the symbol of Japan’s expansionist ambitions, while the rare and spectacular Taihaku, or “Great White Cherry,” had disappeared entirely.
But thousands of miles away, at Ingram’s country estate, the Taihaku still prospered. After returning to Britain, the amateur botanist buried a living cutting from his own collection into a potato and repatriated it to Japan via the Trans-Siberian Express. Over the decades that followed, Ingram became one of the world’s leading cherry experts and shared the joy of sakura both nationally and internationally, sending more than a hundred varieties of cherry tree to new homes around the globe, from Auckland, New Zealand to Washington, D.C.
As much a history of the cherry blossom in Japan as it is the story of one remarkable man, The Sakura Obsession follows the flower from its significance as a symbol of the imperial court, through the dark days of the Second World War, and up to the present-day worldwide fascination with this iconic blossom.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 19, 2019

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781984839961
      • File size: 257191 KB
      • Duration: 08:55:48

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Ellen Archer narrates this audiobook with grace and precision. In addition, Englishman Nicholas Guy Smith delivers the long quotations from the story's protagonist, Collingwood Ingram. The dual approach adds to this evocative and engrossing historical biography of the English plant collector whose passion for Japanese flowering cherry trees saved Japan's most indelible species when industrialization, war, and pollution threatened to destroy them. Ingram, a self-taught botanist, ornithologist, and aficionado of Sakura (cherry blossoms), preserved the once extinct Taihaku (Giant White). Author Naoko Abe, a Japanese journalist based in England, celebrates a most worthwhile life and gives the listener a primer on Japanese culture and history while telling the story of the richly symbolic cherry tree. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 8, 2019
      Japanese journalist Abe (Dance Notations and Robot Motion) delivers a charming and informative biography of the eccentric English aristocrat Collingwood Ingram (1880–1981), who saved Japan’s cherry blossoms from extinction in the mid-20th century. After visiting Japan in 1902 and 1907, Ingram, a former ornithologist, fell in love with the country’s cherry blossom trees. When he returned to the country in 1926, he was heartbroken to learn that the diverse varieties were disappearing due to a national preference for one particular strain, leading to near-extinction of other types of cherry blossoms (“two decades of yearning for a country that... had taken his breath away had evaporated”). He became determined to document the species and take cuttings with the hope that they would flourish throughout the world. In 1945, Ingram wrote what “remains a horticultural classic and bible” on the subject, which encouraged growers worldwide to keep multiple species alive. Abe offers intriguing facts throughout, such as how cherry blossoms ended up in Washington, D.C. (botanist David Fairchild and his wife, Marian, the daughter of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell, imported 150 trees; and in 1906, Tokyo’s mayor sent 2,000 trees as thanks for the U.S.’s involvement in the Russo-Japanese War). Ingram devoted himself to the cherry blossom until 1981, “when sensed that his life was drawing to a close.” Impeccably researched and lovingly crafted, Abe’s enlightening history will be a boon to horticultural enthusiasts.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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