Yellow Rose (yamabuki)

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Yellow Mountain Rose (yamabuki, Japan)

***** Location: Japan
***** Season: Late Spring
***** Category: Plant

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Explanation


http://www.paghat.com/kerria.html

Kerria japonica . Yamabuki 　山吹
litterally means "mountain breath". These bright yellow flowering bushes grow wild all over Japan, especially favoring riversides and gorges. Other translations are "Mountain rose, wild rose, Easter rose".

white mountain rose : shiro-yamabuki 白山吹
double-flowering mountain rose : yae-yamabuki 八重山吹
dark yellow mountain rose : ko-yamabuki 濃山吹
mountain rose with leaves : ha yamabuki 葉山吹

The flowers have five petals, while the doublel-flowering looks like a ponpon with many petals.
They paint whole mountain ranges in bright yellow in late spring. Since olden times, these flowers have been a part of Japanese poetry, especially the Manyo'shu and the Tale of Genji. See later.

The bright yellow has been used to describe the yellow color of gold, especially the gold plates of Japanese money during the Edo period. "Yamabuki-iro" is the color of gold and bribes.


http://www.pierre-marteau.com/currency/coins/japanese.html

Below I quote a link about this kind of Japanese Money.

Gabi Greve

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Double-flowering yellow mountain rose


White mountain rose


Look at more pictures here:
http://www.hana300.com/yaeyam.html

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Yamabuki (Kerria japonica)
By LINDA INOKI

Murasaki had prepared the floral offerings.
She chose eight of her prettiest little girls to deliver them,
dressing four as birds and four as butterflies.
The birds brought cherry blossoms in silver vases,
the butterflies yamabuki in gold.

From "The Tale of Genji" by Murasaki Shikibu,
translated by Edward G. Seidensticker (Penguin Books)

The simple, pure-yellow flowers of the yamabuki are borne in arching sprays with tender, bright-green leaves, and can still be found growing wild in the mountains. In literature, its Japanese name is sometimes translated as "mountain rose" or "yellow rose," although the original implies a mountain breeze or spray.
William Kerr, the first plant hunter to live in China, introduced the shrub to the West in the early 1800s, where the double variety was affectionately called "bachelor's buttons," because of its showy spring display.

© The Japan Times: Apr. 12, 2001
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20010412li.htm

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More Links about this plant:
http://www.hort.uconn.edu/plants/k/kerjap/kerjap1.html
http://home.hiwaay.net/~oliver/kerria.html
http://www.manntaylor.com/plantweek51.html

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The shrub is especially associated with the Ide Tamagawa, a river near Kyoto, which was well-famed for Yamabuki that flourish along its banks. Flower-viewing excursions were arranged among courtiers & courtesans specifically to observe Yamabuki in spring along the Ide Tamagawa. These excursions could be very expensive, & men who idled away their time in pleasure district activities were said to be "scattering gold coins as the Yamabuki scatters golden petals."

Hiroshige in 1830 illustrated the Kerria Rose overshadowing two frogs, in one of a famous series of plant portraits accompanied by the opening lines of poems. The jist of the poem that accompanies the famous picture can be paraphrased: "Frogs are calling in the spring rain, when the Yamabuki fails to shelter them.

"Why does the Kerria fail as a rain-shelter for frogs? Perhaps literally because the frogs are active so early in the spring that the Kerria hasn't yet regained all of its sheltering leaves. But the poem alludes to a mino which is a raincoat made of grass, punning this with the same word that means "seed" or "fruit." The Yamabuki is proverbially believed to be sterile, thus cannot provide the frog with a raincoat (mino) because it has no fruits (mino).

The pun is no mere jest, however, for it embodies a Buddhist sense of mono-no-aware, the sadness of things. So the poem's sentment could be rephrased: "The Yamabuki has flowers like the brocade robes of the wealthy, yet it is so poor it cannot afford even a grass raincoat."

In another story about Oota Dookan and a fair maiden, we read this song:

The Yamabuki enriches our house with flowers,
yet there is sadness here,
for these riches are an illusion,
and our flower has no mino (fruit)

Read a lot more about the Mountain Rose here:
http://www.paghat.com/kerria.html

.. .. .. ..

Here is another short quote concerning the above print from Hiroshige,
from a long essay about Haiku by Haruo Shirane

... the poetic essence of the kawazu, or frog, a seasonal word for spring, was song, usually calling for its mate, standing beneath the yamabuki (kerria), the bright yellow mountain rose, found on the banks of a river or stream, with its petals reflected in the clear water.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccba/cear/issues/fall99/text-only/shirane.htm


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Worldwide use


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Things found on the way

Read some detailed information about Japanese Money.
http://www.pierre-marteau.com/currency/coins/japanese.html


My story about the Color YELLOW in traditional Japanese kimono and yellow Daruma.
http://darumadollmuseum.blogspot.com/2005/04/yamabuki-yellow-daruma.html


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HAIKU

Horo horo to yamabuki chiru ka taki no oto

Petals of the mountain rose
Fall now and then,
To the sound of the waterfall

Basho
http://www.takase.com/Haiku/Haiku.htm

in another translation

the petals temble
on the yellow mountain rose -
roar of the rapids

http://www.haiku.insouthsea.co.uk/teachbasho_self3.htm

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yamabuki ni te o kazashitaru itachi kana

in yellow roses
shading his eyes to gaze ..
a weasel

Issa
http://cat.xula.edu/issa/searchissa.php?haiku_id=237.16a



yamabuki ya mazu o-saki e to tobu kawazu

yellow rose
please, you go first
frog jumping

Issa
http://cat.xula.edu/issa/searchissa.php?haiku_id=161.12a


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Related words

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