SEKINO (Junichiro) &
KAJII (Motojiro), author.
Sakura no ki no shita ni wa [Beneath the Cherry Trees]
The darker side to cherry blossom season
SEKINO (Junichiro) &
KAJII (Motojiro), author.
Sakura no ki no shita ni wa [Beneath the Cherry Trees]
A limited, privately printed edition of Beneath the Cherry Trees by Kajii Motojiro (1901-1932). The artist Sekino Junichiro (1914-1988) illustrated four plates for this book, two of which are printed in woodblock, the other two in copperplate etching.
First published in 1931, Kajii’s story opens with the famous first line, Sakura no ki no shita ni wa shitai ga umatte iru! – “There are dead bodies buried beneath the cherry trees!”. Cherry blossom season in Japan usually invites celebrations and merry viewing parties, but in Kajii’s imbues this image with a deep sense of melancholia and a certain sinisterness. Written in the first person, the narrator paints a visceral image of cherry trees feeding off the decomposing corpses of various creatures that lie underneath, before gazing back out onto the unsuspecting crowd who are enjoying the view above.
As a highly skilled printmaker, Sekino was able to create four very different plates to accompany Kajii’s story. The book opens with an upward view of cherry blossom, through which we see a distant horizon. This might be a depiction of the Izu peninsula, where Kajii wrote the story. The following images take a much darker tone, with stylised images of the corpses and what happens under the trees.
Rare. Only 1 copy in OCLC (The Met).
