DAZAIFU, Fukuoka Prefecture--A storied shrine has given five symbolic Japanese apricot trees to a high school in Fukushima Prefecture that was seriously damaged during the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011.
DAZAIFU, Fukuoka Prefecture--A storied shrine has given five symbolic Japanese apricot trees to a high school in Fukushima Prefecture that was seriously damaged during the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011.
Dazaifu Tenmangu shrine here normally does not offer its famed apricot trees. But it made an exception to encourage third-year students at Fukushima High School in the prefectural capital who suffered setbacks after the disaster.
Legend has it that Tenmangu shrine’s sacred tree, called Tobiume, flew to Dazaifu from Kyoto one night because it yearned for Sugawara no Michizane, a scholar and politician in the Heian Period (794-1185), who was shunted off to Dazaifu in a demotion at the time. He is now deified as Tenjin-sama, the god of scholarship.
The 313 third-year students who will graduate this spring experienced the magnitude-9.0 earthquake on the day of their junior high school graduation ceremony three years ago. Two of the high school’s four buildings were rendered unusable.
The students had to take senior high school classes in prefabricated temporary buildings and in a partitioned area of the gym. They will graduate before the school buildings now under construction are complete.
On Feb. 17, the young apricot trees were handed over to a group led by Fukushima High School Principal Minoru Honma on his visit to Tenmangu shrine.
“The students are proud of their school’s apricot emblem and turn to it for inspiration,” a priest said at the shrine’s main hall. “The head priest was deeply moved and happily agreed (to provide the trees).
“Japanese apricot trees are resistant to the cold, and their blossoms open earlier than any other flowers. We pray that their sweet fragrance wafts over the school buildings and that the reconstruction and restoration are speedy.”
A planting ceremony will be held in the schoolyard on Feb. 28, the day before the high school’s graduation ceremony.
The plant is an essential part of Fukushima High School. Its symbol is the apricot and its nickname is “Baiko,” a combination of the Japanese characters meaning “Japanese apricot” and “school.”
The school newspaper is the Baisho (Japanese apricot emblem), and the school festival is called Baiensai (Japanese apricot garden festival).
The school song, written by Sendai native and renowned poet Bansui Tsuchii, starts, “The emblem is a wonderfully fragrant Japanese apricot blossom.”
Around June last year, Yuji Shinoki, 51, and other Fukushima High School alumni, most of whom graduated in 1981, approached Tenmangu shrine about “encouraging the third-year students by planting Dazaifu Tenmangu shrine apricot trees, the best of their kind in Japan.”
Tenmangu shrine has 6,000 apricot trees from around 200 species. As a general rule, it does not give them to people unaffiliated with the shrine, and it initially rejected the alumni’s request.
But it decided to make the transfer after head priest Nobuyoshi Nishitakatsuji heard about the request from an acquaintance, Masahiro Taji, head priest of Fukushima Inari Jinja shrine and a former Fukushima High School student.
“I thank you for this farewell present for our graduating students who were put in a difficult situation,” Principal Honma said at the shrine.
One of the five young trees is a variety called “omoi no mama” (genuine thoughts) that is presented each year to the prime minister. One of the young trees has no name, so apparently the students will give it one themselves.