Floating flowers are taking over Japan this spring

In Japan, too many flowers is just enough, especially when it comes to hanachōzu!

The latest fashion for excess splendor started at shrines that fill their purifying mizu-chōzuya (“hand washing water place”) with a mix of spring blooms and colorful floating balls…

…but it grew to include families and shops that also welcome spring by putting a basin of water filled with flowers outside their front doors.

The fashion for hanachōzu really took off during the covid pandemic, when shrines filled their hand (and mouth) purifying basins with floating flowers to remind worshippers not to perform the usual ritual cleansing, for fear of contagion.

But from this grim reality sprang such beauty that two whole towns near Tokyo took hanachōzu displays to a whole new level. People longing for the cancelled cherry blossom gatherings came to Kawagoe and Gyōda to walk through the streets in a safely socially distanced way and enjoy the basins of flowers instead.

And from that sprang a rainbow of variations that delight the senses in whole new ways!

Some hanachōzu are grand…

Some are exquisitely small…

Some are sweet…

Some are funny…

…and some can’t resist letting a little business promotion sneak into their displays. Guess what shop this one is in front of?

Hanachōzu is the perfect extension of Japanese flower arranging aesthetics, because it allows artistry to flourish on so many levels.

The choice of basin is, of course, key…

And pleasing color combinations are just the beginning. Japanese flower artists prize texture as well as color…

And put together blossoms whose shape and way of growing could never work in a vase, but compliment each other beautifully when floating in a bowl.

They also search out plants that would never appear in a bouquet. Get up close and feast your eyes on these strange beauties:

And when seasonal colors feel too limiting, some hanachōzu even take flights of fancy beyond nature’s palette…

But all of them have one thing in common: they’re gorgeous, and once you’ve seen one, you just want to see more.

If you’re in Japan and want to see some hanachōzu yourself, there are displays all over Kawagoe until the end of March 2023 (details and locations here, on the excellent In Saitama blog, which is where I first heard about hanachōzu!)

And the town of Gyōda (famous for its castle and the ancient lotus park planted with 3,000-year-old seeds) puts on displays all over town for the first two weeks of EVERY month (except August), with nighttime light-up hanachōzu displays on the first Saturday of each month. Here’s a map of where I took my photos, but honestly, one of the great delights of hanachōzu is to start at the shrine, then wander the streets of this small town and discover them for yourself.

There will be a Beyond Tokyo travel feature in a future Japanagram about going to Gyōda, so if you’d like to see more hanachōzu and know more about how to get there, subscribe!
It is, of course, FREE.

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Jonelle Patrick writes novels set in Japan, produces the monthly e-magazine Japanagram, and blogs at Only In Japan and The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had