桜 means 'cherry tree'

These essays showcase four types of trees that afford great pleasure. The Japanese love seeing rows of them along rivers, the seashore, and avenues (especially on the world's longest tree-lined road), and people famously picnic under cherry blossoms. To the Japanese, the pine, cedar, willow, and cherry also symbolize key qualities: transience and mortality (the cherry); longevity, vitality, and sincerity (the cedar); emotional flexibility, weakness, sadness, and thinness (the willow); and superior rankings (the pine). Moreover, these trees play key roles in the arts, such as haiku, woodblock prints, ink paintings, lyrics, Noh theater, and ghost stories.

The Heian period (794–1185) produced literary firsts, as this bundle shows. Major publications included "The Tale of Genji," (54 volumes!), "The Tales of Ise" (collected poems and prose), "The Tale of the Heike" (an epic), and "Konjaku Monogatarishu" (more than a thousand tales from India, China, and Japan, including Japanese folklore). The famous いろは poem emerged, using all basic archaic syllables only once. And whereas people used to wax poetic about ume (Japanese apricots), Heian poetry instead reflected a sudden appreciation of cherry blossoms, with 花 (flower) newly meaning "cherry blossom" in verse.

Westernizing in the Meiji era (1868–1912) changed the way the Japanese drank and ate, as this bundle reflects. Importing British machinery enabled people to mass-produce shochu. Western confections flowed into Japan, and the arrival of ice cream inspired a green tea flavor. Before 1868, the Japanese didn't eat beef, believing cows to be exclusively for physical labor. Buddhism also drove a disdain for consuming quadrupeds. But with westernization the Japanese suddenly viewed beef consumption　as enlightened. Out of discomfort, though, they did name some meat dishes with flowery euphemisms (e.g., peonies and cherry blossoms).