Azalea featuring flower events enliven people in Kurume, southwestern Japan

April 30, 2017

Azalea featuring flower events enliven people in Kurume, southwestern Japan


Kurume City, southwestern Japan, becomes something like a town-wide flower park dominated by light and red purple azaleas around this time of the year.
Azalea, or tsutsuji in Japanese, is known as the city's flower, and events featuring the flower are held at various places from April to May.
The biggest tsuttsuji-featuring event takes place at a scenic riverside park.
The origin of azeleas in Japan, a wild one, is said to have come from Kagoshima in the southern part of Kyushu, southnwestern Japan. The original Japanese azalea, called Kirishima, spread to many parts of Japan early in the 17th century in the Ero era, when a gardening boom occurred among wealthier people.
Charmed with its beautiful colors, horticulturists tried to grow various seedlings. Decades of endeavors to develop more beautiful species followed, and in the first half of the 19th century, a samurai in the Arima clan in Kurume came up with a unique moss-based nursing method.
This contributed to growing new species with vivid colors and small, thickly blooming flowers.
Species developed with his method became to be called "Kurume Tsutsuji" in the Meiji era. The Kurume Tsutsuji brand then caught on well with flower lovers across Japan.
A main part of the event at the riverside park, opened in 1989 in commemoration of the centennial of the town's inauguration as a city. is an annual flower and plant market, where visitors can find their favorite ones. On every weekend, a gardening clinic is open at a booth at the event site. One day, a middle-age couple were asking a senior gardener at the booth how to grow a certain flower.
Satisfied with the gardener's advice, the wife said, "Thank you, sir. Your information was very much useful. We have to write it down."
The name of Kurume Tsutsuji has come to be widely known among people in the city, an old castle town with a population of about 300,000. But most of them little know that the brand is linked to the nursing method developed by the Kurume samurai, Sakamoto Genzo. A program to introduce Sakamoto's feat was provided in an event at a different site.
Kurume is home to Bridgestone Corp., the world's largest automotive tire manufacturer, which has continued philanthropic activities for local people over years.
Azalea flowers, which can be found here and there in the city, have become an important part of Kurume citizens' daily life.  If the Ero era samurai's work is well remembered among them, azeleas should be even more charming and attractive to them.