F.Y.I.

The following quote came from the Ikebana International website:


"Ikebana International has adopted the fabled Japanese cherry as their emblematic flower. It is intertwined in the Japanese samurai culture dating back many hundreds of years when the brief flowering of the cherry reminded each samurai of the delicate beauty of life and its fleeting nature - the cherry blossoms burst forth each spring in blankets of breathtaking beauty, only to fall with the first wind and storm that besets it. This struck the samurai as the way their existence was ordained - a brief time upon the earth and then - gone in a flurry of inevitability."

In The Last Samurai, Katsumoto (Watanabe) refers to cherry blossoms twice:

The first time is when he remarks to Algren that he keeps searching for a perfect one.

The second is when he says that they are all perfect.

The cherry blossom is, then, a masculine symbol, appropriately identified with the samurai, because it's blossom is short-lived but doesn't wither on the branch. Instead, it falls before the blossom fades.