Roses In Japan

During this period, Japanese were working hard to lay the foundation for a modernized nation. On the other hand, the military clique's hegemonism led Japan into wars with other countries, which ended in the misery of defeat in the Second World War in 1945. However, it was also during this period that the cultural base of the nation as a modernized country was established. In horticulture and rose-related culture, especially, there were developments worth mentioning.

The Meiji Government founded the Hokkaido and Sakhalin Development Bureau in the Ministry of Industry with a view to promoting agriculture in these areas more efficiently (1869 -1882). For the purpose of testing the adaptability of plants imported from Europe and America, it opened three different types of "governmental gardens" in the area of Shiba Park in Tokyo (1871). Some specialists were invited from the US to help to test vegetables and garden plants, including roses, there. Also, the government opened in Tokyo "the Rokumeikan", a hall where parties were given so Japan's high society members could have contact with dignitaries from abroad. It is said that on such occasions, the hall was decorated with thousands of rose flowers. These flowers, since the rose gardens and nurseries run by Japanese owners were unable to supply them, were ordered from the horticulturist "Boemer and Co.", which was run by an American nurseryman. This company was located in the foreign settlement in Yokohama, and had a greenhouse where roses were grown for cut-flowers. They were able to sell them at very high prices - sometimes more than $50 a stem, causing a vast expenditure on the side of the Japanese Government.
A government official named Yoshida, with the permission of the then foreign minister Inoue, started to grow roses in the above mentioned governmental gardens, and after many trials and errors, succeeded in supplying roses for 15 yen or less a stem in the late 1880s. This meant that the skill of Japanese gardeners in growing roses improved to the level of the Americans in Yokohama in those days, a tribute to the effort of Yoshida and his gardeners.

Thus, Japan's modernization was in progress on cultural sides. However, on the military side, Japan gradually got into trouble with other countries. In 1931, the Manchurian Incident broke out, and in 1941, Japan went into the Pacific War. Meanwhile, from 1937 to the end of the Pacific War in 1945, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry prohibited the import of all items from abroad, including plants and flowers. Rose-related activities got into a state of dormancy, and this lasted until 1951, when the San Francisco Peace Treaty was concluded. The flowers of 'Peace' donated from San Francisco Rose Society to a rose show in Yokohama in 1949, were the harbingers of the revival, and then the boom, of rose growing in post-war Japan.

Among the leaders of rose activities in prewar Japan, we must mention the name of Shikuro Arisawa, a retired naval officer who served as the president of the Imperial Rose Society. He made a special effort in hybridizing new roses, and wrote an article "How to Hybridize Roses" for the journal of the Imperial Rose Society No. 1 (1932). The first book on roses after the termination of the Second World War was The Rose by Katsumi Otaki, Tadao Nomura, and Masahisa Aoki (Zen'ikukai Shobo Publishing Co. 1955) , which was followed by The Cultural History of Roses by Masahisa Aoki (Sakuhin-sha Publishing Co. 1956).