The season of cherry blossom, or sakura, is one of the most treasured gifts of nature in Japanese society. Every year people visit parks, river banks and mountains to see these delicate white and pink flowers unfold. There are maps that show the blossoming schedule across the country. Many, perhaps the majority, look forward to the opportunity to indulge in this ancient aesthetic ritual.
The flowering of the sakura is truly special. I would like you to experience this moment too. You can explore these images as a free digital book with accompanying commentary or you can download each separately as smartphone, tablet or computer backgrounds. I hope you can enjoy this taste of timeless beauty from one of the most intriguing countries in the world.
Get the book:
You can download this book to view the images at their best. The download is a 65.35MB PDF document which will work on mobile, desktop or tablet devices. Because of the size it will take a while to complete depending on the speed of your connection.
Get a Sakura background image:
These images and the accompanying book are all licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. This means you can use these images, you can share these images and you can remix these images. However, the source must be attributed and they cannot be used commercially. The attribution should be “Copyright (c) Shane Coughlan 2016.”