Photo: Sybilla Patrizia
Austrian and Tokyo-based photographer Sybilla Patrizia has been documenting Japan’s sakura season since 2017. As the country declared a state of emergency this week due to Covid-19, its ordinarily bustling cherry blossom viewing spots are quiet. This year, sakura sites are closed; parties and festivals cancelled. Patrizia’s images of tourists fighting over the best selfie angles, brandishing their phones in the air and posing beneath the gorgeous candy-coloured canopies, hands outstretched in awe and appreciation, are poignant talismans of a carefree world that once was.
All photos: Sybilla Patrizia
“With a state of emergency hovering over Tokyo like a dark cloud of unknown, the once bustling hub has been muzzled into eerie quietness.
Where crowds would once fight for the best selfie-spots in front of the most glorious-looking cherry trees, park gates are now locked, patches of grass untouched by the picnics that never came, and a few locals discreetly snap that one sakura picture without which this season simply cannot end.
The fleeting beauty of the sakura trees make it painfully hard—if not impossible—to just stand by and watch from city apartment balconies, as millions of petals get blown away, and then slowly, all over town, concrete turns to pink and trees turn back to green.
The crowds of people that I’ve been photographing for years among Tokyo’s gentle sakura trees now seem like mere ghosts of the past, far from this new reality we have to live with. But regardless of what us humans do, regardless of the struggles we face, the sakura will come and go, and not before long we shall see you again.”