Explain about Japan

March 20th 2024

About this lily posting

* This posting is about lilies in Japan. Many lilies in Japan were the origin of the Oriental Hybrid Lily flowers that are popular with gardeners around the world. The lilies were traded ¹ a lot in the past, both the wild lilies and the lilies that had been bred ².

The Orient means countries of the Middle East and East and Southeast Asia but these days the phrase ‛the Orient’ is not really used.

When trade really started again after the Edo period, Japan had an exotic image, a mysterious image and this is the image the phrase ‛the Orient’ creates.

The adjective for ‛the Orient’ is ‛oriental’ and this word is still used quite a lot, even if ‛the Orient’ is not. People talk about oriental rugs, oriental furniture, oriental cuisine and yes it seems Oriental Lilies.

Oriental Lilies are lilies that have been adapted from wild lilies from Japan. There is actually also another group of lily plants associated with Asia called Asian Lilies. The lilies written about in this posting belong to the Oriental Lily group. Oriental Lilies and Oriental Hybrid Lilies are the same thing.

** In this posting we will introduce some phrasal verbs using ‛up’, for example to ‛look up’ something (check some information) or to ‛look up’ at the sky. Phrasal verbs ending in ‛up’ usually mean an action connected with an upwards movement such as ‛hang up a jacket’ or ‛put up a poster’ or are used to show that an action that has finished.

Actions in which it means ‛finish’, again include ‛hang up’ as in ‛hang up a phone’ meaning finishing the phone call and ‛eat up’ as in a parent saying to her child ‘Come on – eat up all your food!’

We will also introduce some words that end in ‛less’ for example ‛careless’ or ‛wireless’. Words ending in ‛less’ usually mean the part before ‛less’ is not there. For example ‛careless’ means there is no ‛care’ and ‛wireless’ means there is no ‛wire’ or no ‛cord’.

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Big and beautiful lilies Part 1

This time the posting is written in a story format. The story is about a couple, Mayumi and Kanta.

Mayumi and Kanta had decided to go and look for some lilies in the wild in Saitama after having read about them on the Internet. They had looked up ³ the history of them. It seemed Japan had had a lot of lilies growing wild in the past and that in the eighteen hundred (1800’s) it had become big business.

They headed out to the station, on a hot August day, using their contactless PASMO cards to pay for their train rides. They were heading for some low mountains , to see if they could find some 山百合 ヤマユリ (yamayuri).

‛Yama’ means ‛mountain’ in Japanese. Yamayuri are often called Golden-rayed Lilies in English. ‛Ray’ has the meaning of a line of sun. They had read that the Golden-ray Lilies are the origin of many Oriental Hybrid Lilies in the world.

Oriental Hybrid Lilies are tall lilies, the tallest in the world, often about one metre in height and have big flowers and often have a strong fragrance ⁴. And many are very bright in colour. They had heard Yamayuri had a strong fragrance.

After taking three different trains, they got on a bus which was held up by roadworks, so they took longer than they thought to get to the mountains they wanted to walk up.

They found some information about the flowers of the mountains on a map that they got at the final station they got off at which was near the mountains they were going to climb up.

After folding up the map and putting it in Kanta’s new rucksack, which he had saved up money for, they headed up the mountain. Near a wall not far from the train station they some タカサゴユリ(takasagoyuri) – Formosa Lily in English. Formosa comes from the scientific name which is Lilium fornosanum. They read that Formosa Lily was originally a native ⁵ plant of Taiwan.

Looking up the information on his smartphone Kanta noticed it seemed that some of the lilies had English names but other lilies had only the Japanese name or the scientific name. For lilies, the names of the flowers don’t usually have kanji Kanta thought and the Japanese name is written in katakana. The Formosa Lily didn’t have an English name. All a little confusing.

They passed another lily by the side of the road as they walked up the hill to the bus stop. Maybe it was an Oriental Hybrid Lily that people with gardens in many countries liked because it had strong colours and a strong fragrance. They smelt it but it didn’t have a fragrance. In the plants or gardening world plants in gardens with no smell are ‛odourless’ ⁶.

They got on the bus and the woman in front of them had some trouble with putting her money in the coin machine. People in Japan in the 2020’s still used a lot of cash. Buses and trains were not cashless.

Looking out the window of the bus they saw it had started to rain. As well as the well drained ⁷, acid soil, Mayumi remembered that was one reason that lilies grew well in Japan – lilies liked moist ⁸ soil she’d read on the Internet. There was usually plenty of rain to keep the soil moist in Japan.

The bus continued up the mountain and Kanta and Mayumi got off the bus when the bus was about halfway up the road.

Big and beautiful lilies – Part 2

The two walked away from the road, through the trees, towards a more grassy area. They had read the lilies liked some shade ⁹ but also some light. Sides of hills were the type of place that got some sun but were in the shade part of the day.

Looking up at the sky, they saw that the clouds were getting darker. Soon the rain started to get harder but they’d made up their minds ¹⁰ to try to find some yamayuri growing in the mountains and didn’t want to give up ¹¹ . It started to get a little cold but they tirelessly ¹² continued trekking up to the more open, treeless area.

They sat under some trees for lunch and Kanta opened up his rucksack to get the food out. He searched in his bag but gave up when he realized he’d left their lunch on the table at home. He’d also lost the map on the way up though the trees. Careless Kanta.

No lunch meant they didn’t have the energy to walk around the mountains all afternoon. The hungry couple found the open ground and they found one or two lilies but not many and they couldn’t check them on their smartphones because of the rain. It was now starting to get misty ¹³ and it was getting colder. It was time to give up their search for more lilies.

An hour and a half later they were sitting on the bus heading back to the town at the bottom of the mountain. Kanta decided to look up some things about the lilies in Japan in the past.

After the Meiji era started, the trade in lilies increased a lot. A German doctor and botanist¹⁴ called Phillip Siebold was a name that Kanta noticed two or three times. Siebold introduced many plants to Europe and North America including lilies during the end of the Edo period. After trade increased in the Meiji period, a lot of other foreigners became involved in the export ¹⁵ of lilies. Sometimes whole plants were exported but usually it was just the bulbs.

In the centuries before the Meiji period it seems ヤマユリ(yamayuri) was used as a food, not as an ornamental ¹⁶ plant. People used to eat the bulb and also used it to make medicine. Many lilies are poisonous but the ヤマユリ Yamayuri is not poisonous. A type of this Golden-rayed Lily as it is called in English is the biggest wild lily in the world Mayumi told Kanta and is the origin for the very fragrant Oriental Hybrid Lily called Casa Blanca. It is called サクユリ(sakuyuri) in Japanese and it is found on the islands of Izu near Tokyo but there are not many growing there now she said.

Many of the Yamayuri bulbs were dug up during the end of the nineteenth century, that’s the eighteen hundreds (1800’s) and that’s one reason why there are not many growing there now and why some people are trying to protect them.

The rain got heavier as the bus headed slowly down the hill towards the town. The couple were held up again, this time by all the cars moving slowly in the heavy rain and the bus arrived late at the station.

After filling up their stomachs on some rice balls from a convenience store, they got the train and Kanta continued to look up lily stuff on his smartphone. While using his wireless earpieces or earbuds as they’re sometimes called, he found that some wild native lily species in Japan such as ヒメユリ(himeyuri) (Lilium concolor) and others including the ヤマユリ(yamayuri) were the origins of modern Hybrid Oriental Lilies as Mayumi had said. Examples of others apart from Casa Blanca were a lily named Dizzy (Lilium ‛Dizzy’) and the Starfighter Lily (Lilium ‛Starfighter’). These lilies are big, are often showy ¹⁷ and often have a strong fragrance.

The modern hybrid lilies’ scientific names seemed to also be their English names but these scientific names were written in a different way to the scientific names of the old types of lilies.

It was all starting to get too much for Kanta – all the rain, information, names and naming. He thought he was dizzy ¹⁸.

Hours later they were at home looking at a Lilium Magnifique, one of the Oriental Hybrid Lilies. They’d bought it in a flower shop on the way back from the station.

Apart from their fragrance, size and colour, another reason that lilies are popular is that they are good as a cut flower, as they last for a long time.

The colour and the fragrance of the Lilium Magnifque in the vase all seemed so different to the mist and the mountains and endless cars and rain of that day’s afternoon when the young couple had been on a search for the wild lilies native to Japan that were the origins of the modern Oriental Lily in front of them on the table.

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1. to trade ~ / trade / trading
<Example sentences>

■ What was traded between India and Africa a hundred years ago?

■ Do those two countries do a lot of trade with each other?

■ He want to work for a trading company after he finishes university.

5. native
<Example sentences>

■ Bamboo is native to East Asia.

■ Rabbits are not a native Australian animal. They were brought there by the British.

7. to drain ~ / a drain
＜Example sentences＞

■ Be careful when draining the vegetables after boiling them. You know the water is very hot!

■ To increase the size of the airport a big area of land will need to be drained.

■ The drains on the streets all had leaves blocking them after the storm so the water couldn’t run into them.

8. moist / moisture
<Example sentences>

■ Please use hand cream to keep your hands moist.

■ If you plant the seeds in moist soil and water them a little every day to keep the soil moist, you will have 　 beautiful, big salad plants by July!

■ After baking the bread, quickly put it in a bag and it will stay nice and moist.

■ The winter air has little moisture in it.

12. to ‘make up your mind’
<Example sentences>

■ I can’t make up my mind. What colour do you think is best?

■ Have you made up your mind yet? You need to give your answer to them by tomorrow lunchtime.

■ She’s usually good at making up her mind quickly, not like the others.

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■ Do you make your mind up quickly about things? I ~

■ Around you do people give flowers to each other?

■ If you go to ~ you’ll be surprised – it’s almost all cashless. ~

■ What country has an exotic image for you?

■ When you don’t understand a word do you look it up?

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■ What does your country export? What is an export from your country?

■ Thinking of plants or creatures you might see ~ at this time of year.

■ Do you like the smell of any flowers or plants?

■ Is there anything you’re useless at? I’m useless at ~.

■ What do you use to look up words? Usually I look things up using ~.

1. in this sentence to ‘trade’ something means to buy and sell goods in large amounts.
2. to ‘breed’ plants means to change them by mixing them with other plants to create the type of plant you want.
3. to ‘look up something’ means to check information about it. It is different to ‛look up to someone’ which means to respect or admire them.
4. ‛fragrance’ means a nice, sweet smell. ‛Fragrant’ is the adjective.
5. the word ‛native’ in this sentence means a plant that ‛grows naturally in a place and has not been brought from somewhere else’.
6. the word ‛odour’ means a strong smell, sometimes a bad smell.
7. to ‛drain’ something means to let the liquid, for example water, go away from it.
8. ‛moist’ is an adjective which means not dry and is used to talk about plants or things like skin. Moisturiser for people’s hair is based on the word ‛moisture’.
9. in this meaning the word ‛shade’ means an area of darkness that the sunlight cannot get to.
10. to ‛make up your mind’ to do something means to decide to do it.
11. to ‛give up’ doing something means to stop trying to do something.
12. to do something ‛tirelessly’ means to not stop doing it, even though you’re doing the same thing for along time and you get tired.
13. the word ‛mist’ means water in the air that forms very light clouds that stops you seeing things around you. It is similar to fog. Mist is more associated with mountains and fog is more associated with the sea.
14. a botanist is a scientist who studies plants.
15. in this sentence to ‛export’ something means to sell it to a different country. To buy something from a different country we say ‘import’.
16. the word ‛ornamental’ means that something is used to be looked at because it looks nice. It does not have other major purposes.
17. in this sentence ‛showy’ means bright and colourful and has a positive meaning when talking about flowers. If you use it to talk about people or people’s fashion it has a more negative meaning, meaning bright and colourful but not beautiful.
18. in this sentence ‛dizzy’ means you feel that you are going to lose your balance and you feel a little sick. After the Coffee Cup ride at an amusement park people feel dizzy