Page 79 At the end of the road the path blurs in odorous mist, and in a moment we are enveloped in the rosy clouds. As far as the eye can reach stretches the low-hung canopy of the thin petals; the trunks of the trees are small and gray, and one forgets them, or never thinks to associate them with the mist of pale vapour overhead, hung in the soft air, impalpable, evanescent, a gauzy cloud, lifted at dawn and poised breathless close over the earth. A little wind ripples above, and the air trembles with a snow of pink petals swerving and sliding down to the carpet of thin fallen blossoms, while darting children in scarlet and saffron and lavender crow and chatter, catching at the rosy flakes with brown fingers. The light here is pale and pearly as it filters through the sky of opal blossoms, and it transmutes the small dusky people into the semblance of butterflies and birds, now gathering into glimmering swarms of flickering color, now darting off with shrieks of delight over the carpet of fallen petals.
Such was the Western public's image of Japanese cherries in the early twentieth century. The days of the "false cherry" were long gone, its lack of edible fruits was no point of discussion, and it was bad taste to even only hint at it. The situation in Japan also had changed completely. With the waves of modernization, Western commodities had swept the country in an explosive growth of imports. In an attempt to balance the trade deficit, the Japanese government had actively begun setting up markets for exporting things Japanese. A system of trade fairs and shows, quality examinations, and charters was set up, and extra-territorial trade zones were opened in port cities such as Yokohama and Kobe where foreigners were allowed to set up trade agencies, banks, and finance and insurance companies. An important role in the opening of Japan's botanical world was played by Louis Bรถhmer, who made an expedition through the country commissioned by the Japanese government in 1874. A few years later he set up a nursery for exporting Japanese plants in the free trade zone of Yokohama. Bรถhmer's price list of 1894 announces that "the Japanese cherries, plums, and peach flowers are a sight in this country." It offers "Prunus cerasus double jap[anese] (cherry)" for the wholesale trade at ten dollars per hundred saplings or sixty for a thousand to be grown in open ground. Being the only Western wholesale exporter, Bรถhmer doubled his prices within five years.