100 Views of a Town in Japan: Wild Wisteria

Wild wisteria covering an abandoned house in Aomori, Japan. May 2021.

Recently, everywhere I go in Aomori, I see in the forests around me splashes of purple flowers hanging from trees. I have noticed them each year, but this spring I have been especially in tune with admiring the changes in nature around me. It is as if I want to burn to my memory the flowers of Aomori, Japan, while I still can.

In the past week I have paid special attention to these purple flowers. I checked with a Japanese friend if they were wisteria even though they grew in the wild. She confirmed that they were called 山藤, yamafuji, or “mountain wisteria.”

As I admired the flowers hanging from the trees, my friend surprised me by saying that “it's a bit scary.”

“Why?” I asked, mystified.

“It looks like kabi. What is kabi in English?”

“mold.” I responded.

Once you see something in a certain way, you cannot unsee it.

White and purple wisteria, in Aomori, Japan. May 2021.

They are also beautiful on a trellis in someone’s garden.