Originally released on 16mm film; available for presentation in digital formats. Digital scanning by Vulnerable Media Lab, Queen's University.

"Set to the music of composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, Cherry Blossoms suggests something of [Georgia] O'Keeffe's delicate yet bold representation of floral life." – Jesse Cumming, in Sensual Life: The Films and Videos of Kyoko Michishita (2022)

“At that time I was listening to Miles Davis's l.p. record called Get Up With It, and it was the beautiful, beautiful jazz trumpet and I thought I should make a film of cherry blossoms, it will be perfect. And that's how I filmed, but this beautiful jazz did not match at all.

“But the reason why I had been so attracted to cherry blossoms, I got a huge inspiration from a short story written by Ango Sakaguchi... He is one of my favorite writers; he died in 1955 at the age of 48. He was very popular, especially during the ten years after World War Two: he inspired college students and intellectuals in Japan – I mean massive influence!

“I like the way his mind works, the way he writes: so succinct and straight to the core. That's what Georgia O’Keeffe does – every great mind in the world does, but it’s very difficult. So, this is a short story by Sakaguchi called In The Forest, Under the Blooming Cherry Blossoms (Sakura no mori no mankai no shita). I will give you just the ending of it: well, a scary murderer and burglar living on the mountain near Kyoto met a beautiful woman in Kyoto, and he wanted to bring her with him, so he killed her husband and carried her on his back to his home. He had to go through [the forest] at this time of the full-bloomed cherry blossoms. So the thing is, it's so beautiful, he's so strongly drawn to it, but for the scary man murderer, he feels scared… it's on both sides of the same coin, beautiful and so scary...

“Well… according to her wish he brought her back to the city, where she collected the heads of young men or dancers. It was her hobby to play a game with real hazards. A gruesome part, but then he got bored. He misses mountains so terribly and now cherry blossom time is approaching, and it's a short period, just a week or so, the blossoms bloom and then go. So he has to hurry, and she says, ‘No no no, I don't want to go back,’ and she thought probably she could manipulate him anyway once she got there, so she said, ‘okay I will go back this time.’ And so he carried her and came to under the fully bloomed cherry blossoms, and she was holding him so tight, her fingers plunging into his skin and or almost strangling him, and he wanted to say ‘stop it.’ And then he turned around and he saw an old woman, a monster, all purple, and its kinky hair was green. Her mouth was open from ear to ear, and he was scared and dropped his arms. She slipped down and dropped on the ground, and he got on to her and strangled her as much as he could. When he looked at the body, it wasn't a monster: it was the beautiful woman he had been in love with. And this man had never cried. On the mountain his tears came down, and then a few petals started to fall on the back of her body, and then he couldn't move. But he had no reason to hurry; he now felt he had no place to go back to, he just kept lying there, and more petals kept falling, falling, falling, covering the entire body. And on his body, too. He kept losing his eyesight and feelings, and the end of the story, he tried to see her face again, dug his hand into the piles of cherry blossom petals. There was none: it was just piles of cherry petals. At the end of the story he couldn't express his feeling because he would have died anyway, and then probably his body would disappear just the same way as the beautiful woman's.

“I am strongly attached to it but every time I read it, I still don't understand… Because of this story I'm strongly attached to cherry blossoms.

“The Miles Davis music didn't work, so I consulted with Toshi Ichiyanagi, who is now one of the only remaining great contemporary composers after Takemitsu is gone. There was a concert at Tokyo American Center, and it had dawned on me that maybe part of that live concert would fit my short film. So I talked to Toshi, and he said he will see to it, and he surely did: he composed a piece which he thought would be perfect to accompany my cherry blossom film. That's how the music was made – can you imagine, Toshi, this great composer, did this all this work for me! I thank you, Mr. Chiyanagi. The music is wonderful and it’s suited so well.” – Kyoko Michishita, edited from an interview by Lisa Steele & Jesse Cumming, March 31, 2022