Sakura桜

cherry blossom

Full bloom lasts days. Then hanafubuki, a flower snowstorm, and it's done. That's the whole point: sakura is the standing example of mono no aware — the ache of things that don't last, and the sharpening of beauty by the fact that they don't. Heian courtiers wrote poems under them about exactly this. It's not only elegiac, though: the blossoms open Japan's school year and its fiscal year in April, so they're also just what beginnings look like.

Most people who make one of these go dark: near-black ink on black is the most-used palette on the site, because a wallpaper that recedes leaves your icons legible. It looks nothing like the bright version below — which is rather the point of being able to pick.

At a glance

• Pattern Sakura
• Subtitle 桜
• Means cherry blossom
• First use Heian period
• Signifies beauty in impermanence
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