“Sarusuberi” is one of the typical
mid-summer flowers in Japan and is blooming everywhere in Tokyo area as you can see in the photos above. This
plant belongs to Indian Lilac, although the name may sound like some kind of
berry to you. It is just a coincidence that the name sounds like berry but it has no connection to any
berries because it’s a completely Japanese name.
The name consists of two words “Saru" and "Suberi” and they means “Monkey would slip”. Because of its very smooth bark probably ancient people thought even monkey would have some difficulty climbing up the tree. Well, I don’t know if anybody had ever checked if it is true.
Anyway, it is a kind of funny name even though the flowers are beautiful, but the name is normally written in three Chinese characters (Kanji) that mean “Hundred Days Red” giving a completely different atmosphere. These characters do not have any logical connection to the pronunciation “Sarusuberi”. However, Sarusuberi flowers last a long time and therefore “Hyakujitukou(Hundred Days Red)” is actually another name of Sarusuberi flowers although it's not well known.
Somehow people have been using “Sarusuberi” verbally but
“Hundred Days Red” in a written form, and the two were combined to describe the same flower. Since
Japanese use 3 different types of characters, two of which are phonetic and one of which is ideogram and non-phonetic, this type of mixing phonetic sounds to non-phonetic writing sometimes
happen to Japanese words.
In addition, I'm showing Sarusuberi in one of Japanese phonetic characters called "Hiragana", and in non-phonetic Chinese characters called "Kanji" below the photos of the flower as a reference.
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