Osmanthus blossoms are now releasing their fragrance in residential neighborhoods, parks, and many other places. Even in Kitanomaru Park near Palaceside Building, where there are not so many osmanthus trees, a pleasant sweet scent seems to drift from nowhere as you walk along.
I wrote "pleasant sweet fragrance," but some people apparently associate osmanthus with restrooms. It is said that in the past many households planted osmanthus near toilets to mask unpleasant odors. Osmanthus blooms and releases its fragrance for only two or three weeks at most in a year; during the rest of the year it could not cover bad smells. Later, toilet air fresheners came to use osmanthus scent, and that smell seems to have become fixed in people's minds as a restroom odor. Today's toilet fresheners are mostly citrus or lavender, with hardly any osmanthus type left—but the smell of old air fresheners remains deeply imprinted, which is why people link it to toilets. A thoroughly unfair story for the osmanthus.
According to books on the subject, osmanthus is said to have been brought from China in the Edo period. Yet at Mishima Taisha in Mishima, Shizuoka Prefecture, there is an osmanthus designated a natural monument that is said to be over 1,200 years old. Its fragrance is said to have reached as far as eight kilometers away. If it "arrived in the Edo period," it would already have been 700 to 800 years old then—how was it brought over, one wonders.
It is also said to be dioecious, with only male plants brought to Japan, so it bears no fruit. I certainly have never seen osmanthus fruit. How did it spread in Japan, then? Osmanthus is an extremely hardy tree; it seems to have multiplied through cuttings or by naturally rooting where branches touched the ground.
Written in kanji, osmanthus is 金木犀 (kinmokusei)—"gold tree rhinoceros"—said to come from bark resembling rhinoceros hide. Its Chinese name is dangui; the flower is guihua. There is a Chinese liquor called Guihua Chenjiu. Small osmanthus petals and buds are steeped in white wine and aged three years; it is said that Yang Guifei loved to drink it. It smells sweet like osmanthus—but some who drink it may also think of drinking in a restroom......