My mother doesn’t like camellias. She said they look too beautiful when they die; it’s as if they were freshly decapitated when they fall on the ground. Ironically, this is the very reason why we can’t bring this flower to the funerals.

But I think there’s a certain message behind when you die beautifully.

In the Japanese mindset, we believe that we are two separate entities since the beginning: body and soul.

So when people die, they lose a body. But the soul remains still. You will know instantly that their souls still live inside you. If you still feel them, their presence when you think of them, what they said, how they made you feel, etc etc. This is how the Japanese continue the legend. This is the samurai spirit. As long as the souls exist, it is no hyperbole to say that we actually never die.

Kamikaze attacks existed, because we believed in that. We don’t believe in afterlife; we are no Christian or orthodox Buddhist. But we believe in souls and how we carry those souls after we die.

Whenever I see camellias, I always think about this story. When I die, I want to die beautifully, just like these camellias I pick up on astreets.