Ya gotta have flowers if you want seeds/fruit!! All trees and shrubs produce some sort of flower - that's how they reproduce. Some maples have very showy flowers compared to JM's - my native bigleaf maple produces racemes of fragrant yellow flowers 4-6" long before the leaves emerge and red maples have extremely attractive flowers. Check out the attached link.

Here is a link that might be useful: red maple flowers

Right, they have to have flowers, but I have never seen any before- at least on JM's ;)

Thanks for the link.

Always nice to see the flowers on Japanese maples. Then you know its a great time of year!