Shinden no Oitozakura

Before calendars told Kobuchisawa's farmers when to plant rice, this cherry did. Tradition holds it was planted as a goshinboku, a sacred tree, on the paddy-field ridge that once grew rice offered to a shrine, and its bloom timing served as the signal to begin planting season. It stands alone at the edge of a working rice paddy at about 820 metres elevation, the kind of solitary specimen that gets used for film and tourism location scouting rather than crowded up by other trees. A weeping form of the Edo Higan cherry, it is thought to have taken root around the shift from the Sengoku era to the Edo period, putting it at roughly 400 years old, a figure that lines up with what a tree this size should be. Sources differ slightly on the trunk. The city gives 8 metres round, the tourism board a more precise 7.5. The smaller figure is used here. It was designated a Yamanashi Prefecture Natural Monument in 1959, prefectural rather than national. Free parking for about 30 cars and 5 buses sits nearby. Close approach has been temporarily restricted in places while the soil and roots recover from foot traffic, though the tree stays visible from the paddy edge and the parking area throughout.