The Taiko Weeping Cherry of Daigo-ji

In the spring of 1598, months before his death, the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi staged one of the most extravagant cherry blossom parties in Japanese history at Daigo-ji, inviting hundreds of guests and reportedly having some 700 cherry trees transplanted to the temple grounds for the occasion. The weeping cherry now growing in the Sanboin sub-temple's garden carries his name, Taiko Shidarezakura, and his story, but it is not that tree: at roughly 150 to 170 years old it was planted in the 19th century, long after Hideyoshi's party and his own death the same year. What survives is the site and the association, strong enough that the painter Okumura Togyu made this specific tree the subject of a celebrated work simply titled Daigo, after which the tree picked up a second nickname, Togyu's cherry. Sanboin's garden itself was largely designed by Hideyoshi in the last months of his life, which means the cherry, even at a fraction of his party's age, blooms inside a landscape he did lay out himself.