Isshingyo-no-Ozakura
Isshingyo Park, Minamiaso
Lightning split this cherry's trunk into six sections sometime before 1945, and it went on flowering. In 2004 two typhoons broke two of its four main limbs, turning a domed crown into what people here now describe as an M. The trunk still measures 7.35 metres round, and the branches reach 26 metres from north to south. It is a yamazakura, a wild cherry, traditionally dated at over 400 years, and it grows on a grave. The story told in Minamiaso is that Nakamura Korefuyu, lord of Yazaki Castle, died fighting the Shimazu clan of Satsuma in 1580, and that his wife and children planted saplings over the graves of the fallen with one heart. Isshingyo, the name of both the tree and the park around it, means roughly that: one heart's practice. For a tree this famous the paperwork is thin. No national or prefectural Natural Monument designation covers it. It is kept going instead by village and prefectural arborists, and that care is currently intensive: the village closed the park from 16 March to 15 April 2026 and cancelled its own cherry festival so the tree could be treated, with the 2027 festival still undecided. It flowered that spring anyway.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Nakamatsu 3226-1, Minamiaso, Aso District, Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan (in Isshingyo Park, on the grounds of a park golf course)
You can recognise it by the crown, split into an M since typhoons took two of its four main limbs in 2004, and by branches reaching 26 metres north to south. It stands on its own in Isshingyo Park, on the park golf course.
Free, standing inside Isshingyo Park (on a public park golf course) in Minamiaso village. Open year round with on-site parking, but note the tree itself is currently under arboricultural treatment: the park was closed to visitors 16 March to 15 April 2026 specifically to protect the tree during care, and the village cancelled its own long-running cherry blossom festival the same spring for the same reason. Confirm the tree is not mid-treatment-closure before a same-day visit in early spring.
Minami-Aso Railway, Nakamatsu Station, 15 minute walk (about 1.2 km). About an hour by car from central Kumamoto City; no direct public transport link makes it a same-day car or rail trip rather than a walk from any city we publish.
In bloom
late March into April, when the wild cherry flowers
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.