This weeping cherry began its life somewhere inside the Kyoto Imperial Palace grounds before Emperor Komei, who reigned from 1846 to 1867 and was the father of the Meiji Emperor, had it given to Ka...
Weeping Higan Cherry
Half of these are stand-ins for a more famous tree, and in Kyoto nobody minds. This page maps every weeping higan cherry on the site, 4 so far across 2 cities.
The weeping cherry everyone photographs at Maruyama Park is the second one on the spot, the original having gone. The Taiko cherry at Daigo-ji is not the tree Toyotomi Hideyoshi saw when he staged his enormous blossom party there in the spring of 1598, months before his death, but it stands where the party happened. Shidarezakura hang their flowering branches straight down, so the tree makes a curtain you walk under rather than a canopy you look up into, and they open before the ordinary somei-yoshino. Nara's is the extreme case: the weeping cherry beside the approach to Himuro Shrine opens before any other cherry in the city, and the local spring is dated from it. The fourth came out of the Kyoto Imperial Palace grounds as a gift, in the reign of Emperor Komei.
Kyoto
Photo: KimonBerlin (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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...
Photo: Raita Futo, Wikimedia Commons (via Flickr) (CC BY 2.0)
The tree everyone photographs at Maruyama Park is not the tree that made the spot famous.
Nara
Photo: Degueulasse (CC BY 3.0)
Nara's spring officially starts at this tree.
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