Japan’s First Public Park

Several Ueno Park attractions have been revived by popular demand. One is Shinobazu Pond. The park was devastated during World War II, and for a while Shinobazu Pond was drained of water and converted into paddies to feed the hungry. Four or five years after the war ended, though, the water was pumped back in, and the pond gradually resumed its former appearance.

Photo by Hajime Suga

Just as Shinobazu Pond started to recover, it faced a new threat. Plans arose to fill in the entire pond, which had a circumference of two kilometers, and turn it into a baseball field. The idea was abandoned in the face of massive community opposition. Saved by the locals, the pond went on to become one of Tokyo’s premier bird habitats.

Photo by Hajime Suga

Today Ueno Park’s biggest attraction must be its cherry trees, of which it has fifty varieties. These were planted right after the war with local donations. Food was then in short supply in Japan. Precious fertilizer was hardly going to be wasted on cherry trees, so they started to die. Many were chopped down for firewood by people who had lost their homes and were sleeping outdoors.

The two Okan-zakura cherries in Hakamagoshi square that greet you as you enter the park from the neighborhood. Photo by Hajime Suga

Some local enthusiasts with the local tourism federation, concerned about the cherry trees’ plight, started to collect donations to restore them. Their goal was to raise enough money to plant 1,000 trees. Things were tough back then, and people hardly had enough to eat. But that didn’t stop the fundraisers. They overshot their goal and succeeded in collecting enough money for 1,250 cherry trees.

The cherry trees of the Ueno Toshogu shrine, late 1950s-early 1960s. Photo by Hajime Suga

And so, thanks to the enthusiasm of the locals, the cherry trees of Ueno Forest were restored soon after the war. They are now over sixty years old. They differ from younger trees in the sublime harmony of their branches and blossoms. That is why they mesmerize people — and why Ueno Park has become one of Tokyo’s favorite blossom-viewing destinations.
 
Photo by Takehiro Goto

The Ueno Cherry Blossom Festival started being held soon after the war to celebrate the planting of the cherries made possible by the locals’ dedication. This festival, which takes place in cherry-blossom season, is said to have already existed before the war. It is still a spring institution in Ueno. It is a joint endeavor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (which owns Ueno Park), the police, and the community. Local shopkeepers’ associations and neighbor hood associations take charge of decking out the park with lanterns and such, enhancing the festive mood.



When spring arrives, several hundred Somei Yoshino cherries form a belt of pink. Photo by Hajime Suga

Another reason Ueno Park attracts so many visitors is the beauty of the blossoms at night. Imagine them with Benten Hall lit up in the background, its golden form mirrored on the surface of Shinobazu Pond. Nowhere else can you view blossoms in such a nighttime setting.

Benten Hall on Shinobazu Pond. Photo by Hajime Suga

The cherry trees are Ueno Park’s crown jewels, and in 2006 the Ueno Sakuramori no Kai (“Ueno cherry guardians association”) was set up to protect them. Most of Ueno’s cherry trees are over fifty years old. They require a different type of care than younger trees. And double-petaled cherry trees, which are the result of a genetic mutation, are by the laws of nature apparently doomed to extinction. They need to be grafted and pruned by human hands. 

Koka,a type of double-petaled cherry. Photo by Hajime Suga

So members of local shopkeepers’ associations and other enthusiasts now get together to look after the cherries. Under expert supervision, they prune the trees and apply fertilizer. They also perform grafting to perpetuate the different varieties. Plus almost every year, the Ueno Sakuramori no Kai puts together a map of Ueno Park showing which cherry trees are where. 

While the park initially had over 1,000 cherry trees, that number later declined to 800. It has now fallen even further, to 750. But the remaining trees have grown in the meantime, so if anything they present an even more impressive spectacle.

The cherry guardians doing their rounds with an expert. Photo courtesy of Ueno Sakuramori no Kai

The Somei Yoshino cherry tree, according to one theory, has a lifespan of sixty years. Many of the Somei Yoshino in Ueno Park already exceed that age. What do the cherry guardians find so enchanting about Ueno’s cherry trees? “Their history of almost four hundred years delighting people in their neatly aligned rows,” says Ueno Sakuramori no Kai’s Yuji Kimura. “The fact they remind us today of the special bond the Japanese have had with cherry trees since the Edo period,” says the association’s Kazuya Sato. One day, they dream, Ueno will have row on row of century-old cherry trees, which is why they lavish such care on them. After all, there’s nothing like Ueno’s cherry trees anywhere else.

Photo courtesy of Ueno Sakuramori no Kai

Photo by Hajime Suga