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Full Bloom and Festivals: Japan’s Springtime Enchantment Traveling the Tokaido and Nakasendo / April 2008 To be in Japan in the spring when sakura are in full bloom (mankai) is a traveler’s dream. Planning a visit can be somewhat tricky, though, as sakura don’t bloom by the calendar, but by weather and location – earlier in warmer years, at lower latitudes and elevations, and in sunnier places; and later in cooler years, higher latitudes and locations, and in shadier places. Full bloom occurs within a week after opening of the first flowers (kaika) and lasts about a week. To complicate matters, there are dozens of varieties, from white to deep pink, in clusters and sprays, upright or weeping, each blooming on a different cycle (a couple even in winter). And daily weather (wind and rain) may affect the quality of the bloom. The ideal hanami, or flower-viewing, is at places where a lot of trees are in full-bloom, grouped together or in rows, usually in parks, around castles, temples and shrines, or along rivers and roadways.
Four years ago, we were in Japan in the last week of March and early April and caught the beginning of the blossoming in Osaka and Kyoto, but left before full bloom. This year we scheduled a trip from April 1-16, which on average is best time for hanami in the lower elevations of central Honshu. Sakura season is also a great time to visit Japan for matsuri, or festivals, celebrating the coming of spring. Festivals occur on different days in different places, but often on set dates. We planned to follow the old Tokaido (Eastern Sea Road) along the southern coast, from Tokyo to the ancient capital of Kyoto, where the sakura bloom on average three days later than in Tokyo; then to return to Tokyo via the Nakasendo (Central Mountain Road) to the north and into higher elevations for later blooming. (Map). These two roads were part of the road system established by the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu after he unified the country in 1602. The Tokaido, the most traveled road, covered 300 miles; the more rugged, less traveled Nakasendo, covered 310 miles. Stations along the roads provided inns, teahouses, restaurants and entertainment quarters as well as porters and horse stables. At selected stations were barrier gates where travelers were interviewed, permits were checked and goods inspected, as the government attempted to control travel and trade. Between 1831-1834, woodblock artist Ando Hiroshige produced a series of prints with scenes from the fifty three stations of the Tokaido; between 1834-1842, he finished a series started by Keisai Yeisen depicting the the sixty-nine stations of the Kiso-kaido (another name for the Nakasendo because it went through the Kiso Valley). As these prints spread to the West after the opening of Japan in 1854, they provided glimpses into a country closed to the rest of the world for 250 years and visually defined “Japan” for generations of Westerrners. Kamakura When we flew into Narita, the news from aficianados was that the best day for hanami in Tokyo was the day before, as some wind and rain had already started the petals falling. The blossoms had begun opening about a week earlier than predicted. In Kamakura, our first stop, the sakura along the walking path of Dankazura Avenue to Hachiman Shrine were in full bloom, but falling lightly in swirls with each gust of wind, beautiful, yet sad.
On the way to Hakone, the next day, at Odawara Castle, the bloom was fuller. In the square in front of the castle grounds were a flea market and food booths and the area was crowded with visitors to the castle enjoying hanami.
Hakone is noted for its view of Mt. Fuji over lake Ashi. You can hike a stone-paved section of the old Tokaido. Along the lake are walking paths and a reconstruction of the barrier station where travelers were once requied to show permits. We drove up to the steaming sulphur fields of Owakudani (Big Boiling Valley). On the way there was a close-up view of snow-capped Fuji-san over the northern end of Lake Ashi. We bought a bottle of Odawara sake (Gin-no-Mai, “Singing Dance”) that was excellent.
Now and Then
After a night in Hakone we drove south down Izu Peninsula, where the sakura in the higher elevations had yet to bloom, but Sakura no Sato, inland from Ito, near the rounded Mt. Omuro, was crowded with cars and viewers, though only some of the varieties of trees in the park were in bloom. Along the road to Shimoda in central Izu is Joren Falls and the seven falls of the Kawazu river, where visitors can walk along the paths following stream beds to view the falls. Wasabi was being planted below Joren Falls, where you can also trout fish. We had ayu, or sweetfish (related to salmon, but smaller), roasted over coals, for lunch.
We spent the night in Shimoda, a picturesque seaport on the tip of the peninsula, where Commodore Perry’s “Black Ships” anchored in 1854 to open Japan to trade with the West. The modest row of trees along the Inozawa River was in full bloom.
The small Shimoda Museum is a museum in itself, housed in two adjacent buildings connected by a second-floor walkway. The “namako-kabe,” or “sea-cucumber walls,” feature dark slate tiles overlaid with white plaster cross-hatching, a building technique developed to keep wooden houses from burning down. It’s a very low-tech, homey museum, with displays of the Shimoda festival floats and artifacts of the American and Russian visitors during the 19th century, including a sea-weathered canvas and leather bag of the Russian admiral who was shipwrecked off the Izu peninsula and built a new ship at Heda, introducing Western shipbuilding techniques to Japanese craftsmen. The man selling tickets at the museum told us to make sure we didn't miss the Princess Ka‘iulani memorabilia in the second building; although the princess never visited Japan, King David Kalakaua, her uncle, had once proposed a marriage between her and a Japanese prince in hopes of forming an alliance between Hawai‘i and japan that would protect Hawai‘i from Western intruders.
As we drove up the west coast of Izu the next day, we passed a field of stunning yellow rape flowers bordered by sakura, and farther north along a winding coastal road, sakura formed tunnels of flowers.
Back on the Tokaido west of Izu, we arrived in Shizuoka for its spring festival, held on the first Saturday of April and featuring a flower-viewing procession to Sengen Shrine, a tradition started by Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), who became shogun of Japan in 1603 and retired in 1605 to Shizuoka, where he was brought up. His family ruled Japan for 250 years. The procession, with colorful floats and groups costumed as lords, ladies, and samurai, culminated in traditional dances in front of sakura blooming along the moat and outer walls of Ieyasu’s castle, Sumpu, which is the site of a park today.
Just east of Shizuoka is Nihondaira, one of the best viewpoints for Mount Fuji. We drove up the hill in the early morning to catch the faint glow of the rising sun on the sakura and the near-perfect, snow-covered cone that seemed to float above Shimizu harbor in spring mist (or was it smog?)
Also on Nihondaira is Tosho-gu, or “Eastern-Shining Shrine” at Kunozan, where Ieyasu’s remains were housed after his death, before they were moved to the more famous and elaborate Tosho-gu at Nikko the following year. We climbed the 1159 stone steps zigzagging up a steep hill to the immaculately maintained, elaborately carved, and colorfully painted shrine. There is also a ropeway down to the shrine from the top of Kunozan, but walking up is considered a form of purification. Visitors included groups of businessmen paying respect to and gaining inspiration from Japan’s greatest shogun.
Strawberry farms lined along the coastal highway below Nihondaira, and in payment for a parking space we spent ¥2000 ($20) in a shop that sold delicious fresh strawberry juice and strawberry wafers. West of Shizuoka, on the shore of Lake Hamana, is Hamamatsu Flower Park, where sakura and red, yellow, and white tulips were blooming. The brackish-water lake is known for its abundance of seafood. When we arrived, the locals were digging clams along the shore. The hot spring inn we stayed at served lobster sashimi for dinner and offered a free shuttle to the park for hanami at night, with floral pathways lit to magical effect.
On the way to Hamamatsu, we stopped at the Nakatajima Sand Dunes, where loggerhead turtles nest in the early summer to fall; and the barrier gate at Arai, which was established in 1601 by Tokugawa Ieyasu to restrict guns and girls from the capital. The barrier gate was destroyed by waves in 1708 and moved to a more protected spot inland.The structure at the site is the interview room, built in 1855; and the museum next door houses artifiacts from the era. Now and Then
West to Yoshino-Asuka-Kashihara-Sakai On the way west to Kansai, we stopped in Nagoya to visit Atsuta Shrine, founded 1900 years ago and considered the second most venerated shrine to the sun goddess Amaterasu, the first being the Grand Shrine at Ise where she resides. Atsuta houses one of the three Imperial regalia of Japan given to the ruling family by Amaterasu – the sacred sword Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi (“Sword of the Gathering Clouds of Heaven”), later renamed Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi (“Grasscutting Sword”) after its possessor, Yamato Takeru, used it to escape death in a burning field by cutting a space in the surrounding grass. The sword is said to control the winds, and Yamato used it to direct the winds to blow the fire back at the treacherous lord who had set the field afire. (The other two Imperial regalia are a mirror, housed at the Grand Shrine at Ise, and a jewel, housed at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.)
Continuing toward Kyoto on the expressway through Nagoya with its modern bridges (Edo-period travelers on the Tokaido used to avoid the dangerous river crossings by taking a boat from Mina to Kuwana), we detoured off the Tokaido at Seki and headed for Yoshino. On the way, we planned to spend the night at the Menard Aoyama Resort in the mountains of Iga-Ueno. After driving on narrow roads through mountains and valleys, we turned onto what looked like on our map the most direct way to the resort, Route 755, which turned out to be a winding, deserted single-lane road through the forest. It was raining hard and the road was littered with fallen cedar twigs, with small dirt slides on the mountain side. I was wondering if we were lost, but the GPS indicated we were headed toward the resort so we kept going. After emerging from the forest, we came onto a two-lane road, and the resort was a short ways off, in a very pleasant location among rolling hills, with a golf course and an excellent restaurant and onsen. There were very few guests, since it was the off-season, but the service, kaiseki dinner and onsen and rotemburo were a delight after the cold rainy drive.
The next day, after inquiring at the front desk about the best way to get to Yoshino, we took Route 29 down from the resort to Route 165. Yoshino is considered the best site in Japan for hanami. The more trees, the more glorious the effect, and Yoshino has 30,000 of them. We were either early or late for the full bloom of the main body of trees, but there were groves and single trees in full bloom. Buses and cars were lining up to get on the road that goes up to the viewing sites, and the street to Kinpusen-ji, the main temple at Yoshino, was closed to traffic and full of visitors. Kinpusen-ji was established in the eighth century by En-no-Gyoja, a mountain-ascetic who was a founder of Shugendo, a mystic blend of Buddhism, Shinto, and Taoism. The cherry tree was sacred to this sect, which is why so many are planted in the area.
Just north of Yoshino, in Asuka we visited Ishibutai, the stone tomb of Sogano Umako, a sixth century aristocrat; visitors are allowed to walk into the empty underground chamber below the stones. Just north, in Kashihara, we stopped at the mausoleum of Japan’s first emperor, Jimmu, a fifth-generation descendent of the sun goddess Amaterasu. Jimmu migrated to Kansai from the Miyazaki area in southern Kyushu, where the sun goddess’ grandson Ninigi descended to earth. After defeating the local tribes, Jimmu established the rule of what became the imperial family. His mausoleum is behind a fence and a gate, in the woods; visitors can approach the gate but not enter.
We spent a night in Sakai, near the kofun, or keyhole-shaped burial mound, of the emperor Nintoku, the sixteenth emperor of Japan. This is the largest kofun in Japan, situated in the middle of a suburb of Osaka, in an area that also contains 20 keyhole-shaped tombs, 21 round tombs, and 5 square tombs. Nintoku’s kofun, over five football fields long (1600 feet), 1000 feet wide, and 118 feet high is surrounded by a moat and an outer fence beyond which visitors are not allowed. The mound itself is so huge, you can’t see the whole thing in its entirety except from the air.
From Sakai, we drove to Otsu, on Lake Biwa, the junction town where the Tokaido and the Nakasendo meet. Kyoto is a short drive away. This was our second visit to Japan’s ancient capital, and we went to sites we missed on our first visit: Gosho, the ancient imperial palace; Kamigamo shrine in northern Kyoto, the oldest shrine in this ancient city; and the mausoleum of emperor Meiji (1852-1912), who guided Japan through the opening of trade with the West and modernization after 250 years of isolation under the Tokugawas. (Later in the day, one of the current emperor’s son was scheduled to participate in a ceremony at his great great grandfather’s mausoleum.) We also went to the nearby Fushimi Shrine, dedicated to Inari, the rice goddess, with tunnels of torii along a trail up a steep hill. The shrine is noted for its numerous statues of foxes, who serve as Inari’s messenger.
The sakura along Kyoto’s Kamo river and its canals were past prime, but still in full bloom, as were the trees at Otsu’s Miidera, which, like the park at Hamamatsu, was lit up at night for visitors.
Now and Then
It was rainy. We drove up the Mt. Hiei toll road (there’s also a train) to Enryakuji, the famous monastery of the Tendai sect of Buddhism, which was shrouded in mist. Inside the main hall, unseen priests were chanting, their voices echoing eerily from the dark recesses. The next morning, at sunrise, Lake Biwa was spectacular as storm clouds from the night before hung low, but allowed the sun to light the lake and its Western shore.
Now and Then
Prime Bloom in Hikone On the way from Otsu to Gifu, at Hikone, a small town on the northeast side of Lake Biwa, far enough north and cold enough to be blooming later than Kyoto, we caught up with the season and hit a peak day before petals started falling, with rows of white trees along the outer side of the moat and large pink trees hanging over the inner walls of the moat, forming long and lofty hills of pink. there was a small fair going on, with sales of local products. We bought an bottle of “Golden Turtle” sake, which turned out to be delicious.
We stayed a couple of nights in Gifu, noted for its cormorant fishing (May 11 through October 15 only) on the Nagara River and its castle atop Mt. Kinka. Originally completed in 1204 and rebuilt and renamed Gifu-jo by the daimyo Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), the castle was destroyed by American warplanes in 1945, and rebuilt out of concrete in the 1950s. It offers a 360 degree view of Gifu city. We caught the ropeway up, then walked down the trail to the park at the bottom of the hill where the remains of shogun Oda Nobunaga’s residence was being excavated.
Just outside of Gifu, at Tejikarao Shrine, we went to a 300-year old spring fireworks festival held on the second Saturday in April. Here the twelve surrounding towns carry their kami, housed in omikoshi (portable shrines) hoisted on the backs of young men, to celebrate the arrival of spring. Each town erects two forty-foot tall poles, one with a triangle of ten lanterns and the other topped with a pack of gunpowder. One after another, they fire rockets on strings to ignite first the lanterns, then later the gunpowder, which showers sparks down on the omikoshi and the bare-backed carriers as they dance around the poles. The omikoshi, equipped with pipes packed with powder on their roofs, spew fountains of flames upward into the cascading sparks. Fire crackers, roman candles, and strings of cascading sparks accompany each dance.
This festival features booths along a narrow street in front of the shrine, selling grilled foods, toys, and small golden fish. Children and parents and teenage boys and girls in groups or on dates walked up and down the street. The atmosphere recalled for me the small town bon dances in Hawai’i in the 1950’s. We almost missed the festival. That morning, after the hotel desk clerk told us that was no parking at the shrine and advised us to catch the local train, we drove out to find the site and locate parking nearby. We were walking around Tejikarao Shrine taking photos when an old man who had come for a morning prayer began talking about the shrine. We asked him where the festival grounds were, and he told us that we were at the wrong Tejikarao Shrine, that the festival was held at another shrine of the same name, over a mile away to the southwest, near the local train station of the same name. We drove there, and found the townspeople erecting the lantern and gunpowder poles, packing tubes with gunpowder, and preparing a wide stage with nearly life-sized figures from Shinto mythology. We also found an empty lot and parked there that evening for the festival.
The festival was spectacular yet intimate, with spectators crowded into the limited space at the perimeter of the small temple grounds, which were roped off for safety. That night, there were a couple minor unplanned fires that sent fire fighters scurrying about with extinguishers. From Gifu, we drove through the Ena Valley and up the Nakasendo through the Kiso Valley, noted for its waterfall and sculpted river rocks and for two old post towns, Magome and Tsumago, between which you can still walk the historic road up to and down from Magome Pass.
Now and Then
Takayama Spring Festival At Shiojiri, we turned off the Nakasendo for Takayama, to catch one of the best spring festivals in Japan, held on April 14 and 15 each year. This festival features twelve exquisitely-made floats, beautifully lacquered, carved, and embellished with metal ornaments, and hung with banners and paintings on silk. Three of the floats house 21-string puppets that perform dances to traditional noh music.
Takayama is a great tourist town, with morning markets along the Miya River and an old town with narrow streets lined with traditional houses and shops, including eight sake breweries. We bought some spices at the morning market and a bottle of daiginjyo from Harada brewery; we had a delicious lunch of ten-zaru, tempura and buckwheat noodles, for which the area is known.
In the morning the floats were put on display around town; after the puppet show, several hundred residents dressed up in Edo-style costumes and paraded through the town, stopping to perform a lion dance before the shrines along the way and ending up at the center square.
There is a lantern festival at night, but we didn’t stay because the town was packed, and we weren’t able to book a hotel for that night (people start making reservations a year in advance); so we headed into the still-snowy Hida Mountains, to Hirayu Onsen, to relax in a rotemburo (outdoor hot spring). The specialty in these mountain towns is beef, served with mountain potatoes, ferns and freshly-picked bamboo shoots. Between Takayama and Hirayu is Hida Limestone Cave, which features miniature stalactites and stalagmites. Ten miles north of the onsen is the Shinhodaka Ropeway, which ascends in two stages to the top of Mt. Hodaka, over 7000 feet above sea level, for a spectacular view of the Japan Alps. Near the onsen is Hirayu falls, thawing out with the season (it’s frozen in the winter); a signboard tells of the legend of the discovery of the onsen: a white monkey (shirozaru) led some exhausted samurai warriors to the site.
The next morning, I was relaxing alone in the rotemburo, my body afloat just below the surface, images of spring festivals, melting ice, and sakura blooming, adrift in a pool of memories. The steam swirling rhythmically in the chilly mountain breeze over the hot water entranced me, the glowing swirls rising and vanishing into sunlight. I felt the presence of the sun goddess Amaterasu (“Heaven Shining”) and understood for the first time – deeply and with a pure heart – the reverence Shinto worshippers have for her and her embodiment in the rising sun. That feeling brought closure to a journey that had begun four years earlier with our visit to the goddess’ shrine at Ise. Karuizawa On the way to Karuizawa, our last stop, we drove around Lake Suwa to reconnect with the Nakasendo and follow it east to the Kanto plains, past Tokyo, to Narita. The sakura around this mountain lake, like the sakura in Takayama, were just starting to open. Now and Then
Beyond Wada Pass (we drove through the new Wada tunnel rather than over the old winding road through the highest pass on the Nakasendo) and down at Kasadori, the snow-covered peak of Mt. Asama appeared in the distance, an active volcano which dominates this mountain valley as Fuji-san does the southern coast. Now and Then
Karuizawa, at the foot of Mt. Asama, has become a resort for the upper middle class from Tokyo, with two-story Western-style summer houses and mansions on relatively large lots, surrounded by birches, larches and cedars. The town has a modern shopping street and plaza, as well as an old town (Naka-Karuizawa), where we had an excellent sushi dinner. The highlights of this stop were the lava fields of Mt. Asama; the falls of Shiraito (“White Threads,” so called because water seeps out from the side of a steep hill in thin white streams); and the look-out above Usui pass, where the eroded ridge tops to the south were like none others I’ve seen in Japan.
By the time we got to Karuizawa, the hanami season was almost over in the coastal areas of south-central Honshu. But in mountain towns like Suwa and Takayama, buds were still opening, and spring would continue to bloom, sweeping north for Hokkaido, where the season lasts into May. IF YOU GO: Japan-guide.com provides information and advice about sakura-viewing at http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2011_when.html; the Japan Meteorological Agency issues prediction at http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/indexe.html, starting in early March. We rented a Mazda Versa from tocoo.com and planned routes using the Mapion website and Google Maps. WHERE TO STAY: Online bookings of hotels and ryokan, with some good off-season discounts, are available three months in advance at the japanican.com website hosted by the Japan Travel Bureau. JapanHotel.net accepts booking up to a year in advance. Basically, the more you pay the larger and more elegant the room and bath, the better the hotspring and meals. We appreciated the massage chair in our room at the Gifu Grand Hotel. WHERE TO EAT: The best way to find a good place to eat, whether soba, sashimi, or grilled food, is to ask a local. MORE INFORMATION: To view the complete series of nineteenth century woodblock prints of travel along the Tokaido (road) and Nakasendo, see
Dennis Kawaharada is the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Kapi'olani Community College. For more of his travel writing on Japan and other places, see his website at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~dennisk/.
Roads of Oku, a book of travel essays on Japan, is forthcoming in 2009 from Kalamaku Press. |
