There are varieties of cherry trees and Yoritomo legend

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There are varieties of cherry trees in Japan. In the town of Kyonan, specifically around Sakuma Dam, in the Southern area of Chiba prefecture, you can see more than forty types of cherry blossom trees. The place around it, along Sakuma river and Hota river is famous for its beautiful cherry blossoms.

 

We have many different types of cherry trees which are rare and cannot be seen easily around Sakuma dam. Each year, every February, Kawadu cherry blossoms begin to bloom. After that, you can also see the Yoshino cherry, which we also called the weeping cherry, or Yae-sakura blossoms one after another. In fact, we have planted about 15,000 trees of Kawadu cherry blossoms in our town.

 

In September of 2019, our town was hit by a typhoon, wherein one third of cherry trees collapsed and broke apart. It was difficult for us to hold the flower festival in that certain situation. However, the tourism association of Izunokuni-city and other cities provided us with three hundred trees of Kawadu cherry blossoms to plant.We are thankful to the tourism association for helping us recover our cherry trees.

 

Relevantly, we call the Kawazu cherry tree the Yoritomo cherry tree.The name Yoritomo came from a famous samurai and the first person to establish a Shogunate political system in Japan; Shogunate is a kind of government. He fought against the enemy in Kamakura, but unfortunately, he was defeated. He ran away and crossed the sea by a boat towards Kyonan-machi. It is believed that he stayed there for about two weeks, and healed his wounded heart. Later on, he decided to fight the enemy again, and luckily won this time. With his victory, he managed to establish the ‘Shogunate Government’.

 

Furthermore, we hold a Yoritomo-festival every October. In this event, visitors can see specific people do a reenactment of that time, where a certain person wears the costume of the ‘battledress’ of Yoritomo. After that, there will be a big parade with people who are wearing samurai costumes.

 

At this present moment, we have varieties of cherry trees like Kawadu that bloom early in February. Kawadu cherry has a deeper pink colour than Yoshino, and is more popular among tourists. It will be fun to see these trees personally. So, if I were you, I would pay a visit to this amazing place. See you soon.