Cherry trees are the whole point of Yoshino, and they are planted by the thousand up the side of a ridge in the mountains of Nara Prefecture, about five kilometres from the little town of Yoshino and an hour or two from Osaka. Over some three hundred years, pilgrims planted the sacred shidarezakura and the mountain cherry as offerings to the god of the mountain, and in the first half of April the slopes turn pink, white and green in four layers from the bottom to the top, a wave of flowering that rises up the hillside over about a fortnight.
The mountain was a holy place long before the cherry. It is the northern end of the Omine pilgrimage trail, the long, hard path of the Shugendo mountain ascetics, who combine Buddhism, Shinto and old nature worship, and who walk to Kumano over the peaks. The temple of Kinpusen-ji, whose main hall, the Zao-do, is one of the largest wooden buildings in Japan, houses three fierce blue statues of Zao Gongen, the deity of the mountain, which are shown to the public only on certain days. Parts of Mount Omine have been closed to women for over a thousand years, and the rule still holds. Yoshino was also a place of refuge: Prince Go-Daigo set up the Southern Court here in 1336, and the warrior Yoshitsune hid with his lover Shizuka after falling out with his brother. In 1594, Toyotomi Hideyoshi held a lavish cherry blossom party here, with thousands of guests. UNESCO inscribed the area in 2004 as part of the Kii mountain sites.
The roads up are narrow. Route 169 follows the Yoshino river from Kashihara and Sakurai through steep, wooded gorges, with tunnels and tight bends, and the last stretch to the village climbs in hairpins that become a car park in blossom season. During cherry time, traffic restrictions apply and the whole valley is busy, so go on a weekday and very early, or come in the green weeks of May or October, when the roads are peaceful and the forest is full of birdsong. Winter can bring snow and ice.
Yoshino has about nine thousand people, but the village at the top is tiny and fuel is not sold there, so fill the tank in the valley, at Gojo or Sakurai. The local specialities are kuzu, an arrowroot starch made into sweets and noodles, and persimmon-leaf sushi, which is salted fish pressed in rice and wrapped in leaves. Takamatsuzuka tomb, in Asuka, is famous for its painted wall figures, found in 1972.