Yanaka Cemetery
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The Yanaka Cemetery (Japanese: 谷中霊園 (やなかれいえん) Yanaka Reien?) is a huge cemetery located north of Ueno in Yanaka 1-chome, Taito-ku, Tokyo, Japan. The Yanaka sector of Taito-ku is one of the few Tokyo neighborhoods in which the old Shitamachi atmosphere can still be felt. The cemetery is famous for its beautiful cherry blossoms that in April completely cover its paths, so much so that its central street is often called Cherry-blossom Avenue.
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[edit] Description
Although renamed over 72 years ago, the cemetery is still often called with its old official name, Yanaka Graveyard (Japanese: 谷中墓地 (やなかぼち) Yanaka Bochi?). It has a surface of over 100 thousand square meters and hosts about 7 thousand graves. The cemetery has its own police station and a section dedicated to the Tokugawa, family of the 15 Tokugawa shoguns of Japan, which however is closed to the public and must be peeked at from above the surrounding walls. The last shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu, also known as Keiki, rests here.
The cemetery used to be part of the Tennō-ji Shrine (Japanese: 天王寺 (てんのうじ) Tennō-ji?), and its central street used to be the road approaching the shrine. At about the middle point of the central street are the ruins of the five-storied pagoda that became the model for Kōda Rohan's novel The Five-Storied Pagoda. The pagoda had been a donation made in 1908 by the Tenno-ji Shrine itself. The five-storied pagoda was burned one summer night in 1957 in the so-called Yanaka Five-Storied Pagoda Double-Suicide Arson Case and was later declared a historical landmark by the city authorities.
[edit] History
After the Meiji Restoration, the government pursued a policy of separation of Buddhism and Shintoism (Shinbutsu Bunri), and Shinto funerals became more common. This posed however a problem because until then most cemeteries had been property of Buddhist temples. The solution adopted was the opening of public burial grounds. In 1872, the Meiji authorities confiscated a portion of the Tennō-ji and declared it a public Tokyo cemetery, the largest of the country at the time. In 1935 the name was changed from Yanaka Bochi to the present Yanaka Reien.
[edit] Access
The cemetery lies 6 minutes from JR's Nippori Station
