Yanaka Cemetery

Yanaka Cemetery in Tokyo's Taito ward is one of the city's oldest municipal cemeteries, created in 1874 when the Meiji reforms separated it from the grounds of Tennoji Temple. Its most famous resident is Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the fifteenth and last shogun, buried here in 1913 in a surprisingly modest dome-shaped tomb in Shinto rather than Buddhist form. The wide central avenue, the so-called Sakura-dori, turns into a cherry-blossom tunnel each April and has been a classic hanami spot for over a century. The cemetery forms the quiet core of the Yanaka old-town district, where wooden houses, small temples and resident cats set the mood.