By SHINYA MINAMISHIMA/ Staff Writer
February 2, 2025 at 18:36 JST
KAWAZU, Shizuoka Prefecture--A cherry blossom festival held here as a harbinger of early spring in the Izu Peninsula is now under way, but ironically not many flowers are open due to cold weather.
Organizers expect 800,000 visitors during the Feb. 1-28 event, up from about 620,000 last year.
Aeound 850 trees of the early-blooming Kawazu-zakura variety form a four-kilometer tunnel of pink flowers on the banks of Kawazugawa river every year.
The Izu Agricultural Research Center, part of the Shizuoka Prefectural Research Institute of Agriculture and Forestry, expects the flowers to be at their best, or 70 percent to full bloom, between late February and early March.
Located in the southeastern part of the Izu Peninsula, the town of Kawazu is famed for its 8,000 Kawazu-zakura trees.
At the festival’s opening ceremony on Feb. 1, Mayor Shigehiro Kishi said the town will provide subsidies to help residents maintain cherry trees in their gardens and elsewhere.
Kawazu-zakura is said to have been discovered around 1955.
A local resident, Katsumi Iida, came across a young tree less than one meter tall along Kawazugawa and planted it in his garden.
The tree first bore flowers in 1966.
Mitsuya Katsumata, a landscape gardener in Ito, Shizuoka Prefecture, was charmed by the flowers and started breeding the tree by grafting in 1969.
The variety took hold in many areas and was named Kawazu-zakura in 1974.
The Kawazu-zakura Matsuri festival started in 1991.
In announcing the subsidies, Kishi credited the cherry variety with serving as a foundation for the town’s development.
“We are glad if we can help maintain Kawazu-zakura, which residents have long cherished, into the future,” he said.
The town plans to earmark 400,000 yen ($2,600) in its initial budget proposal for fiscal 2025 to subsidize half of a tree doctor’s diagnostic fees, up to 40,000 yen per tree, and half of pruning fees, up to 20,000 yen, officials said.
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Flowers on a lone and forlorn-looking Kawazu-zakura tree in Kawazu, Shizuoka Prefecture, on Feb. 1 (Shinya Minamishima)
