Hanami-yama Park

photo by くろふね · CC BY 4.0

photo by 京浜にけ · CC BY-SA 3.0

A farmer opened it free of charge in 1959: seventy years on, picnics are still banned.

The land still belongs to the Abe family, cut-flower growers: in April 1959 the head of the family, Abe Ichirō, named the hill ‘Hanami-yama’ and opened it free of charge out of his own generosity, a gesture the photographer Akiyama Shōtarō made famous by calling the hill ‘a paradise of peach trees in bloom in Fukushima’. Today it is run by the fourth generation, Abe Kōji, and despite mass tourism the custom that goes with hanami elsewhere is still banned: no lunches and no parties among the flowers.

A hill planted with flowers for cutting (plums, cherries, forsythias, peaches), privately owned by the Abe family and open to the public free of charge since 1959.

ℹ️ Free entry. Staggered flowering: wintersweet in February, ume in March, then about ten species, among them sakura, forsythia, quince and peach, bloom together in April. Three visitor routes, 30–60 minutes; volunteer guides available. Fukushima tourist information: 024-531-6428.

🚉 花見山入口 · 12 min walk

Sources: hanamiyama.jp · ja.wikipedia.org

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