Yanaka Cemetery

Atmospheric cemetery in old Tokyo where cherry blossoms bloom over the graves of shoguns

Yanaka Cemetery sits at the heart of one of Tokyo's most intact pre-war neighborhoods, a place where the city's usual relentless modernity has not yet arrived. The cemetery covers 26 acres and holds over 7,000 graves — ordinary citizens, Buddhist priests, and historical figures including the last Tokugawa shogun — in a mix of styles from simple stones to elaborate mausoleums.

It is one of the best places in Tokyo to walk slowly and feel something of old Edo. The main avenue through the cemetery becomes a famous hanami spot in spring when the cherry trees bloom overhead. The surrounding Yanaka neighborhood, with its old temples, craft shops, and traditional market on Yanaka Ginza, deserves at least a half-day.

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Yanaka Cemetery is the final resting place of Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last shogun of Japan, who died in 1913. His grave is here, in a city his family once ruled, surrounded by the ordinary dead of a neighborhood that survived the earthquakes and bombs that destroyed most of Edo-era Tokyo.

Other places in Yanaka