Yanaka Cemetery

Yanaka Cemetery covers twenty-five acres of winding paths lined with cherry trees and weathered stone markers. It sits on land that once belonged to Tennoji Temple, a site established in the seventeenth century. When the Meiji government mandated the separation of Shinto and Buddhism, they carved this public graveyard out of the temple grounds. Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the final shogun of Japan, rests here behind a simple iron fence, buried alongside generations of artists, writers, and scholars who defined Tokyo’s cultural landscape.