Yoshino-Kumano National Park

The Yoshino-Kumano National Park, situated on the Kii Peninsula, which reaches out into the Pacific from western central Honshu, takes in the mountains of the Yoshino region and the deep gorges of Kumano region. Many of the temple and shrines once visited by swarms of pilgrims can still be seen. During the Nara period this territory, then remote and inaccessible, was the haunt of the mountain ascetics of the Shugendo sect.

The isolated northwestern section of the National Park consists of the Yoshino Mountains, which rise above the little town of Yoshino. The mountains are widely famed for their cherry trees - some 100,00 in all, in four large groves which are in blossom at varying times, depending on the altitude, between the beginning and the end of April. Nearest the upper station of the cableway is the Shimo-no-Sembon ("Lower Thousand Trees") which is followed by Naka-no-Sembon ("Middle Thousand Trees"), Kami-no-Sembon ("Upper Thousand Trees") and Uko-no-Sembon ("Inner Thousand Trees"). The Cherry Blossom Festival (Hanao-eshiki) is celebrated in mid-April. The tradition has it that the threes were originally planted by a priest named Enno-Ozuno in the 7th C and dedicated to the mountain divinity Zao-Gongen.