At the tail end of this year's cherry-blossom season I set off for one of Tokyo's prime viewing spots, Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. My idea is to walk the quiet backstreets circling the garden, then canter through the park itself, which features several late-blooming varieties of sakura cherry trees.
Exiting JR Sendagaya Station in Shibuya Ward, I head north and through a dank passageway under the train tracks to the garden's Sendagaya Gate.
The street is nearly deserted and flanked by stone embankments quilted with moss. As I head uphill, I recall that the garden is only a small portion of the land granted to Kiyonari Naito, a trusted vassal of Japan's first shogun, Ieyasu Tokugawa (1543-1616), who established the nation's political capital in Edo (present-day Tokyo). Legend has it that Ieyasu offered Naito all the land that he could encompass in a single, non-stop gallop on horseback. In those days when such places were still rural, Naito rode to Sendagaya in the south, north to Okubo, west to Yoyogi and east to Yotsuya — before his horse dropped dead.