Cherry Trees

Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate enforces Sakoku, a policy of isolation limiting foreign trade mainly to the Dutch. Several failed US attempts are made to officially open relations.

President Fillmore appoints Andrew Jackson Downing to plan DC parks and the National Mall.

US Navy Commodore Matthew Perry arrives in Edo Bay (present-day Tokyo Bay), disembarking Marines at Yokosuka. At the time, foreign ships were restricted to the port at Nagasaki. Delivering a letter from President Fillmore calling for the opening of trade relations, Perry declared that he would return the following year to hear the Japanese government’s response.

Perry returns to Japan; the Tokugawa shogunate accepts virtually all of the demands from the previous year. After weeks of negotiations, the Convention of Kanagawa was signed on March 31st, opening American treaty ports and establishing diplomatic missions for the US.

Eliza Scidmore is born in Iowa.

The Meiji Restoration and Reforms, following the Boshin War, westernizes Japan and significantly increases the number of American expatriates in the country; Scidmore later lives in Japan and falls in love with cherry blossoms.

US Army Corps of Engineers dredges the Potomac Flats, extending the Mall westward.

Scidmore visits Japan via her diplomat brother.

The Tidal Basin is constructed as part of the dredging projects.

Scidmore begins lobbying to plant Japanese cherry trees on the Mall.

Congress designates reclaimed land as Potomac Park, including the Tidal Basin.

Helen Taft visits Japan on the way to her husband’s appointment as Governor-General the Philippines; she becomes fond of cherry blossoms.

The McMillan Plan envisions the Mall as a grand civic landscape, replacing Victorian landscaping with ‘City Beautiful’ reforms; the Tafts support it once in office.

Theodore Roosevelt brokers the Treaty of Portsmouth ending the Russo-Japanese War, strengthening US–Japan ties and inspiring Tokyo’s future tree gift.

USDA Botanist David Fairchild imports and plants Japanese cherry trees in DC suburbs with the help of a Japanese gardener, advocating for their wider use.

Newly inaugurated First Lady Taft plans to beautify Potomac Park, inspired by Manila’s Luneta Park; Scidmore, an acquaintance, suggests cherry trees. Japanese chemist Jōkichi Takamine, Tokyo Mayor Yukio Ozaki, the New York Consul-General Kōkichi Mizuno, and the Tokyo Municipal Council offer 2,000 trees as a gift.

The first shipment arrives but is destroyed due to pest infestation to the dismay of Mrs. and President Taft.

A second shipment succeeds; Taft and Viscountess Iwa Chinda plant the first trees around the Tidal Basin.

Eliza Scidmore dies in Geneva; her ashes rest in Yokohama amid cherry trees.

The first Cherry Blossom Festival is held, becoming annual in 1935.

Women protesters chain themselves to trees to prevent Jefferson Memorial construction—the “Cherry Tree Rebellion.”

After the Imperial Japanese Navy’s attack at Pearl Harbor, four cherry trees

During WW2, Allied firebombing damages many of the original areas from which tree saplings were donated, such as the Arakawa River in Tokyo. Many of these areas have since replanted cherry trees donated from the Tidal Basin, such as around the city of Yokohama.

Tokyo donates the Japanese Stone Lantern (March 30, 1954) and Yokohama the Japanese Pagoda (1957–April 18, 1958) to Washington, commemorating the centennial of the Convention of Kanagawa.

Saplings from cherry trees around the Tidal Basin were returned to Japan and planted by the Eliza Scidmore Cherry Blossom Society of Yokohama. These were planted at the Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery at the Scidmore family plot and the general American section.

In the decades since, saplings from the returned trees have been planted across Japan, including at the US Department of State's Foreign Service Institute Yokohama campus, US military facilities in and around the Yokosuka area, and other local parks in Japan.