‘Homecoming Trees’ Honor Takamine and Scidmore

Diana Parsell Homecoming Trees Japan

Eliza Scidmore is popping up all over the place here in Japan. Her cameo appears on plaques marking the presence of cherry tree saplings grafted from trees in Potomac Park — scions of the 3,000 flowering cherry trees that Japan sent to Washington a hundred years ago. Japan is getting a couple hundred of these…

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Group in Japan Keeps Scidmore Memory Alive

Scidmore grave site memorial

When I started this blog a year ago (in an earlier version, titled A Great Blooming), my first post showed a photo of Eliza Scidmore‘s grave in Yokohama. A Japanese friend of mine in America, Miho Kinnas, sent the picture after visiting the site on a trip to Japan. Scidmore is buried in the Foreign…

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During Research in Japan, a Gift of ‘Sakura’

Last Saturday (March 30), NHK television in Japan aired a 15-minute evening news special on cherry blossoms in which I was interviewed about my research on Eliza Scidmore. The footage included scenes of me strolling beneath cherry blossoms at Mukojima in Tokyo and visiting Eliza Scidmore’s grave in Yokohama. Among the viewers who responded was…

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Yokohama Nursery Co., a Century Later

That coat. I knew it at first glance. In Yokohama to do research for my book on Eliza Scidmore, I took a bus across town Friday morning to attend a ceremonial planting of dogwood trees at Honmoku Sanchou Park. The trees were among 3,000 dogwood saplings that America gave to Japan last year in exchange…

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