young pine tree

Looking at beautiful cherry blossoms over there, I was on parts of the remain of the main gate, "Otte-Mon", of Tusruga-castle, in Aizu-Wakamatu city. This city has been well known for the pretty conservative (in positive meaning) "samurai culture" fostered during Edo-period (from around 1600 to 1860's), partly because the ancestry of its master was a relative to the tycoon of this country, or I can say, "Shogun".

Though a solid samurai-culture had been aged for about 250 years since the tycoon's relative brought the sentiment of Edo (I mean, Tokyo's old name and Shogun's main city) in this area, the original master of the castle was not this relative, but a totally different samurai. He made city's fundamentals and name before 1600. The city's old name was "Waka-matsu", which means "young pine tree". The original master especially liked the pine tree as many people did in his era, cause it associated with an auspiciousness, maybe.

Here was Aizu-Wakamatsu city, Japan.