There is no castle here any more. Tsurugaoka Castle was held by the Sakai family as lords of the Shonai domain for something like two hundred and fifty years, and what survives of it is the shape rather than the building: the moat, the earth banks, the line the walls once took. The park was laid out inside that shape.

Seven hundred and thirty cherry trees grow in it. The decision, at some point, was not to put the keep back up but to leave the water where it was and plant. That is a different kind of restoration, and it has aged better than most reconstructions do. The flowering comes in the middle of April and runs to the end of the month.

The moat barely moves. On a still day the trees on the far bank arrive in the water upside down and complete, so that the surface and the air above it join into one thing, and it takes a moment to find the join. People stop on the bridges rather than under the trees.

When the petals start to go, the water whitens before the branches thin. It collects along the inside edge of the moat where the current is slowest, in a band a metre or so wide, and stays there for days. From the bridge you are closer to the flowers than you would be standing underneath them.