The path is open for one week. Inside the grounds of the Japan Mint there is a five-hundred-and-sixty-metre walk along the old course of the Yodo river, and for fifty-one weeks of the year the public cannot use it. During the flowering it is opened, and the Mint gives that as early to mid April.

The custom started in 1883, and it has not been broken since.

The Mint's own account credits its director at the time, Endo Kinsuke, who is quoted as saying that it would be a waste for the staff to keep the blossom to themselves, and who proposed opening the riverbank to the people of Osaka for a few days at full bloom.

It has been walked in one direction ever since, which is a practical answer to the number of people rather than any kind of ceremony, and it means you cannot go back for a second look at anything. Most of the trees are late-flowering doubles, so the passage opens after the rest of Osaka has finished. The city's hanami ends, and then there is one more week of it, behind a gate that was shut all year. Calling it a famous site is slightly wrong. It is a gate that opens once a year, on a schedule set by the trees rather than by anyone at the Mint.