In an average March, Japan’s cherry record shows blossoms opening and almost none at their peak. The Japan Meteorological Agency publishes normals for 58 observation stations, and 33 of them open in March while only three reach full bloom before April starts.
The same month is not one climate either. On the 1991 to 2020 normals, the March daily minimum across the six stations checked here runs from minus 2.4 degrees Celsius in Sapporo to 16.7 in Naha, a spread of 19.1 degrees by my own subtraction. March is the month in which the country stops being one weather story and becomes several.
The normals are a 30-year average, and both cherry pages print the same ones
The agency’s climate tables state their statistical period on the page itself: 1991 to 2020, 30 years of data. The cherry tables name the same window for their own normals and carry a short legend with them: a star marks the stations still observing, a dash means no value, and a blank in the substitute-species column means the tree being watched is somei-yoshino. Both cherry pages list 102 stations. Fifty-eight carry the star and a normal date, while the other 44 print a dash in every column, including all six recent years. The normals on the 2011 to 2020 page and the 2021 to 2026 page are identical for every one of the 58, which is how they were checked here. The observation is not a survey of a city’s trees. The agency observes designated specimen trees, so a normal date belongs to one tree in one place, not to a district.
March opens the blossom almost everywhere and finishes it almost nowhere
Counting the normal dates by month makes the shape of the month obvious. For first bloom, 5 stations are in January, 33 in March, 13 in April and 7 in May. For full bloom, 5 are in February, 3 in March, 42 in April and 8 in May. The three March full-bloom stations are Tokyo on 31 March, Fukuoka on 31 March and Kochi on 30 March, and two of those sit on the last day of the month.
So a trip planned around the peak in Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, Nagoya or Hiroshima is an April trip on the averages, even though every one of those cities opens in March. Kyoto’s normals are 26 March for first bloom and 4 April for full bloom; Tokyo’s are 24 March and 31 March. The gap between opening and peak is nine days in Kyoto and seven in Tokyo, both figures being my own subtraction from the agency’s dates.
Okinawa’s cherry is a different tree and its season ends before March begins
The five stations whose normals fall in January and February are Naha, Miyakojima, Ishigakijima, Minamidaitojima and Naze, and the tables mark all five with a substitute species. They observe hikanzakura, not the somei-yoshino used on the main islands. Naha’s normals are 16 January for first bloom and 4 February for full bloom, and the other four open between 17 and 20 January. A March visit to Okinawa is after the blossom, not before it. The southern record even runs off the top of the calendar: the legend gives a hash mark to a date that fell in the previous calendar year, and on the 2011 to 2020 page Naha and Ishigakijima each carry one, both in late December.
The northern end works the same way in reverse. Wakkanai, Asahikawa, Abashiri, Obihiro and Kushiro are marked with ezoyamazakura as the substitute species, their first-bloom normals run from 2 May to 16 May, and their full-bloom normals from 5 May to 19 May. Sapporo, which is not marked with a substitute species, has normals of 1 May and 6 May.
One March, from 1.1 degrees in Sapporo to 19.1 in Naha
| Station | March mean (C) | March daily max (C) | March daily min (C) | March precipitation (mm) | First bloom normal | Full bloom normal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sapporo | 1.1 | 4.5 | -2.4 | 77.6 | 1 May | 6 May |
| Nagano | 4.3 | 10.3 | -0.5 | 60.1 | 11 April | 16 April |
| Tokyo | 9.4 | 14.2 | 5.0 | 116.0 | 24 March | 31 March |
| Kyoto | 8.8 | 14.1 | 4.3 | 106.2 | 26 March | 4 April |
| Osaka | 9.9 | 14.2 | 6.0 | 103.1 | 27 March | 4 April |
| Naha | 19.1 | 21.9 | 16.7 | 142.8 | 16 January | 4 February |
Two rows are worth reading twice. Nagano’s March daily minimum is below freezing on the average, while its daily maximum is 10.3, so a day in the Japan Alps in March spans nearly eleven degrees. And Tokyo and Kyoto sit within 0.6 of a degree of each other on the monthly mean, which is a reminder that the cherry gap between them is not a temperature gap you would notice while standing outside.
March is the month Tokyo’s rainfall roughly doubles
The precipitation normals move more sharply than the temperature ones. Tokyo’s normals are 59.7 mm in January, 56.5 mm in February and 116.0 mm in March, which is 2.05 times February by my own division. Kyoto goes 53.3, 65.1 and 106.2 over the same three months, Osaka 47.0, 60.5 and 103.1, and Naha 101.6, 114.5 and 142.8. Sapporo runs the other way, falling from 108.4 in January to 77.6 in March as the winter snow eases.
Sunshine moves unevenly. Tokyo’s March normal is 175.3 hours against 170.4 in February, a gain of 4.9 hours, while Kyoto goes from 122.2 to 155.4, Sapporo from 103.5 to 144.7, Nagano from 140.2 to 173.3 and Naha from 93.1 to 115.3, gains of 33.2, 41.2, 33.1 and 22.2 hours. Those five subtractions are mine. Tokyo gets substantially wetter in March without getting much sunnier.
The blossom forecast has not been the agency’s job since spring 2010
The forecasts that circulate every spring are not government products. The Meteorological Agency announced on 25 December 2009 that it would stop issuing cherry blossom forecasts from the following spring. Its own text explains the reason plainly: it had issued them each March and April since 1955 for the whole country except Okinawa and Amami, and private weather companies had come to provide equivalent nationwide information. The same notice states that observation of the flowering itself continues, for the purpose of understanding the effect of climate on living things.
That division still holds. The dates in the table above are observations and normals published by the agency. The date a travel site gives for this spring is a private forecast, and the agency does not issue a competing one.
Since 2021 the agency watches nine plant events and no animals
The phenology programme behind those cherry dates was cut sharply. The agency’s index lists 41 plant events and 24 animal events, with a star marking those still observed as of 1 January 2021. Nine of the plant events carry the star: plum flowering, cherry flowering, cherry full bloom, hydrangea flowering, susuki grass flowering, ginkgo yellowing, ginkgo leaf fall, maple reddening and maple leaf fall. None of the 24 animal events carries it, so the first cicada of summer and the first swallow of spring are no longer recorded by the agency at all.
The data did not vanish. The index states that past records for discontinued items remain published, that the cumulative tables were current as of 19 March 2026, and that many of the discontinued items are now observed by the National Institute for Environmental Studies working with volunteer citizen observers. The observation manual was itself replaced, with the current version dated 9 December 2021 and the pre-2021 manual kept online for the discontinued items.
For a traveller the practical consequence is small but real: the plant calendar that March belongs to is thinner than it was, and the cherry line is one of the few that survived intact.
March figures cover the main islands. The southern prefecture keeps a calendar of its own, where the rainy season normally starts around 10 May and typhoon approaches average 7.7 a year.
Sources Checked
Japan Meteorological Agency — cherry flowering dates, 2021 to 2026
Confirmed the normal first-bloom dates used here (Tokyo 24 March, Kyoto 26 March, Osaka 27 March, Nara 28 March, Nagoya 24 March, Hiroshima 25 March, Fukuoka 22 March, Kochi 22 March, Sapporo 1 May, Nagano 11 April, Naha 16 January, Miyakojima 17 January, Ishigakijima 18 January, Naze 20 January, Minamidaitojima 20 January), the monthly distribution of first-bloom normals (5 in January, 33 in March, 13 in April, 7 in May), the 102 listed stations of which 58 carry a star and a normal while 44 print a dash throughout, and the legend stating that the normals are the 1991 to 2020 average, that a star marks a station still observing, that a dash means no value, that a blank substitute-species column means somei-yoshino, and that a hash mark means the date fell in the previous year.
https://www.data.jma.go.jp/sakura/data/sakura003_07.html
Japan Meteorological Agency — cherry flowering dates, 2011 to 2020
Confirmed that the normal first-bloom dates on this page are identical to those on the 2021 to 2026 page for all 58 stations with values, and that Naha and Ishigakijima each carry a late-December date marked with a hash.
https://www.data.jma.go.jp/sakura/data/sakura003_06.html
Japan Meteorological Agency — cherry full bloom dates, 2021 to 2026
Confirmed the normal full-bloom dates used here (Tokyo 31 March, Kyoto 4 April, Osaka 4 April, Nara 4 April, Nagoya 2 April, Hiroshima 3 April, Fukuoka 31 March, Kochi 30 March, Sapporo 6 May, Nagano 16 April, Naha 4 February), the monthly distribution (5 in February, 3 in March, 42 in April, 8 in May), the identity of the three March stations as Tokyo, Fukuoka and Kochi, the substitute-species marks for the five southern stations (hikanzakura) and the five northern ones (ezoyamazakura), and the northern full-bloom normals running from 5 May at Obihiro to 19 May at Kushiro.
https://www.data.jma.go.jp/sakura/data/sakura004_07.html
Japan Meteorological Agency — cherry full bloom dates, 2011 to 2020
Confirmed that the normal full-bloom dates on this page are identical to those on the 2021 to 2026 page for all 58 stations with values.
https://www.data.jma.go.jp/sakura/data/sakura004_06.html
Japan Meteorological Agency — phenological observation information
Confirmed the use of designated specimen trees, the list of 41 plant events and 24 animal events, the star marking items observed as of 1 January 2021 (nine plant events and no animal events), the statement that records for discontinued items remain published, the cumulative tables being current as of 19 March 2026, the current observation manual dated 9 December 2021 with the pre-2021 manual retained, and the transfer of many items to citizen monitoring run by the National Institute for Environmental Studies.
https://www.data.jma.go.jp/sakura/data/index.html
Japan Meteorological Agency — press release, end of the agency’s cherry blossom forecast, 25 December 2009
Confirmed that forecasts had been issued each March and April since 1955 for the whole country except Okinawa and Amami, that they ended from the following spring because private weather companies provided equivalent nationwide information, and that flowering observation continues.
https://www.jma.go.jp/jma/press/0912/25a/091225sakura.html
Japan Meteorological Agency — climate normals by month, one page per station
Confirmed the statistical period of 1991 to 2020 with 30 years of data on each page, and the March normals for mean, daily maximum and daily minimum temperature, precipitation and sunshine hours used in the table and the text, together with the January and February figures compared against them: Tokyo (block 47662), Kyoto (47759), Osaka (47772), Sapporo (47412), Nagano (47610) and Naha (47936).
Tokyo · Kyoto · Osaka · Sapporo · Nagano · Naha
Japan Meteorological Agency — station index pages by area
Confirmed that the station codes used above correspond to the stations named Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Sapporo, Nagano and Naha.
Tokyo area · Kyoto area · Osaka area · Sapporo area · Nagano area · Okinawa area
Last updated: September 2026
