The last
The most famous tomb is the one of the last Shogun, Tokugawa Shinobu. He was the 15th and final Shogun, ending the Edo period (1603-1868). After he succumbed to the Meiji Emperor in 1867, he went on to live for another 45 year.
In a break of tradition, he did not receive a Buddhist burial, but a Shinto one, which is extremely rare. Unfortunately, you cannot enter his grave, but you can see the mounded tomb from behind the metal bars.
Underworld guards
Apart from the graves, the area is rather well known for its many cats, playing and sleeping along the graves. It usually does not take long before you see one sleeping on one of the tomb stones. Several people seem to be caring for the stray cats that live here.
Their morals
Family graves are the rule. They feature usually one large stone momument with the name of the family written top to bottom, or left to right, ending in 家 (family) and/or 之墓 (grave of). There is generally a place for flowers, incense, and water in front of the monument, and a chamber/crypt underneath for the ashes.
If you want to find out the actual names of whose grave it is, this are usually engraved at the front or at the sides.
If you see an engraving in red, it means that person is still alive! It is in case a married person dies before his or her spouse, with the outliving spouse already being featured on the stone. The engraving of 2 names is apparently cheaper. The red ink is removed when the couple is back together.
History
Yanaka Cemetery, Japan, Tokyo is a large cemetery located north of Ueno in Yanaka 7-chome, Taito, Tokyo, Japan.
The Yanaka sector of Taito is one of the few Tokyo neighborhoods in which the old Shitamachi atmosphere can still be felt. The cemetery is famous for its beautiful cherry blossoms that in April completely cover its paths, and for that reason that its central street is often called Cherry-blossom Avenue.
Although renamed over 72 years ago, the cemetery is still often called by its old official name, Yanaka Bochi (Yanaka Graveyard), and not Yanaka Reien. It has an area of over 100 thousand square meters and hosts about 7 thousand graves.
The cemetery has its own police station and a small walled enclosure dedicated to the Tokugawa clan, family of the 15 Tokugawa shoguns of Japan, which however is closed to the public and must be peeked at through double barred gates.
The last shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu, also known as Keiki, rests here. The cemetery used to be part of a Buddhist temple called Tennō-ji, and its central street used to be the road approaching it. At about the middle point of the central street are the ruins of the five-storied pagoda that became the model for Kōda Rohan's novel The Five-Storied Pagoda.
The pagoda had been a donation made in 1908 by Tenno-ji itself. The five-storied pagoda was burned one summer night in 1957 in the Yanaka Five-Storied Pagoda Double-Suicide Arson Case and was later declared a historical landmark by the city authorities. After the Meiji Restoration, the government pursued a policy of separation of Buddhism and Shinto (Shinbutsu bunri), and Shinto funerals became more common.
This posed however a problem because until then most cemeteries had been property of Buddhist temples. The solution adopted was the opening of public burial grounds. In 1872, Meiji authorities confiscated a portion of Tennō-ji and declared it a public Tokyo cemetery, the largest in the country at the time. In 1935 the name was changed from Yanaka Bochi to the present (Yanaka Reien).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9mWWCa487Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a4Eb1PjMU8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPTVjM8ql48