Large blooms shine again south of Palaceside Building in the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace — east of the Honmaru rest area, "Haruka's Sunflower." About fifty yellow faces turned to the sun despite the heat.
"Haruka's Sunflower" spreads the chain of life of Haruka Kato, a sixth-grader killed in the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji earthquake.
Haruka died when her home in Higashinada, Kobe, collapsed. Half a year later a single sunflower bloomed on the vacant lot — seeds she fed a neighbor's parrot had grown strong. The neighborhood named them "Haruka's Sunflower," nurturing recovery and remembrance, and shared seeds nationwide; last year Tohoku disaster areas received them too.
The East Gardens plants came from seeds the Emperor and Empress received from bereaved families at the 2005 tenth-anniversary memorial and grew at the Imperial Residence; harvested seeds were sown east of the rest area.