Japanese Cherry Wood

Japan's Wood-Products Information and Research Center lists yamazakura in Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu and Korea, while Kew's Plants of the World Online gives its native range as central and southern Japan to the Nansei-shotō islands. Other cherries also yield sakura timber, such as shiurizakura (Prunus ssiori) of central and northern Honshu, Hokkaido, the southern Kurils, Sakhalin, northeastern China and Siberia, and uwamizuzakura (Prunus grayana) of Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. Only small quantities of cherry are used as timber, so it is a valued material.

True cherry wood characteristically always shows irregular greenish streaks in the heartwood, and often many small spots of pith flecks (scar tissue left by insect damage); the sapwood is clearly distinct, growth rings are fairly visible and the texture is fine. Since at least the Meiji era, birch woods such as makanba and mizume have been traded in Japan as 'sakura', 'kabazakura' or 'mizumezakura'. Birch only resembles cherry in colour and has a more uniform, unvarying surface, whereas true cherry has a less uniform surface.

In Japan cherry wood has been used for utensils, Japanese-style furniture, musical instruments, turned ware and carving, and formerly also for tools used in salt fields.