Climate scientist Yasuyuki Aono, who died last summer, learned to read ancient Japanese script to compile records on peak bloom dating back to the ninth century C.E. Yasuyuki Aono kept track of bloom dates for Yamazakura cherry trees in Kyoto. nanamori via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0 The death of a beloved scientist left empty an idiosyncratic but important post in Japanese scholarship. Climate scientist Yasuyuki Aono was the steward of a database of 1,200 years of cherry blossom history, one of the longest-running records of the shifting seasons, when he died of cancer in 2025. Fans of his efforts searched for someone new to take up the mantle. Just as Japan’s 2026 cherry blossom season waned, a replacement record keeper was named. Genki Katata, an environmental biophysicist based in Tokyo, will assume the venerated role of tracking and forecasting the much-anticipated pops of pink and white that welcome spring in the ancient capital Kyoto.…