Jōmon Sugi

Jōmon Sugi is the elder of the cedar forests of Yakushima, a gnarled giant of Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) standing at around 1,300 metres on the northern flank of Mount Miyanoura, deep in the island's mountainous interior. It is not especially tall, about 25 to 30 metres depending on the measurement, but its girth is prodigious: the trunk measures some 16.4 metres around, and with a timber volume estimated at about 300 cubic metres it is counted as the largest conifer in Japan. What holds the eye is its shape rather than its size, a massive, knotted, undulating column that looks more like a rock formation than a tree.

Its age is a matter of long debate. Early estimates in the 1970s spoke of more than 7,000 years, figures that gave the tree its fame and its name, which recalls Japan's prehistoric Jōmon period; another reading links the name to the rippling surface of the trunk, which resembles the cord-marked patterns of Jōmon pottery. Later work was more cautious. Radiocarbon dating of wood samples pointed to roughly two thousand years, and some researchers have suggested the trunk may be several trees fused together around an older core. Most accounts now settle on something in the range of two to three thousand years or more, which still makes it one of the oldest living things in the country.

The tree was identified in 1966 by Iwakawa Sadatsugu, a local municipal official, and its discovery helped spark the movement to protect Yakushima's old-growth forests; much of the island was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993. The walk to it is a journey through that history. Much of the route follows the rails of an old logging tramway, past the ruins of Kosugidani, a vanished forestry settlement, and then climbs past other celebrated old cedars: the Wilson Stump, the huge hollow stump of a cedar felled long ago, whose opening frames a heart-shaped patch of sky from inside, and the Meoto-sugi and Daiō-sugi cedars. To protect its roots from the trampling of visitors, the tree is now seen from a wooden viewing deck a little over ten metres away.

Getting there

Jōmon Sugi stands in the mountains of Yakushima, an island south of Kyushu in Kagoshima Prefecture; the nearest sizeable town, Nishinoomote, is on the neighbouring island of Tanegashima, so the practical bases are the Yakushima port villages of Miyanoura and Anbō. Yakushima Airport (KUM) is about 12 km from the tree in a straight line. The usual route is the Arakawa Trail, a round trip of about 22 km with some 700 metres of climbing that takes at least nine hours, so hikers set out early in the morning. From March to November private cars may not drive up to the Arakawa trailhead; a dedicated bus runs from the Yakusugi Museum, with connecting buses from Miyanoura and Anbō.