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Yakushima NP, Kagoshima
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
Kuguri-sugi, a 31 m cedar on the 30-minute trail, arches over the path. Yakushima Town says it may be two trees fused after one fell—a living gateway with a surprising origin.
At Futago-sugi, two young cedars of similar thickness grow from one old stump—not separate ground roots. This stump regeneration turns a logged tree into a platform for its successors.
In 2024, Yakusugi Land’s rain gauge logged 11,153 mm—the highest reported total among 11 island gauges—even with missing observations. That’s over 11 m of rain in a year.
Yakushima’s old felling custom gave a tree a veto: woodcutters leaned an axe against it overnight; if it fell, they took it as the mountain gods refusing permission. Rice, salt and shochu were offered too.
The old stumps here mark a tax paid in timber: because Yakushima’s land was poor for rice, Edo-era islanders delivered flat cedar roof boards, called hiragi, to Satsuma instead.
Yakusugi isn’t a separate species: on Yakushima, Japanese cedars younger than 1,000 years are called kosugi, “child cedars”; only older trees earn the name yakusugi. Both grow here.
These old stumps and logs endure in a very wet forest because Yakusugi grows slowly, forming tight rings and resin-rich wood that resists decay. The forest’s fallen timber is a lesson in durability.
Yakushima’s cedar craft has an unexpected rule: live Yakusugi felling was prohibited in 2001, so woodworkers now rely mainly on old cut stumps, wood scraps and naturally fallen trees, known as domaiboku.
Despite the visible stumps, this 270-hectare forest saw relatively little logging in the Edo period. The Japan Tourism Agency says its remotest sections have recovered enough to be considered virgin forest.
The Buddha Cedar’s often-quoted age of 1,800 years isn’t exact: a forest-agency survey estimated a midpoint of 1,700, with a broad 800–2,600-year range, using Yakusugi disk data.
