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Yakushima NP, Kagoshima
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
One of 5 seedlings grown from 1,180 Yakusugi seeds that flew with astronaut Mamoru Mohri aboard Endeavour in 2000 now grows on the museum grounds. Its family tree includes a spaceflight.
Heavy snow snapped a 5-meter, 1.2-ton branch from Jōmon-sugi in 2005. Preserved at the museum as the “Life Branch,” this giant offshoot can be touched—a rare chance to feel a piece of the famous tree.
The museum shows how Yakusugi became roof shingles called hiragi. Under Satsuma rule, islanders paid annual tribute in these boards and received rice in return—roofing timber was literally their tax currency.
A 5-meter-tall, 8-ton Yakusugi stump at the museum once traveled to the 1985 Tsukuba Expo. Its stepped notches are Edo-period axe marks, left by workers cutting into the massive trunk.
A cross-section displayed here carries 1,660 annual rings—each one marks a year of growth. Instead of an estimated age on a sign, the tree’s story is written visibly across its wood.
A past museum exhibition rebuilt Kosugidani in a 1:150 diorama. The forest settlement and nearby Ishizuka once held 540 people, with schools and a post office; logging ended in 1967, and the village closed in 1970.
The museum helped lead an inventory of Yakushima’s famous cedars. When 37 trees documented in 1992–93 were rechecked about 30 years later, 6 had died or fallen; the new survey used 3-D scans and drones.
The diesel trolley outside the museum carried more than Yakusugi logs: the old forest railway also brought everyday goods to mountain communities and served as residents’ transport. It’s a railcar with a local-life story, not just a logging tool.
A past museum exhibition explained the railway’s “Kosugidani method”: a brake block of yamaguruma wood pressed against wheel and rail, with granite embedded to add grip, let the logging trolley descend the mountain under control.
One panorama room compresses Yakushima’s climb from warm subtropical coast to near-subarctic mountaintops: island vegetation is arranged vertically, letting visitors cross several climate zones without leaving the museum.
The museum’s entrance hall is itself a Yakusugi exhibit: its timber frame was built by shrine carpenters using traditional joints, not nails or pins. You enter through a lesson in Japanese woodcraft.
A 2-meter chainsaw sits among old axes and early saws in the museum’s logging display. That near-human-height machine makes the shift from hand tools to mechanized cedar felling startlingly tangible.
Living Yakusugi are no longer cut for craft: most cedar used by Yakushima woodworkers comes from logs left in the forest after historic logging or trees toppled by wind. The island’s woodcraft has a salvage story.
