What is the oldest tree in Aga?
Aga's only mapped tree, and its oldest, is Shogun Sugi, a Japanese cedar estimated at roughly 1,400 years old and measured as Japan's thickest cedar by trunk girth. It stands on town land beside Byodo-ji temple in Iwatani, Aga Town, Niigata Prefecture.
When Japan's Ministry of the Environment re-surveyed the country's giant trees in 2000 and 2001, Shogun Sugi came out ahead of every other cedar on trunk girth: 19.31 metres round, beating Yakushima's far more famous Jomon Sugi at 16.1 metres, though Jomon Sugi is usually cited as the older of the two. Shogun Sugi rises 38 metres on town-owned land east of Byodo-ji temple, in a rural fold of Niigata Prefecture reached by car in about an hour from Niigata city. Its age, put at roughly 1,400 years, is an estimate rather than a ring count, so read it as a broad claim about the Heian era rather than a date. The name itself comes from legend: the Heian-period general Taira no Koremochi is said to have spent his later years nearby, and the tree has carried his rank ever since. Aga town's own heritage page dates its designation as a National Natural Monument to 8 April 1926. The site is free and open to the public, with nothing between a visitor and the trunk.
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