Shogun Sugi

Japan's thickest cedar is not the famous one. When the Ministry of the Environment re-surveyed the country's giant trees in 2000 and 2001, the Shogun Sugi measured 19.31 metres around the trunk, well ahead of Yakushima's Jomon Sugi at 16.1 metres, which is the cedar every guidebook names. Jomon Sugi is still usually cited as the older of the two. On girth there is no argument. It rises 38 metres on town land east of Byodo-ji temple, in a fold of rural Niigata about an hour from the city by car. Its age is put at roughly 1,400 years, which is an estimate rather than a count of rings, so read it as a broad claim about the Heian era and earlier rather than a date. The name comes from a story instead of a record. The Heian-period general Taira no Koremochi is said to have spent his later years nearby, and the tree has held the rank ever since. Aga town's own heritage page dates its designation as a National Natural Monument to 8 April 1926; another account gives a later Showa year, and the municipal date is the one recorded here. No recent inspection of its health turned up in the sources we reached, and nothing in them points to decline. If you have stood under it lately, tell us what you saw.