Japan's 10 Most Remarkable Ancient Trees

Japanese Cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) · estimated 2,600+ years (official Ministry of Environment figure; disputed, see notes) · Yakushima wilderness / Arakawa trail

The largest yakusugi known, 16.4 metres round, found only in 1966 by a postal worker. Published ages run from 1,300 years to 7,200 because the trunk is hollow and nobody has reached its oldest wood; the Ministry of the Environment says over 2,600. Budget a full mountain day, nine to ten hours on foot there and back.

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Camphor Tree (Cinnamomum camphora) · at least 900 years on documentary evidence, about 1,600 by the shrine's own reckoning · Kamo, Aira

The thickest trunk we map in Japan, 24.22 metres round, ranked first in the country by the Environment Agency's 1988 survey of giant trees. It was already a sacred tree when the shrine beside it was founded in 1123, which puts it at 900 years at the very least. It stands in Aira, a day trip north of Kagoshima.

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Photo: そらみみ (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Camphor Tree (Cinnamomum camphora) · traditionally said to be about 3,000 years · Takeo-cho, Takeo City

A camphor 20 metres round with a small stone shrine standing inside its hollow trunk. Takeo Shrine gives it 3,000 years, which is tradition rather than a measurement. Since 2022 you look at it from a few metres back while its roots recover.

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Japanese Cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) · roughly 3,000 years · Sugi

Two cedar trunks from one base, the taller about 60 metres, on the grounds of Yasaka Shrine. It has been a Special Natural Monument since 1952, and the railway station 800 metres away is named after it. The 200 yen entry pays towards protecting the ground its roots run under.

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Higan Cherry (Prunus subhirtella var. ascendens) · traditionally estimated 1,800-2,000 years · Yamataka, Hokuto

One of five single trees on Japan's very first list of National Natural Monuments, in 1922, and one of the Three Great Cherry Trees. The 1,800 to 2,000 years is a legend tied to the prince Yamato Takeru. It grows outward rather than up, a root flare near twelve metres round under a tree about ten metres tall, with pale blossom in early April.

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Photo: そらみみ (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Camphor Tree (Cinnamomum camphora) · roughly 2,000 to 3,000 years · Omishima Island (Shimanami Kaido)

A camphor you walk through: its split base forms a passage seven metres long that worshippers used on the way to the inner sanctuary of Oyamazumi Shrine. Its own believers nearly killed it in the Meiji era by stripping its bark as a charm for long life, and it regrew from its own roots. Free, and a short detour off the Shimanami Kaido.

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Higan Cherry (Prunus subhirtella var. ascendens) · traditionally estimated around 1,500 years · Neo, Motosu

Inspected in 1948 and given three years to live, then saved by a Gifu dentist who spent a month grafting new roots onto it. The name means pale ink, for blossom that opens white and fades to grey in early April. Another of the Three Great Cherry Trees, protected the same day as Jindai-zakura.

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Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) · about 900 years · Bodaiji Temple, Mount Nagi

A ginkgo 42.5 metres tall, said to have grown from the walking stick of Honen, the founder of Pure Land Buddhism, planted at the temple gate when he was a boy. In 2013 DNA tests linked it to two other ginkgos in the same story, which corroborates the legend without dating the tree. The temple lights it after dark.

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Photo: そらみみ (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Japanese Apricot (Prunus mume) · traditionally over 1,000 years · Saifu, Dazaifu (day trip from central Fukuoka)

Legend says it flew overnight from Kyoto to follow the exiled courtier Sugawara no Michizane in 901. It flowers first of the roughly six thousand plums at Dazaifu Tenmangu, usually from late January, and students touch it for luck before exams. Thirty minutes by train from central Fukuoka.

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Weeping Willow (Salix babylonica) · at least 81 years, since it was a grown tree on 6 August 1945 · Motomachi

No registered A-bombed tree in Hiroshima stood closer to the hypocentre: 370 metres. It was never transplanted, which is what the letter a in its register code N03a1-01 records, so it stands exactly where it stood on 6 August 1945. Free, in the Chuo Park green space.

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