Ancient trees in Japan

Japan is the one country on this map where the oldest trees are older than the buildings by design. This page maps 44 remarkable trees across 5 cities in Japan, each one verified and placed. The oldest of them is The Ayasugi of Kashii Shrine in Fukuoka, at traditionally about 1,800 years.

Shrines are rebuilt, sometimes every twenty years as a matter of ritual, while the tree in the courtyard is left alone and wrapped in a straw rope to mark it as sacred. A camphor at a shrine gate is not decoration, it is the thing the shrine was built around. The state has protected trees as Natural Monuments since 1919, and the Environment Ministry keeps a record of every tree in the country over three metres in girth, which is why ages and measurements here are firmer than almost anywhere else in Europe. Be careful with the biggest numbers all the same: a thousand years is usually tradition rather than measurement, and the sources say so.

Every mapped city in Japan

Fukuoka11 trees · oldest traditionally about 1,800 years 2

Kyoto10 trees · oldest about 1,200 years 3

Tokyo10 trees · oldest 800 years 4

Nara9 trees · oldest over 1,000 years 5

Osaka4 trees · oldest 1,000 years

The oldest tree mapped in Japan

The Ayasugi of Kashii Shrine traditionally about 1,800 years

Kashii, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka. Legend says this cedar started as a twig.

Trees from Japan also appear in The Ginkgos Worth a November Trip · The Oldest Tree in Every Country We Map · Trees Planted by Kings and Their Gardeners. See every city on the map, or open the map to find what is near you.