The Satsuma lords passed this tree on their way to Edo. The old Takaoka road ran close by it, a good way east of the modern route, and it was the road the Shimazu used for the sankin-kotai, the enforced march to the shogun's capital and back that every daimyo made. Sarukawa was the checkpoint on it, the gate between Satsuma and the outside. The ginkgo stands 400 metres off the present highway at the foot of a hill, in the loop of an old meander of the Oyodo river, and because nothing tall grows near it you see the crown long before you arrive. It is 11.2 metres round and 30 metres tall by the Environment Agency's survey, and it has been a National Natural Monument since December 1935. The signboard says 800 years and attributes the planting to Shimazu Tadahisa, the clan's founder, who died in 1227. That is where the number comes from: it is the legend converted into arithmetic, not a measurement, and the giant-tree database that records the tree says in plain words that it looks younger. It is a female tree, straight-trunked with few heavy limbs, and it goes gold in the last week of November.
Autumn colour
late November, when the whole crown turns gold
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Uchiyama, Sarukawa, Takaoka-cho, Miyazaki 880-2222You can recognise it by its straight trunk with few heavy limbs, its crown visible from far off since nothing tall grows near it. It stands 400 metres off the highway, at the foot of a hill by the Oyodo river.
Free, open ground at the foot of the hill
About 25 km west of central Miyazaki on Route 10 toward Miyakonojo, roughly 40 minutes by car; no convenient train
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.