What is the oldest tree in Otoyo?
Otoyo's only mapped tree, and its oldest, is Sugi no Osugi, a twin-trunked Japanese cedar that local legend credits with an age of roughly 3,000 years. It stands on the grounds of Yasaka Shrine in Sugi, Otoyo, Kochi Prefecture, 800 metres from the station named after it.
The railway station is named after the tree. Get off at Osugi on JR Shikoku's Dozan Line, walk 800 metres, and there it is on the grounds of Yasaka Shrine: two cedar trunks rising from one base, the southern about 60 metres tall and roughly 20 metres around at root level, the northern a little under that at 56. Locally they are the Meoto Sugi, the married-couple cedar. Japan made it a National Natural Monument in 1924 and upgraded it to Special Natural Monument in 1952, among the highest designations the country gives a tree, and in 1990 it went onto the New Japan Famous Trees 100 list. The age everyone quotes, 3,000 years, is legend rather than dendrology; the same tradition credits the planting to Susanoo, the storm god of the old chronicles, and nobody has dated the wood. Entry costs 200 yen, which funds conservation against the real threat, ground compacted by decades of visitors standing exactly where you are about to stand.
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