What is the oldest tree in Sakegawa?
Sakegawa's mapped tree is Kosugi no Osugi, a Japanese cedar known internationally as the Totoro Tree because its two rounded crowns, seen from the field below, resemble the ears of the animated character. Its age is genuinely disputed: Japanese Wikipedia gives 700 to over 800 years, while Yamagata Prefecture's own landscape register heads its entry with an estimate of 1,000, and neither source states a method.
The trunk divides into two cores just above the base, which is why the village has long called it Meoto-sugi, the married-couple cedar, and Enmusubi no Sugi, the matchmaking cedar; a mountain deity is enshrined at its foot, and one local story has a lord of Shinjo sheltering under it from a blizzard while deer hunting. From around 2020 the tree's resemblance to a character from a well-known animated film turned it into an international destination, with visitors posing beneath it holding umbrellas. Its age is disputed: Japanese Wikipedia gives 700 to over 800 years, while Yamagata Prefecture's own landscape register heads the entry with an estimate of 1,000, and neither source states a method, so the honest range spans both. Its base measures 6.3 metres round, it stands about 20 metres tall, and its crown spans roughly 17 metres. Sakegawa Village listed it as a natural monument in November 1986. There is a public car park and a marked path from it, about half an hour by car from JR Shinjo Station; the path is not cleared in winter.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.