What is the oldest tree in Shokawa?
Shokawa's oldest mapped trees are the Shokawa-zakura, two Edohigan cherries (Prunus itosakura) roughly 450 to 500 years old. They stand together on a viewpoint above Miboro Lake in Shokawa, a district of Takayama, Gifu Prefecture, having been transplanted here whole in 1960 from two temple grounds the reservoir was about to flood.
The two cherries once stood at separate temples, Shoren-ji and Koren-ji, in a valley due to disappear under the Miboro Dam's reservoir. Jpower's first president pushed to save them rather than let them drown, and the gardener who agreed, after initially refusing, moved both mature trees intact to this new viewpoint above the future lake. Contemporary accounts called the scale of the operation unprecedented anywhere in the world, and it drew sharp criticism at the time for how brutal the process looked. Both trees took root in spring 1961 and were formally named Shokawa-zakura the following year. They still bloom together every late April into early May, with evening illumination during the season, and draw roughly 50,000 visitors a year, a genuine destination rather than a roadside curiosity. Girth runs about 6 metres each and height about 20 metres. The site fails the day-trip boundary from Takayama itself, roughly 30 to 40 minutes by car via the Tokai-Hokuriku Expressway, which is why it is mapped as its own place rather than folded into a future Takayama page. Free admission, parking on site, no bus route confirmed.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.