Five cedars were planted on this hillside in 1391.
Japanese Cedar
Cryptomeria japonica
A picture scroll donated to Kasuga Taisha in 1309 shows this shrine's great cedar as a sapling. We map 32 of them, in 21 cities.
Seven centuries on it is roughly eight metres round and twenty five tall, and it is the same organism, which makes it one of very few ancient trees anywhere that can be checked against its own portrait as a young plant. A second tree took root in its base and grew toward the neighbouring hall, and rather than cut it back somebody cut a hole in the roof; the hole is still there. Fukuoka's cedar at Kashii Shrine is traditionally dated at about 1,800 years, from a legend that Empress Jingu pushed a branch from her armour into the ground here. Kyoto's stands in the old imperial timber forest and layers under heavy snow, rooting where the trunk is pinned down.
Hiroshima
About three or four metres up, this cedar stops being one tree.
The Environment Ministry's surveyors reached this shrine in 1988, put a tape round the cedar at chest height and got 5.80 metres.
In 1974 the cedar at Ato Myojin Shrine measured 3.41 metres round.
There is no road to this one.
Padua
A slim trunk for its reported age: this Japanese cedar is said to have gone into Padua's botanical garden in 1850, which would make it around 175 years old, and eighty three centimetres of girth is...
Fukuoka
Legend says this cedar started as a twig.
Photo: そらみみ (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Kagoshima
Every cedar in southern Kyushu is said to descend from this one.
Nara
There is a picture scroll, donated to this shrine in 1309, in which this cedar appears as a sapling.
Photo: Pufacz (CC BY-SA 4.0)
An eagle carried off a baby and left it in a cedar on this slope, and the baby grew up to found Todai-ji.
Takachiho
This cedar is named after a town in the hills north-west of Tokyo.
Photo: sk01 (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Couples walk round these two cedars three times, hand in hand.
Aga
Japan's thickest cedar is not the famous one.
Fujikawaguchiko
Twelve metres round the trunk and forty metres tall, this is one of the largest cedars in Yamanashi, and it stands in a shrine yard rather than deep forest.
Photo: さかおり (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Higashi-Hiroshima
Locals do not count this cedar on its own.
At 6.2 metres round this is the thickest trunk in Higashi-Hiroshima's register, and a separate Japanese catalogue of village giants makes it thicker still at 6.5.
Two catalogues have measured this cedar and they disagree by a quarter of a metre.
Two shrines in this one farming district hold cedars whose measured girths differ by a single centimetre: 5.56 metres here, 5.55 up the road at Okayama Hachiman.
Horaiji
For decades this was the tallest cedar in Japan, somewhere between 59.6 and 60.8 metres depending on which survey you read.
Itoshiro
Somebody laid 420 steps up a mountainside so that people could reach one tree.
Photo: Alpsdake (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Kaga
Emperor Showa was a trained biologist, and in 1947, in Ishikawa for the National Sports Festival, he stopped at this cedar and examined it closely.
Neba
Thirteen point eight metres around and forty metres up, this is the largest tree in Nagano Prefecture and, by the count most often quoted, the sixth largest cedar in Japan.
Nihonmatsu
In 1643 the lord of the Nihonmatsu domain, Niwa Mitsushige, stopped under this cedar on an inspection tour and, by local account, was struck enough by it to rename the village Sugisawa after the tree.
Photo: さかおり (CC BY 4.0)
Lightning hollowed this cedar from the inside.
Photo: さかおり (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Ono
Two cedars stand about 1.37 metres apart on the approach to Suwa Shrine, and each has its own name.
Otoyo
The railway station is named after the tree.
Sakegawa
People arrive at this cedar carrying umbrellas, so they can stand underneath and recreate a scene from an animated film.
Photo: contri from Yonezawa-Shi Yamagata, Japan (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Takahagi
About a fifth of this trunk is still living tissue.
Tsuruoka
This tree used to be half of a couple.
Photo: 掬茶 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Uda
Yatsufusa means eight clusters, and the sources cannot agree that there are eight.
Photo: さかおり (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Yakushima
Published ages for this cedar run from about 1,300 years to 7,200, and not one of them is a measurement.
For a while this was the largest cedar anybody knew of on Yakushima.
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