The ancient forest island — 7,000-year-old Cryptomeria cedars in a UNESCO rainforest, Yaku deer and macaques in the mossy undergrowth, and the landscape that inspired Princess Mononoke
Yakushima (屋久島) is a circular island 60km offshore from the southern tip of Kyushu, in Kagoshima Prefecture — 504 sq km, dominated by the mountain massif of Miyanoura-dake (1,936m, the highest peak in the Kyushu region) that rises directly from the sea. The island's unusual geography (the mountain height forces moisture-laden Pacific air upward, producing over 4,000mm of annual rainfall in the upland forests — one of the wettest inhabited places in Japan, described by the Japanese proverb 'it rains 35 days a month in Yakushima') has produced a temperate and subtropical rainforest of extraordi…
Yakushima's Yakusugi cedar tradition was shaped by the Edo period (1603-1868) cedar harvesting industry: the shogunate required Satsuma Domain (which controlled Yakushima) to pay tax in the form of cedar boards, and the Yakushima forests were systematically felled for this purpose from the 17th century. The cedars less than 1,000 years old were felled (these are called kosugi — 'small cedar'); the trees over 1,000 years old (the Yakusugi proper) were too large to transport with the technology of the period and were left. This historical accident preserved the oldest trees: the massive Jomon S…