Story of Kitayama Cedars ( for children ) 北山杉の話

Kitayama Cedars

Future of Kitayama Cedars

Kitayama Cedars are indispensable part of our traditional lives. We are now making efforts to think out new ideas to turn them into indispensable part for our modern life style as well as construction.

Decoration for New Year and Christmas.

The color is made brighter to go well with white colored walls of modern houses.

Handrails of stairs.

Imagine that you adopt Kitayama Cedars in your ordinary life style. Let’s think of how to make a good use of them.

All the trees are the same?

Kitayama Cedars are reproduced by the method of planting cuttings of trees which means those Kitayama Cedars grown in Nakagawa are the clones made from the same gene. The mother tree of this species is the one you see in Nakagawa Hachimangu Shrine. It is white cedar aged over 600 years.

Various patterns

While some patterns are artificially made by the hands of human, some patterns are naturally made. When the patterns are made by human hands, we place plastic sticks around the tree about 2 years before we cut it down.

Rough pattern / Smooth pattern / Wavy pattern

Secret of mountain

As you look around the mountain view of Nakagawa you would notice that trees grown up on the mountain are separated into groups. This is for a purpose of changing the type of trees we plant as well as for keeping proper space between the trees planted by one person and those planted by others.

Secret of shed ( wooden storehouse )

Those sheds in the village were built for a purpose to collect and store Kitayama Cedars. They have two stories. First floor is a place where we remove the bark of the trees and polish them. There is a large window up on the second floor so the room gets constant drift to dry Kitayama Cedars.

Magical trees?

Daisugi ( foundation cedar ) is one of the methods of growing Kitayama cedars. By offering additional human aid we can produce multiple trees from one single tree as their base. The oldest Daisugi in Nakagawa is aged over 400 years and it still continues to produce as many as 30 Kitayama Cedars in a year.

How to grow Daisugi

1. Cut off trunk

2. Leave branches just as they are

3. New trunks start shooting out from the points where the base trunk was cut off.

Story of sand polishing

It is a process called sand polishing which makes Kitayama Cedars shiny. There is a story like this in Nakagawa.

Once upon a time a villager of Nakagawa came upon a monk who was down being sick.

The gentle villager offered to attend to his nursing.

Thanks to the care the monk was able to make his recovery and offered to share secret information in exchange. He told the villager “ There is a small waterfall called Bodai Fall deep in the forest of Nakagawa. If you polish cedars with sand around the waterfall they will turn into very beautiful cedars.

So the villager took this advice and did as the monk said. As result the cedars turned very shiny and became famous in the capital.

What is Honjikomi?

Honjikomi is a traditional harvest method of Kitayama Cedars passed on from generation to generation. On a bright sunny day in summer we cut trees down from the bottom part in the mountain. Then we bind those trees together and peel off bark with their branches still remaining on the trees. And we leave those trees leaning against a tree standing from the ground. In this way we can dry those trees thoroughly inside out and turn them into strong and beautiful Kitayama Cedars.

Loose ladder

This is a ladder used for pruning. The length of large one is as long as 7 meters. There is no nail used to build this ladder so that it moves along when a wind blows.

Kitayama Cedars and their tradition

It is said that the history of Kitayama Cedar started about 600 years ago, thus it is the oldest human creation of a forest in the world. Kitayama Cedar is highly regarded as one of traditional industries of Kyoto. The products of Kitayama Cedars are still used today as construction material for Japanese tea rooms and traditional restaurants. Another characteristic of Kitayama Cedar is its beautiful appearance. The product is used directly in a form of a log in a part of a structure where it strikes out.

Kitayama Cedars are very slim!

Slim trunk is one of the characteristics of Kitayama Cedar. They are made slim on purpose by planting them close to one another and cutting off many branches as they grow. It takes about 30 to 40 years until the trees are harvested from the time they are planted. Those carefully grown trees have very tight grain so that they are very strong despite their slim trunks.

Ordinary Cedar / Kitayama Cedar

Since there is no river large enough to carry trees in Nakagawa, folks in the village made those trees to grow slim on purpose so that trees can be carried with hands. This is the beginning of how they are made slim.