A Forest Planted for Future Generations

A grove with a planned succession of trees grew on the site of old fields and overgrown plots around Meiji Shrine. Its lower layer consists of evergreen oaks, castanopsis trees, and camphor trees, while conifers and tall pines still stand above them. The pines are meant to give way to broadleaf trees over time, so fallen trunks are left to decay, and leaves from the paths are returned to the roots. To the right of the entrance torii stands a camphor tree that came here from the native village of one of the grove's creators.

In nineteen fifteen, Prime Minister Shigenobu Okuma demanded that Japanese cedars be planted here. He wanted a majestic forest like the groves around the ancient Ise Shrine. For Meiji Shrine, created in memory of Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken, such a decision seemed fitting.

There was almost no forest on this site. Of the seventy hectares, old groves occupied only eight; the rest of the land consisted of fields and overgrown wasteland. A railway ran nearby, steam locomotives emitted smoke and soot, and the dry soil lacked moisture. Cedars would grow poorly here and gradually die.

Seiroku Honda, a professor of forestry at the Imperial University of Tokyo—today's University of Tokyo—objected to Okuma. He was entrusted with creating a grove that was meant to exist for centuries. Honda staked his professional reputation on this calculation: by then, he had already designed Hibiya Park and taught Japan's first university program in landscape architecture.

Keiji Uehara, Honda's graduate student, who was seeking a place on the project, gathered the evidence for him. Uehara surveyed eighty-eight old shrines and studied the groves around ancient imperial burial mounds. People had once built up these mounds and then, for centuries, barely interfered with the vegetation. Seeds sprouted on their own, fallen trunks and leaves turned into soil, and young trees took the place of old ones.

Honda, Uehara, and the forester Takanori Hongo proposed reproducing the same process here. In the lower layer, they placed evergreen oaks, castanopsis trees, and camphor trees suited to Tokyo's soil. They planted conifers above them, and mature pines above those, so the new grove would immediately have a tall silhouette. The pines were intended only for the forest's first generation. After they died, light and space were meant to go to broadleaf trees.

The commission approved the foresters' calculation. About one hundred thousand trees were sent from across Japan, and one hundred ten thousand volunteers planted them and laid out paths. By the shrine's opening in nineteen twenty, the grove was already standing, but no one considered it complete. Hongo depicted four stages in his drawings: immediately after planting, after fifty, one hundred, and one hundred fifty years. The dying off of the first trees was part of the plan, just like their planting.

Uehara directed the work on site for three years, then defended his doctoral dissertation based on this experience. In nineteen twenty-four, he founded Japan's first technical school of landscape architecture.

A study completed in two thousand thirteen showed that the broadleaf species had indeed taken the place intended for them. There are now two hundred thirty-four varieties of trees here. No new trees are planted, fallen trunks are not removed, and leaves collected from the paths are returned beneath the trees.

To the right of the entrance torii, a camphor tree sent from Kawarai, Honda's native village, still grows. The cedar forest that Okuma sought is not here.