The forest is a shrine.
At least that is the way many conservationists feel about protecting forests, and what better place to showcase this than the planting of 1,000 trees with ceremonies in Shinto shrines.

These ceremonies will take place on 11 April and 17 April in the Tokyo area. The first will be at the Akagi Shrine in Kumagaya, Saitama Prefecture, where the planting of 1,000 trees in the shrine’s vicinity will be carried out and celebrated.

The following week on 17 April a similar tree planting ceremony will take place at Kamimachi Hikawa Shrine, also in Saitama Prefecture.

Japan used to celebrate “Greenery Day” held on 29 April until it was renamed “Showa Day” to honor the former Showa Emperor. However, there are widely practiced “Arbor Day” events held throughout Japan in April.

The Shinto shrine 11 April date to celebrate the planting of 1,000 trees almost coincides with the first historic Arbor Day held on 10 April, 1872 in the United States.

This first Arbor Day in Nebraska is due to the inspiration of Julius Sterling Morton (1832-1902), a Nebraska journalist and politician originally from Michigan.

Throughout his long and productive career, Morton worked to improve agricultural techniques in his adopted state and throughout the United States when he served as President Grover Cleveland's Secretary of Agriculture. But his most important legacy is considered Arbor Day.

Love Those Trees (Photo: David Tharp)

The tree plantings at Akagi and Kamimachi Hikawa Shrines is the brainchild of Professor Emeritus Akira Miyawaki of Yokohama National University, whose Guardian of Forest Revival Action Committee received a grant from The Nippon Foundation to put these tree plantings into action.

Professor Miyawaki is concerned that in recent years the development of urban areas and city suburbs is encroaching more on nature, and as a result lots of trees, vegetation and forest areas are being lost.In the past 30 years, over 30% of suburban wooded areas have been lost to urban development, according to research carried out by Yokohama National University. The results of this research indicate that the remaining 70% have little hope of escaping unspoiled.

It was learned during the Great Hanshin Earthquake that wooded areas actually act as natural barriers to disaster side effects such as fires, so in this sense, forests and trees have an useful function of protecting people from fires caused by natural disasters.

The creation and protection of a “green oasis” around cities made from wooded and forested areas is an important project undertaken by Professor Miyawaki in cooperation with The Nippon Foundation.

He has been working on this Guardian of Forest Revival Project since 2009 in addition to his commitments to the university’s Center for International Studies in Ecology.

The 1,000 tree planting ceremonies planned for April will involve about 30 species of trees.