New Life for the Ezo Spruce

Quite suddenly, the conversation turned to Ezo spruces and nurse logs.

In Hokkaido’s natural forests, young Ezos rise from their fallen ancestors. Of course, the forests’ mature spruces scatter countless seeds upon the ground each year. But conditions in Hokkaido are harsh. Sprouting is no guarantee of success. The seeds which implant on fallen trees are the lucky ones: they have been granted better conditions for growth. This isn’t to say they have an easy time of it, mind you, or that they can afford to sit back and grow taller without trying. Space is tight atop a nurse log. The weaker sprouts lose the fight and disappear, while only a handful—the sturdiest fellows, who have managed to withstand the inhospitable conditions and also had a bit of luck—are allowed to keep on living. Some are as much as three or four hundred years old. These spruces tend to stand neatly in straight lines, having grown along a single trunk. This makes them easy to spot, however ignorant one is about trees.

I was intrigued, moved even, to hear this. I could hardly leave it there, and so I decided that I must see these spruces with my own eyes.

Fortunately, an opportunity arose to visit one of the University of Tokyo’s research forests in the mountains of Furano. I say ‘arose’: I imagine they felt their hand was forced somewhat, when I kept mentioning, loudly, how desperate I was to see the trees. I felt a little guilty, I must admit, but found that I couldn’t help myself. I am not a young woman anymore; when I considered the risk of missing my chance to meet the Ezos, I felt there was no time to lose. I put aside all thoughts of the nuisance I was causing and my own patheticness, and, when my meeting with the spruces was finally confirmed, I was over the moon.

Red autumn koyo leaves were already appearing in Hokkaido by 28 September. The colour of this just-turning foliage made for a striking scene. The new season was well on its way: bunches of deep-purple nokongiku wildflowers were popping up here and there along the railway tracks, and I glimpsed, standing by the entrance to the inn, a native rowan whose branches sagged with the weight of clustering bright-red berries. I was shown to my room, where a stove had been lit, and when the sun went down it quickly grew cold. I had scarcely believed my ears when, leaving Tokyo that morning, I had heard it was just three degrees in Hokkaido. Now I felt this coldness directly against my skin.

On the first day, I was taken to what I think is called a specimen room, with examples of Hokkaido’s largest species of trees. These behemoths, which had been cut and arranged according to their size, stood towering in rows with their bark still intact. I was struck, first of all, by how heavy they looked. I am used to seeing dense concrete buildings, but my city-dwelling sensibilities were startled in the face of these trees’ enormous hulk and heft. I lose all ability to remember details when I’m feeling overwhelmed like this; I listen without hearing and look without seeing. I tried my best to take it all in, but my memories were utterly incoherent later, nothing remaining but the image of a lively group of giant pillars.

The next day we visited a viewpoint with a memorial stone marked ‘Sea of Trees’, where I saw mountain ridges in the distance and beheld the sheer size of the university’s research forest. Next we went down into a valley and then, as our Jeep climbed higher into the mountains, I saw at first hand how, as our elevation gradually changed, so too did the species of trees forging their living in each part. After that, I saw conifers and broadleaves which had been singled out as what we call ‘elite trees’. There are all manner of conditions which must be met for a tree to be deemed elite, but these ones were endowed with a splendour obvious even to an untrained eye.

Just then, a light rain began to fall. Mist swirled upwards from the valley, blurring the way ahead. With each step I took, I left dew on the bamboo grass underfoot. I couldn’t help but get excited. The elite trees were unquestionably magnificent. But so were many of the more ordinary ones, which hadn’t been singled out. These had a strength and promise all of their own. I wondered whether the ones at the tail end struggled to make a living, part of a weak, inferior class of tree… There is something tragic about it, or perhaps endearing. Trees are essentially silent beings, and although I strongly desired to speak to someone, I swallowed my urge and stood as still and quiet as the forest.

On the third day, we entered the forest through a different valley. As we drove, I learned about plant communities and ecological succession, and the various environments which are best suited to them.

This, too, was the day I saw the Ezo nurse logs I had come for. ‘Look, over there,’ someone said, as I rushed to see. ‘There too!’ I didn’t have the faintest idea where they meant. I could see only the feet of the trees, which all looked the same to me. Yesterday’s rain still hadn’t let up: the forest was dense and shady, the trees’ hides were covered in water and their canopy was an umbrella of interlacing branches. The bamboo grass reached my chest, making it difficult to walk. I was despondent. It seemed all that talk about how anyone could spot one of these Ezos from a single glance had been nonsense. But then someone called out to me, and I finally saw it. I made my way over, panting. Yes, even a fool could recognize it! The row of thick Ezo trunks, standing upright in a straight line. Tall, solemn spruces, bestowed with the old name for the huge expanse of Hokkaido. What I felt then was not quite intimidation, but certainly a desire to put my best foot forward before the trees. I was struck by the serenity of the forest. The need to approach these spruces with due care and respect. There were seven, perhaps: similarly sized, perfectly spaced out, and, peppered between them, smaller, more slender trunks. Such a perfect natural composition.

I asked about the age of the spruces. Probably over two hundred and fifty, three hundred years old, my guide said, as they explained how the harsh conditions leave their trunks thinner than one might otherwise expect for their age. I stood still and quiet for a time, and began to notice small, scattered sounds around me: water droplets falling here and there, hitting bamboo leaves. Some even tapped on my shoulders. Vestiges of the rain, perhaps, or a present brought by the mists. Or maybe it was a greeting from the spruce trees.

The one disappointment was there being no proof that these trees had grown on a nurse log. The best we could do was to guess, based on their straight line. I trusted that these were the kind of trees we were searching for, but still my heart was set on seeing the full picture. It’s not that easy to do, however; it stands to reason that if these Ezos had been there some three hundred years, the fallen tree they once grew on would by now have completely rotted away. The soil had evened out, and there was nothing to suggest the silhouette of the huge tree which had once presumably lain there. I was somewhat underwhelmed.

Thankfully, my disappointment was short-lived. Someone reassured me that we were certain to find what I was looking for, and before long they beckoned me over, pointing to a group of young trees. The saplings were small and spindly, and crowded on top of what was unmistakably a fallen tree. Its bark was now completely covered in moss, but the evidence was still clear to see in its size and form: it was thick, its upper side the same height as my legs as I stood next to it, and with the exact cylindrical shape a trunk would have, tapering towards one end. As a final touch, there was a stump just beside it, to which it seemed to belong.

Slowly but surely, the whole spectacle began to seem rather cruel. What had once been a tree now told of the changes wrought by death. Meanwhile, perched atop it were young trees showing no signs whatsoever of grief. If the renewal I had seen before, in the line of giant Ezos, had been dignified and pure, then this was a more graphic form of reincarnation. It was definitely a nurse log, which is what I had been hoping to see. But I wasn’t prepared to witness such a stark scene. I was stuck: wanting to look, while wishing to look away.

I tried gently shaking one of the young trees, a baby barely a shaku, or 30 centimetres, high. Its trunk moved flexibly with my hand, but its roots stayed in place with surprising firmness. Some of the young tree’s rootlets had crawled inside the corpse of the fallen Ezo, while others formed a complicated network around its surface, and thicker roots wrapped themselves around the outside of the trunk, as if rushing to reach the ground. Their one concern was to keep living, and they made no effort to hide their brazenness in pursuit of this goal. I hesitated, before placing my hand on the corpse. How cold it was, how wet. Some of the moisture would have come from the past days’ rain, but the dead tree was drenched. What I was touching, though, wasn’t the tree’s body but the thick coat of moss covering it, as if nature had clothed the tree in the kimono of the deceased. Steeling myself, I pushed the moss aside with my fingertips. The section of tree beneath was soaking, too. My fingertips brushed against fragments of something brittle and dark reddish-brown. Old bark. I kept pushing the layers aside. Underneath the old bark was something firmer. But there were still softer sections, which would yield to my pressed fingernail. I suppose decay doesn’t develop uniformly. I prodded a section that was starting to turn. The bark resisted a little, before I managed to tear away a strip about the length of one of the new trees.

I pointed to a tree just slightly taller than me, asking my guide the same question about its age. ‘Probably around seventeen, eighteen,’ came the reply. ‘Perhaps older, actually.’ ‘That old?’ I asked, though I got no response this time. Instead, the guide drew a nata hatchet from his hip and casually cut down its neighbour. He showed me the cut end of the tree, around the same size as the one I had pointed to, and, smiling, told me to count the number of rings. The tree he cut had already been a straggler in the fierce competition to live on the nurse log, looking unsteady with a fracture in its trunk. Cutting down trees like this one, he said, which risked harming the healthier trees, is a way of protecting the forest as a whole. The growth rings were incredibly fine. There was no way that I could count them with my eyesight, but someone younger than me counted twenty-something.

Since he had the hatchet out, he also cut open a section of the nurse log for me. He only struck the blade lightly, but drops of water flew in all different directions. The piece he chipped off, which was about 5 bu, or 1.5 centimetres, thick and 5 sun, or 15 centimetres, long, had started to discolour but still retained the shape of a wood splinter. I asked about time again: how long did he think it had been since this tree fell? ‘Well,’ he said, ‘let’s suppose that the tallest of the new trees growing on it is around forty years old; and that before this tree’s seed landed, moss was already on the fallen trunk… Can you hazard a guess at how long it might have been standing here, taking all that into account? Forest time is different from the time people keep.’ His answer was calm and considered.

Sixty or seventy years might be a long life for a human, but when old trees fall and their outer layer disintegrates, it takes years for the damage to reach their core. The trees which come along and trample on their corpses are just kids still, at fifty or so. I wondered whether the forest moves slowly, or whether people’s lives are particularly fleeting. I suppose one might consider this slowness frustrating or, equally, peaceful. My eyes grew more acclimatized to the sight as I looked around, and, slowly, I was able to make out other rows of nurse logs.

It isn’t just fallen trees, I was told; sometimes Ezos will spring up on the stumps of trees which have snapped or been cut down. The guide pointed towards a slope where a stump had been left, probably after a tree was blown over. Those, he said, were the most typical. On top of the stump was a single tree standing tall and upright, strong and sturdy. The newer tree had sent a number of thick roots down into the ground, while beneath its base the decaying remains of the old tree were still clearly visible. This living tree seemed to me to be looking after the old stump. To be caring for it, to love it, even, as if the new growth was protecting the old one within its stomach. It might have wrought relentless suffering upon that stump some hundreds of years ago, taking the old tree’s nutrients for its own, but it was now thanks to this very tree that the stump remained. It was a chance discovery, but seeing that pair somehow helped to dispel the bitter aftertaste from witnessing the gruesome joins in the endless circle of life and death, replacing it with something altogether more refreshing, like drinking spring water. I reached out to touch the living tree. This one was moist, too. Its skin was colder than any of the trees I had touched so far. My fingertips turned red; I thought they might freeze. The old stump within was also dripping wet, and, as I put my fingers to it, the places I touched turned to powder. I supposed it was able to keep its shape for this long because no-one has been around to disturb it.

Suddenly, I glimpsed reddish brown between the many long roots of the young tree. I kept waiting, staring, hoping for a second look. Then, adjusting my position, I spotted it again. I think I was able to see it because of some outside light that was being refracted inwards. Oh, I thought, carefully reaching my hand in and feeling around. I was surprised to find it warm—just a little, mind you, but warm nonetheless. Even more surprisingly it was dry, despite everything on the outside being soaked through. The whole forest was sodden, except this sheltered patch. This part, seemingly the core of the old tree, had been kept warm and dry under the roots of the new one. I’m not sure that I would have noticed its subtle heat but for the cold wetness of my own fingertips, which made them sensitive enough to detect the warmth in this old tree. I also don’t know whether this toastiness emanated from the old stump itself or from the new tree keeping out the cold. It is not as simple, I realized, as the old tree being dead and the young one alive. There is no need to get so fixated on the seams between life and death, or the cruelty of this cycle. These events, too, are just a moment in time, and how lucky I was not to have missed the warmth this old stump can still provide. I decided to believe this heat would remain forever in my fingertips, a thought which somewhat overwhelmed me and brought tears to my eyes. Trees are not just living things, but feeling beings, like us. Better keep a watchful eye over them from now on, I thought, or I’ll miss the emotions they are hiding within. The wind started to pick up a little, ruffling the red and yellow leaves of the broadleaf trees dotted around and decorating our way home.

Young Ezo spruces grow atop their fallen ancestors in one straight line, in one single direction. Though I wonder what ‘one’ really means. How should we think about oneness? I am sure there are all manner of theories, and it is not something I can answer, I suppose. But this trip did teach me one thing. I learned that in the forests of Furano, new Ezo spruces grow out of fallen trees and stand up tall, in perfect lines. Somehow, this simple discovery was enough to make my heart full.

Excerpt from Tree, by Aya Kōda, reprinted with permission from HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright 2026.