Left-Handed Grass on the Building

Takinoya no Hidarimaki-gaya: Japan's Greatest Left-Twisting Kaya

Walk into the hamlet of Nōza, high in the mountains of northern Hyōgo, and one living thing commands the view. A single evergreen rises some 26 meters above the terraced paddies and tiled farmhouse roofs, its crown so broad that it throws shade across a good part of the village center. People here do not bother with its formal name. They call it Kayanoki-san, roughly "Mr. Kaya Tree," and have done so for generations.

This is the Hidarimaki-gaya of Takinoya, a National Natural Monument and the largest tree of its kind in Japan. Kaya is the Japanese name for Torreya nucifera, an evergreen conifer of the yew family sometimes called the Japanese nutmeg-yew. What makes this particular kaya remarkable lies not in the tree itself but in the seeds it drops each autumn.

A Seed That Spirals the Wrong Way

The shell of an ordinary kaya nut carries faint grooves that run more or less straight from top to bottom. On a Hidarimaki-gaya, many of those grooves curl. They twist in a slow leftward spiral around the seed, like the thread of a screw turned the unusual direction. The name says exactly this: hidari-maki means "left-winding," and gaya is the local pronunciation of kaya.

The trait is a natural mutation, and it is far from consistent. On any given tree most seeds curl gently to the left, a few turn to the right, and some barely twist at all. That variability is part of why botanists found the variety worth recording. The left-twisting kaya is known from only a handful of places in Japan, among them Hino in Shiga, Nabari in Mie, the village of Obara in Miyagi, and here at Nōza. Of the trees granted protection as left-twisting kaya, the one at Takinoya is the giant.

For the families of Nōza the curiosity has always been practical as much as scientific. Kaya nuts are edible once their bitterness is leached out, and they yield a fine cooking oil. The seeds were also thought to bring good fortune, which is how they came to sit on the New Year tray alongside chestnuts and dried persimmons.

Eight Centuries in One Place

The tree is estimated to be about 800 years old, which would place its first years in the Kamakura period, when this part of Tajima was a remote agricultural district far from the centers of power. It stands at roughly 220 meters above sea level, near the middle of Nōza, where rice terraces and houses sit close together.

At about 3.7 meters off the ground the trunk divides into two great limbs, one reaching north and one reaching south. The southern limb climbs to roughly 25 meters with a base nearly 5 meters around; the northern limb reaches about 23 meters. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the girth at chest height as 7.35 meters and the spread of roots at the base as around 15 meters, though local surveys put the root girth closer to 16.5 meters. Either way the canopy is enormous, fanning out about 20 meters east to west and some 28 meters north to south in an even, rounded dome.

Hyōgo Prefecture designated the tree a protected natural property in March 1938. The national government followed on 9 June 1951, registering it as a Natural Monument. The official designation name, Takinoya no Hidarimaki-gaya, preserves the name of Takinoya, the old village that once governed this area before postwar mergers folded it into Yabu City.

The Tree and a Man Who Reshaped Kyoto

The ground beneath the kaya carries a second story. This plot was the birthplace of Kitagaki Kunimichi, who rose from a village family of Edo-period headmen to become the third governor of Kyoto Prefecture. Kitagaki is remembered above all for championing the Lake Biwa Canal, the great waterway completed in 1890 that carried water from Lake Biwa over the mountains into Kyoto, powering mills, feeding the city, and helping revive it after the imperial capital moved to Tokyo.

A small weathered shrine sits near the foot of the tree. Kitagaki raised it to honor comrades who died in the Ikuno Incident of 1863, a short-lived armed uprising against the shogunate in which he took part as a young man. Before the Pacific War, oil pressed from the tree's own nuts was sent each year to the Kitagaki household in Kyoto, a quiet thread tying the family to the village it had left behind.

Keeping a Giant Alive

A tree this size carries its own risks. Because the trunk forks into two heavy limbs, heavy snow or strong wind could pull it apart at the join. As early as the middle of the Meiji era the villagers wrapped chains around the two limbs to hold them together. After the 1938 designation they added a low stone railing, replaced and adjusted the chains, and pruned dead wood.

The hardest test came in September 1993, when a typhoon collapsed the slope on the north side. Dead branches multiplied, the foliage thinned, and the tree almost stopped fruiting. Investigation traced the trouble to the roots, which had been smothered by imported fill and compacted soil that cut off air and water. From 2007 a three-year restoration backed by national subsidy went to work. Tree doctors from the Hyōgo branch of the Japan Tree Doctors Association dug trenches on the west and north sides, replaced the soil with improved blends, laid a wooden water channel that loops most of the way around the tree, installed automatic sprinklers, propped the great limbs with five hanging supports, and built a boardwalk so visitors no longer pack down the earth over the roots. By around 2010 the kaya was fruiting fully again and putting on new growth.

Much of this care is local. Residents formed the Nōza Kayanoki Preservation Society in July 1998, and it still tends the railings, signs, and parking. Each year in late September members gather the fallen nuts, leach and dry them for more than a week, and sell them; the proceeds go back into protecting the tree. Children at the nearby elementary school have even staged a play about it.

Visiting Nōza

The kaya stands in the open on private land near Nōza 548, and the village welcomes visitors who come to see it. There is no admission charge, and a small parking area has been set aside thanks to the landowner. The boardwalk lets you walk close to the base without harming the roots; the stone railing and the chains binding the twin limbs are easy to pick out.

Autumn rewards a visit twice over. Late September into early October is when the seeds fall, and the rice terraces around the tree turn gold at the same time. The tree is an outdoor monument with no fixed hours, so any daylight visit works, but bright, dry weather makes the spreading canopy and the texture of the bark far easier to appreciate.

Around Yabu and the Tajima Region

Yabu City lies in central Tajima, an inland corner of northern Hyōgo known for big trees and mountain scenery. Two other National Natural Monuments lie within the city: the Tarumi Great Cherry, a colossal Edohigan cherry reckoned among the largest in the prefecture, and the Great Sawtooth Oak of Kuchi-Ōya, long revered locally as a tree where a deity dwells. For dramatic landscape, Amataki Falls drops close to 100 meters through a wooded gorge and counts among Japan's hundred notable waterfalls. Yabu Shrine, with its forested precincts, is an easy addition to a day in the area.

Travelers willing to go a little farther can reach Kinosaki Onsen, a hot-spring town of willow-lined canals, within about an hour to the north, making Nōza a natural stop on a wider tour of Tajima.