Inland Sea Ako

Giant Fig Trees in a Coastal Shrine

Pass through the stone torii of Nojima Shrine on Miyazaki's Nichinan Coast and the canopy closes overhead almost at once. Several Akou trees grow within the precinct, and the largest of them—the eastern specimen designated as a National Natural Monument—spreads its branches roughly forty meters from east to west and twenty meters to the southwest. The trunk measures 6.9 meters around at chest height. Pale aerial roots descend from the limbs above; many reach the ground and have thickened over the decades into secondary trunks, so that the tree appears to stand on several legs at once.

The Akou (Ficus superba var. japonica) is a semi-deciduous member of the fig family, native to warm coasts from Wakayama south through Kyushu and into the Ryukyus, with a wider range reaching Taiwan, southern China, and Southeast Asia. It is a coastal species, and Miyazaki sits well inside its natural range. What makes Nojima's trees unusual is not their location but their size and form. Recorded measurements place the height at about 15 meters, with the canopy extending over an area few other trees of this species in Japan can match.

Visitors can walk freely beneath the canopy. Worn stone steps, a small stone monument commemorating the 1662 Tondokoro earthquake, and a wooden honden sit beside the largest tree, all somewhat dwarfed by it.

What Makes the Akou Distinctive

The Akou belongs to the genus Ficus, which contains figs, banyans, and the strangler trees of the tropics. Several traits make it worth pausing to examine. The fruits are small, spherical, and appear directly on the trunk and branches rather than at the tips of leafy shoots, a habit called cauliflory, more typical of tropical trees than temperate ones. The bark is smooth and pale grey, the leaves leathery and oval, about ten centimeters long. Although broadleaf and ostensibly evergreen, the species sheds its leaves more than once a year before pushing new growth, sometimes losing them all at once in spring.

The aerial roots are the feature most visitors photograph. In tropical forests, Akou and its relatives often germinate on the trunks of other trees, send roots down to the ground, and eventually envelop the host, earning them the unflattering name of strangler fig. The trees at Nojima have grown in a more conventional manner, rooted in soil from the start, but the long pale roots dropping from the branches give a clear sense of how the strangling habit begins.

Why a National Natural Monument

The shrine's trees were designated a National Natural Monument on 3 October 1941, under the criterion for famous, ancient, or extraordinary trees and groves. The original designation record, written in formal pre-war prose, gives a root circumference of 10.5 meters, a trunk circumference at eye level of 5.9 meters, a height of around 15 meters, and a branch reach approaching 100 meters: language that conveys awe more than precise modern measurement. Subsequent surveys by Miyazaki City record the eastern tree's trunk at 6.9 meters around and the canopy at about 40 meters across, figures consistent with a tree that has continued to grow steadily over the past eighty years.

Two trees on the grounds carry the designation. Their estimated age is around three hundred years. The reasons for protection are straightforward enough: the form is unusually shapely, the canopy is unusually wide, and the species itself is at one of its more northerly outposts in Japan. Larger Akou trees can be found in Nagasaki and Kagoshima, but few combine the dignified setting of an old shrine with the tree's full architectural spread.

The Shrine Beneath the Branches

Nojima Shrine was established on the third day of the twelfth month of Bun'an 3 (1446), founded by a local figure named Taguchi Hisatsugu. Its earlier name was Shirahige Daimyōjin; the current name was adopted in 1872. The principal deity is Shiotsutsu-no-Ōkami, the salt-tide god who, in the Kojiki account of Yamasachi-hiko, points the way to the palace of the sea god. Four other deities are enshrined alongside him, including Sarutahiko.

The shrine has its own local Urashima Tarō tradition. A record from 949 CE describes a fisherman named Tachibana no Sonshun who met an old white-haired man on this shore. The stranger said he came from Tango Province, had long lived on Mount Hōrai—the mythical isle of immortals—and asked to be enshrined here. Sonshun consulted the villagers and built a small shrine. Whether the encounter records the same Urashima figure familiar from folktales is impossible to say, but the local connection is taken seriously, and the shrine sees a steady trickle of pilgrims drawn to the legend.

The shrine also preserves a kagura tradition said to be five hundred years old, descended from the Ise lineage and originally performed jointly with nearby Kaeda Shrine. After the great Tondokoro earthquake of 1662 disrupted that partnership, the dances continued at Nojima alone. Of the original thirty-three pieces, twenty-two are still transmitted. They are performed each year on 23 November at the autumn festival, and Miyazaki City designated them an Intangible Cultural Property in November 2013. Seven kagura masks of considerable age accompany the dances.

One small modern note: surfers and cyclists riding the Nichinan Coast often stop here to have their boards or bicycles purified. The shrine sells related charms made from local Obi cedar, and a cycle stand stands beside the torii.

Reaching the Shrine and the Coast Around It

Nojima Shrine sits at the edge of National Route 220, the Nichinan Phoenix Road, about 25 kilometers south of central Miyazaki. By rail, JR Kōuchiumi Station on the Nichinan Line is a three- to five-minute walk away; the train from Miyazaki Station takes roughly forty minutes and costs around 480 yen one way. Drivers from Miyazaki Interchange can reach the shrine in around thirty minutes.

The area around Utsumi belongs to Nichinan Coast Quasi-National Park, and the road from Miyazaki to Cape Toi has been listed among Japan's 100 finest. Aoshima Island, with its surrounding 'Devil's Washboard' wave-eroded rock platforms and its own ancient subtropical forest, lies a few kilometers north. The Horikiri Pass viewpoint and Michi-no-Eki Phoenix rest stop are between Aoshima and Utsumi. Further south are Udo Jingu, the cave shrine built into a coastal cliff, and the Moai statues of Sun Messe Nichinan. A half-day's drive easily takes in all of them.

The shrine itself is small, the visit short. Most travelers find that thirty minutes is enough to walk the grounds, look up at the canopy, and read the inscription on the earthquake stone. Those who time their visit for 23 November can also see the kagura performed beneath the trees.