Four trails, hand-built across eighteen seasons on Yakushima.
A small, considered catalogue: the ancient cedar routes of Jomonsugi and Shiratani Unsuikyo, a high-alpine traverse, and a four-season wildlife observation programme — each led by an island-born guide to a maximum of six guests.
Four routes, hand-built since 2007.
Most visitors arrive at Yakushima with one question in mind — which trail, and with whom. This page answers it directly. There are four flagship routes we lead, no more, and they are the same four we have refined across twelve thousand departures from our restored 1932 cedar house in Miyanoura.
Each route is built around a single idea: a small group, a guide who was born within sight of the trailhead, and a pace that lets the forest — not the schedule — set the day. Our maximum group size is six guests per guide, against a local industry average of fourteen. Every booking plants three Yakusugi cedars through the Yakushima Forest Trust, and every transfer runs on 100% biofuel minivans introduced in 2022. We do not offer twenty permutations of the same trek, and we do not run routes we have not personally walked and audited season after season.
The four routes that follow are, in order of physical demand: the Jomonsugi Ancient Cedar Route, the Shiratani Unsuikyo Moss Trail, the Yakusugi High Traverse, and the Wilson's Stork & Yakushika Wildlife Observation Programme. Read each in turn, or scan the index below.
— The Yakushima SP route desk, Miyanoura
The four routes we lead.
A small catalogue by design. Scroll into each chapter for the day-by-day itinerary, the assigned guide, and the departures still open this season.
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01
Flagship · Ancient cedar
The Jomonsugi Ancient Cedar Route
A measured two-day ascent to the 2,300-year-old Jomonsugi cedar, via the Yakusugi Land trail and an overnight at the Taikoiwa rock shelter. Our most requested route and the one our summit-completion record is built on.
- Days
- 2D / 1N
- Distance
- ≈ 21 km
- Vertical
- ≈ 1,300 m
- Difficulty
- Moderate–strenuous
- Best season
- April – June, Sept – Nov
- Group cap
- 6 guests
Read the full itinerary 98.2% summit completion, last five seasons
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02
Day trek · Moss & myth
Shiratani Unsuikyo Moss Trail
The half-day descent through the moss-furred canyon said to have inspired Princess Mononoke. We run it as an unhurried five-hour day route from Miyanoura, returning for lunch at the cedar house.
- Days
- Half-day
- Distance
- ≈ 8 km
- Vertical
- ≈ 240 m
- Difficulty
- Easy–moderate
- Best season
- Year-round, best Mar – Dec
- Group cap
- 6 guests
Read the full itinerary Departures timed to avoid UNESCO-loop day-tripper crowds
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03
Multi-day · High alpine
The Yakusugi High Traverse
A four-day ridge-and-valley traverse from the Kigen sugi cedar to the south coast at Hirauchi, with two mountain-hut overnights. Built for fit trekkers who want the longest continuous cedar-forest line on the island.
- Days
- 4D / 3N
- Distance
- ≈ 38 km
- Vertical
- ≈ 2,100 m
- Difficulty
- Strenuous
- Best season
- May – June, Oct – early Nov
- Group cap
- 6 guests
Read the full itinerary Pre-trek fitness review with lead guide Tokuo Arima
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04
Wildlife · Four-season permit
Wilson's Stork & Yakushika Wildlife Observation Programme
A three-day, low-elevation observation route built around the seasonal ranges of the Yakushika sika deer and the rare Wilson's Stork. We are the only operator permitted by Yakushima Town to lead this four-season route.
- Days
- 3D / 2N
- Distance
- ≈ 16 km
- Vertical
- ≈ 420 m
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Best season
- Year-round, by species
- Group cap
- 6 guests
Read the full itinerary Wildlife is observed, never staged — sightings are never guaranteed
Jomonsugi, the 3,000-year cedar
Twenty-two kilometres. Ten to eleven hours on the trail. One living cryptomeria, estimated at 2,170 to 7,200 years old, depending on which study you read. This is the route our company was built around — the long, old-growth ascent from the Kigen sugi trailhead, through a tangle of Yakusugi giants, to the fenced viewing platform above the island's most photographed tree.
We cap the day at six guests. Our guides carry a printed topographic sheet, a forestry radio, and the kind of route memory that comes from walking the same mountains in every season since 2007. You'll move slowly — about 1.6 km/h on average — and stop often, not for photos alone, but to read the cedar: the burls, the scarred trunks, the moss lines that tell you how high the snow sits in February.
Our published completion rate to the Jomonsugi platform over the last five seasons is 98.2 percent. We do not promise a summit — weather on the 1,300-metre ridge is uncontrolled — but if the mountain allows, we will be there.
- Distance
- 22 km out-and-back
- Time on trail
- 10–11 hours
- Max group size
- 6 guests, 1 guide
- Summit completion
- 98.2% over 5 seasons
- Best seasons
- April – June, September – November
- Lead guide
- Tokuo Arima, JMGA senior alpine specialist
Shiratani Unsuikyo
If Jomonsugi is the long pilgrimage, Shiratani is the first conversation. A half-day or full-day walk through a ravine where every stone, root, and fallen log wears a thick green pelt of moss — the same forest many visitors recognise from the Studio Ghibli film Princess Mononoke, though the valley has been quietly drawing naturalists for centuries before that.
It is the route we recommend to anyone arriving on the island with a single free day, or to anyone who wants a gentler first immersion before committing to the longer Jomonsugi traverse. The trail is well-formed, the elevation change is modest, and your guide will read the forest with you: the difference between Higanbana and Yakusugi seedlings, the places where the monkeys cross at dusk, the angle at which the afternoon light cuts through the canopy in October.
- Distance
- 6 km (half-day) or 12 km (full-day)
- Time on trail
- 3–4 h / 5–7 h
- Elevation gain
- ~360 m
- Max group size
- 6 guests, 1 guide
- Best for
- First-day arrival, families, photographers
Wilson's Stork & Yakushika Observation
Yakushima SP holds the only four-season permit issued by Yakushima Town to lead observation routes for the endangered Wilson's Stork and the island's endemic Yakushika sika deer. These are not wildlife "safaris." We observe. We do not bait, call, or stage sightings — and we will not promise you a particular animal on a particular morning.
What we do promise is a route planned around seasonal movement: the Yakushika rut in late autumn, the stork's breeding window in early spring, the quiet coastal estuaries where resident species gather in winter rain. Routes are walked at dawn or in the last two hours of daylight, with binoculars, a printed field sheet, and the same measured pace we bring to the cedar trails.
- Permit
- Yakushima Town, four-season wildlife observation
- Target species
- Wilson's Stork, Yakushika, native macaques
- Window
- October – June (closed in peak stork nesting)
- Group size
- Max 6, with spotting scope
- Promise
- Observation only — no staged sightings
