Aya Koda wrote this before she died. She died in 1990. Daughter of Rohan Koda, a famous name in Japan, she turned her attention to the wood. Specifically, trees. Tree, one of her final books, tracks her journeys to visit legendary specimens across her homeland. Now Charlotte Goff has translated it. The first time in English.
“Trees go through life without sayinga word,” Koda writes. Even if their path is curved, they say nothing. Wonderful, she thinks. Also sad.
This isn’t cutesy nature writing. No fluff here. It feels like the thoughts of someone who knows they’re running out of time. Koda uses the zuihitsu form, a loose Japanese tradition that means “following the brush.” Musing over plotting. Spontaneity over structure. It creates a lightness, sure, but also an originality that cuts deep.
She was frail. Sometimes carried up mountains by guides. This fragility sits right against the mass of the trees she meets. Often, she is the younger one. Take Jōmon Sugi on Yakushima Island. A Cryptomeria japonica. Some call it Japanese redwood. Estimates for its age vary wildly—2000 years minimum, maybe 7000.
“If I am completely honest I was afraid”
That was her reaction. Fear before an ancient cypress.
Then there is the Jindai-zakura. A cherry tree. Allegedly two millennia old, perhaps Japan’s oldest of its kind. She describes the roots and bark as gnarled, ancient. Then the flowers come out. Delicate. Brief. She calls it a “pincer movement of beauty and terror”
Another tree, the Miharu Takizakura in Fukushima, offers a different perspective on age. It feels as though all its generations are present simultaneously.
“What seems to happen is thát all the generations of the tree live riht alongside one another… ancestors from long, long bfore them were living insiđe one bbdy.”
Who else but a dying writer would notice that?
The book surged in popularity recently. Why? Wim Wenders’ film Perfect Days featured it in 2024. Good move, too. I’d recommend watching it if you haven’t.
Read Tree. Go look at some bark.
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