Yakushima Forest
Long ago, when time was not measured in hours but by the heartbeat of the earth, a wanderer strayed to the shores of Yakushima. He arrived in the month when the island’s rains are at their heaviest and most abundant. The locals warned him: “On Yakushima, it rains thirty-five days a month!”
The wanderer set out into the heart of the island. With every step, he felt the roots of the ancient Jaku-sugi cedars awakening beneath his feet. These silent witnesses of millennia hold within them every story the sky has ever told the earth. In the deep shadows beneath their canopies, the wanderer slowly began to lose himself.
Suddenly, for a single second, the clouds parted.
Through the dense crowns of a thousand plant species, a sliver of light broke through...
***
The wanderer never left the island. It is said that he transformed into one of those silent shadows that guard the stillness of the cedar forests—a stillness carved into eternity by rain and silence.
