It wasn¡¯t the heat of the sun that stopped me in my tracks on a Shinjuku street ¡ª it was the absence of shade.
I had just gotten back from a visit to Nagoya, where I once lived amid smokestacks and train lines. For the first time in years, I made a pilgrimage to see the Giant Camphor Tree that grows on the grounds of Atsuta Shrine. Its hulking, thousand-year-old limbs capture the strong sunlight and cast it soft and dappled, as if its leaves were green stained glass, onto those below. The tree had a way of making the grounds quiet, the air cool and the breeze feel full of the rich and healing scent of life.
Japan is a country of spectacular trees: the crimson blaze of autumn maples, the blush of cherry blossoms in spring and evergreen forests that cloak entire mountainsides in deep green. Trees here are not just admired ¡ª they are, in many cases, revered.
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