Forest Bathing in Japan: Where Shinrin-yoku Began and Where to Try It

Shinrin-yoku means forest bathing. The phrase sounds ancient and is not. It was introduced in 1982 by Tomohide Akiyama, then head of Japan’s forestry agency, as part of a campaign to encourage people to visit the country’s forests. Japan was at the height of its industrial boom, city workers were exhausted, and two thirds of the country was covered in trees that few of them saw.

What it is

Forest bathing is a slow walk in the woods with attention given to the senses. There is no destination and no exercise target. A guided session lasts two to three hours and covers perhaps two kilometres. The guide stops often and asks the group to listen, to smell the bark and the soil, to touch moss, to lie down and look up through the canopy, to drink tea made from leaves. Phones are put away. It ends, as a rule, with a period of sitting alone.

The idea has deep roots even if the word is recent. In Shinto, old trees and groves are sacred, and mountain forests have been places of ascetic practice for more than a thousand years.

What the research says

From 2005 a group of Japanese scientists began to measure the effects. The best known is Dr Qing Li of Nippon Medical School in Tokyo. In his experiments, people who walked in a forest for several hours a day over a few days showed an increase of about half in the activity of natural killer cells, a part of the immune system, and the effect lasted for a week or more. The same walks in a city produced no change. Li attributed the result partly to phytoncides, the aromatic compounds given off by trees such as cypress and cedar. Other studies have recorded lower levels of stress hormones, slower pulse and lower blood pressure.

The evidence has limits. Reviews of the research have found it encouraging but not strong enough to prove cause or to support medical guidelines. Many studies are small and rely on what participants say they feel. It is best treated as a pleasant practice with some scientific support, not as a cure.

Where to do it

Japan certifies forests for the purpose. More than sixty sites across the country have been approved as forest therapy bases, after tests of their effect on visitors, and have marked trails and trained guides.

Akasawa, Nagano. The first official forest bathing event was held in 1982 in the Akasawa forest in the Kiso valley, and it is regarded as the birthplace of the practice. The forest is of Kiso cypress, some of the trees three hundred years old, once reserved for the rebuilding of the Ise shrine. Eight easy trails follow a stream, and an old logging railway carries visitors through the wood. It is closed in winter. See our guide to Nagano.

Yakushima. This island off the south of Kyushu is covered in rainforest of ancient cedar, the oldest trees several thousand years old, on granite that is carpeted in moss. It rains almost daily. It is a World Heritage site and the wildest forest in Japan that is easy to reach.

Kumano. The pilgrim paths of the Kii peninsula run for days through planted cedar and natural forest between shrines. Walking them is forest bathing with a purpose; our account of the Kumano Kodo explains how to arrange it, and there is more on the region under Kumano.

Okutama and Hakone. For visitors with only a day, the wooded valleys of Okutama are two hours west of central Tokyo and have a certified therapy road. The cedar avenue of the old highway at Hakone is closer still.

How to make the most of it

Go with a guide the first time, since the slowness is harder than it sounds. Several ryokan and hotels in forest districts now arrange sessions in English. Go in the morning, in any season. Rain improves the smell of the forest. Follow it with a hot spring, which most of these places have; the two belong together, and Japan intends to put its onsen culture forward for UNESCO recognition. For a more structured day of meditation in the trees, there is Zenbo Seinei on Awaji Island.