Trees are highly revered in Japanese culture. Often seen as symbols of longevity and considered sacred in several cases, trees are seen as important heritage icons which must be protected and conserved.1 The art of adding prosthetic limbs to trees in order to preserve them is a traditional method used in Japanese arboriculture. Marc Treib, a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, once wrote that “Arboreal prosthetics address a variety of needs: to support the tree during its early years…; as compensation for a structural weakness…; in periods of decline; and as life-support in advanced age.”2

 

Artificial tree supports are a way of supporting the tree as it grows. Wooden posts, tied to wandering branches, are not only used for structural support, but for promoting growth into old age.3  These artificial limbs also function as a form of arboreal architecture. An intervention of natural and introduced, existing together in a hybrid urban landscape.

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1 Hiroshi Omura "Trees, Forests and Religion in Japan," Mountain Research and Development 24(2), 179-182, (1 May 2004). https://doi.org/10.1659/0276-4741(2004)024[0179:TFARIJ]2.0.CO;2

2 Marc Treib, "Plant Prosthetics: Artifice In Support Of Nature", Arnoldia 65, no. 1 (2007): 13-18, http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/issues/2007-65-1-Arnoldia.pdf.

3 C.J. Doon, “Tree experts from Japan use century-old technique to save ‘heritage’ tree,” PA State College, 2014. http://www.statecollege.com/news/local-news/tree-experts-from-japan-use-centuryold-technique-to-save-heritage-tree,1459009/