Alishan is home to Taiwan's only "Tree Spirit Pagoda," built to appease the spirits of the 100,000 great trees felled during the period of Japanese rule. Today it stands as a mark of a largely forgotten chapter in the region's forestry history.

• In 1934 the Japanese authorities held a "Tree Spirit Festival" at Alishan, and the following year they erected the Tree Spirit Pagoda, both to commemorate the 77 Japanese and Taiwanese workers who died or were injured during logging and to console the spirits of the felled trees.
• Ceremonies were held twice a year, once in March and once in September. Most participants were forestry-station civil servants and logging foremen, the majority of them Japanese, with ordinary members of the public rarely taking part.
• The observances continued for many years after World War II, though the ritual shifted from Japanese Shinto to a Taoist "pudu" rite. When logging ceased and operations were restructured in 1969, the ceremony was formally discontinued.
• Research indicates that the Tree Spirit Pagoda derived from a custom found across Japan of setting up "grass-and-tree pagodas" at major logging sites to make offerings to the forest and pray for the workers' safety; it was not an indigenous Taiwanese belief.
• The rings of the pagoda's base represent the growth rings of a tree (each ring standing for 500 years), while the marks carved into the tower symbolise the traces of the saw. It was completed in 1935, the same year as the Alpine Museum and the Alishan VIP Guesthouse.

Outlook: Although the ceremony has been discontinued for decades, the Tree Spirit Pagoda remains an important cultural asset of Alishan and a site featured in tourist interpretation, continuing to bear witness to the past of Taiwan's forestry industry.