Plant traits and soil properties interact each other. Leaf litter is one of the most important pathways for plants to affect soil properties. However, it still remains unclear how plants shape soil properties through their leaf litter in a community especially in a diverse forest. In this study, we investigated the relationships among biomass and functional traits of above-ground leaf, those of leaf litter on the ground, and soil properties at a community level in a 1.2-ha plot, in which all individuals of woody species with > 5cm in their dbh are measured and mapped, in Ogawa Forest Reserve, Ibaraki, Japan. In this plot, leaf litter and soils were collected at every intersection of 10m x 10m grid, for 143 points in total. We found that community-weighted means of above-ground leaf traits and those of leaf litter traits did not necessarily correspond to each other depending on the functional traits. Further, we found that some functional traits associated with leaf litter decomposition (i.e., lignin or condensed tannins) were more important for shaping some soil properties than those associated with above-ground performances such as photosynthesis (i.e., LMA or nitrogen). These results provide new insights into how plants shape soil properties.