Three camphors at the same shrine, spanning legend to living memory. The Living Gate is hollowed into a passage worshippers once walked through, put at 2,000 to 3,000 years old and revived after believers nearly killed it stripping its bark for a longevity charm. A few hundred metres away, Japan's first Prime Minister planted a camphor of his own in 1909. And facing the shrine's approach path stands the widest of the three, an eleven-metre-round camphor temple tradition credits to a legendary ancestor of the Ochi clan. All free, open at every hour, a short detour off the Shimanami Kaido.
0 / 3 visitados en Omishima
Foto: そらみみ (CC BY-SA 4.0)
1
Ikiki no Gomon (The Living Gate)
Camphor Tree (Cinnamomum camphora) · roughly 2,000 to 3,000 years · Omishima Island (Shimanami Kaido)
There is a footpath through this tree. The split and hollowed base of the camphor forms a passage about two metres wide, three metres high and seven metres long, and worshippers walked through it on their way to the inner sanctuary of Oyamazumi Shrine. The name records exactly that: Ikiki no Gomon, the gate of the living tree.
How old it is depends on who you ask, and neither answer comes from a dating method anyone can check. The standard reference work on the island says 2,000 years. The board at the tree says 3,000. What has actually been measured is the size: eleven metres around the main trunk, fifteen and a half where the trunks meet, and thirty-two metres around the exposed root mass at ground level, which is the part you walk through.
It nearly died in the Meiji era, and its own believers were the reason. Bark taken from it was used as a charm for long life, stripped away until the original trunk was failing. The tree recovered the only way a camphor can, throwing fresh growth from its own root base. That second trunk, four and a half metres round, carries the crown today while the original stands spent beside it. One organism, regrown from itself.
Ehime Prefecture listed it as a Natural Monument in 1951. It sits five minutes from the shrine's main hall on Omishima, free and open at any hour, a short detour off the Shimanami Kaido.
Leer más y cómo llegar →
2
Ito Hirobumi Memorial Camphor
Camphor Tree (Cinnamomum camphora) · about 117 years (planted 1909-03-22) · Omishima Island (Shimanami Kaido)
Japan's first Prime Minister planted this one himself, which makes it the youngest tree of any consequence in a precinct where the others are counted in millennia.
Ito Hirobumi came to Oyamazumi Shrine on 22 March 1909, by tradition as a descendant of the Kono clan whose tutelary shrine this is. He put a camphor in the ground and he brushed the characters for the shrine's stone name-tablet on the same visit. Seven months later he was shot dead in Harbin.
The tree is about a metre round, which in this precinct counts as slender. Oyamazumi's grove was designated a National Natural Monument in 1951 as the oldest primeval camphor stand in Japan, and 38 named ancient camphors sit under that protection. This one is not among them and does not pretend to be. It is here for the date and the hand that planted it, not for its girth, and it is a rare thing anywhere: a tree whose first day is recorded to the morning.
That also makes it easy to walk past. No source places it more precisely than the shrine grounds, so the pin here marks the precinct rather than the trunk. Look for the young, straight camphor standing among the giants, a few hundred metres from the Living Gate. If you find it and can place it exactly, tell us.
Leer más y cómo llegar →
Foto: そらみみ (CC BY-SA 4.0)
3
Ochi-no-Mikoto's Hand-Planted Camphor
Camphor Tree (Cinnamomum camphora) · roughly 2,600 years (temple tradition, not a measured date) · Omishima Island (Shimanami Kaido)
A third camphor stands in the same shrine grounds, and it is the one visitors meet first. Ochi-no-Mikoto's Hand-Planted Camphor stands directly facing the sando, the approach path into Oyamazumi Shrine, with a trunk eleven metres round at breast height and a crown reaching fifteen metres over the path.
Temple tradition names Ochi-no-mikoto, a legendary ancestor of the later Ochi clan, as the one who planted it, sometime before the reign of Emperor Jinmu. That is a founding legend, not a documented planting date, and the site treats it that way: the age given, roughly 2,600 years, comes with the story attached rather than a growth-ring count.
What is measured is the girth. Japan's Ministry of Environment giant-tree survey for the Chugoku-Shikoku region puts it at eleven metres, among the thickest camphors recorded anywhere in the country. Together with Ikiki no Gomon and 35 further camphors across the grounds, it belongs to the Oyamazumi-jinja Camphor Grove, designated a National Natural Monument in 1951 as Japan's oldest primeval camphor stand.
Free to see, open daily, and the easiest of the shrine's three trees to find: it stands on the path everyone already walks, facing the gate.
Leer más y cómo llegar →