The Ayasugi of Kashii Shrine

Legend says this cedar started as a twig. Empress Jingu, returning from a campaign on the Korean peninsula in the third century, is said to have buried a sword, a spear and a staff on this spot, then pushed a cedar branch from her own armor sleeve into the ground beside them with a vow that it should guard Japan forever. The branch took. Its leaves grow in an alternating, woven pattern that gave the tree its name, Ayasugi, patterned cedar, and for centuries cuttings from it have been sent to the Imperial court as a token from one of Japan's most ceremonially important shrines. Kashii Shrine is a chokusaisha, one of the few shrines that still receives a personal envoy from the Emperor, and its unusual kashii-zukuri roofline is a National Important Cultural Property in its own right. The tree made its way into classical poetry too: a verse in the Shin Kokin Wakashu, compiled around 1205, already treats the Ayasugi as an old and storied thing. Today it stands 21.5 metres tall with a trunk 4.9 metres around, a dense green pyramid beside the shrine's main hall, still doing, by tradition, the exact job it was planted for eighteen centuries ago.