The Camphor of Kego Shrine

Fukuoka's busiest shopping street runs past a camphor tree older than the district's name. Tenjin was built up around Kego Shrine, not the other way around, and the shrine's own record puts this camphor at over three hundred years, older than the 1608 rebuilding ordered by Kuroda Nagamasa, the daimyo who also built Fukuoka Castle. The shrine traces its founding much further back, to a guardian deity said to have protected Empress Jingu's fleet during a third-century campaign, but the tree standing today is a comparatively recent arrival by that math, planted or self-seeded sometime after the shrine's Edo-period move to this exact spot. What makes it worth a detour is the contrast: department stores, a covered shopping arcade and some of the highest rents in Kyushu surround a small shrine precinct where a single camphor still throws real shade over the forecourt. Kego Park borders the grounds to the north, giving the tree a second, quieter side to be seen from. Independent measurements of its exact girth or height are hard to come by, which is unusual for a tree this central. What is not in doubt is its address: closer to a train platform than any other tree on this list.