The Black Pine of Tokuzen-ji

A black pine shaped by centuries of tending rather than left to grow wild: that is what a 3.3-metre trunk on a cultivated species like Pinus thunbergii usually means, and it is the main fact this tree offers up front. The national giant-tree survey measured it in 2000, recorded good health, and left the age column blank, its habit whenever nobody has counted rings. Tokuzen-ji sits in Nora, a hamlet in the rural north of Toyosaka-cho, far enough off the beaten path that the pine appears on no local cultural-properties list, only the national register. That is not a mark against it. Most of Japan's registered giants stand exactly like this, on temple ground nobody outside the parish has written about, found only because someone with a tape measure once made the rounds. There is no train or bus stop within reach. The route in is by car, through farmland in the hills north of Saijo, and the register's own coordinate marks the temple rather than the trunk, so the pin should be read as approximate.