The Fir of Ashuku Hachiman Shrine

A momi fir at Ashuku Hachiman Shrine measures 3.4 metres round, the only figure anyone has ever put to it. The Ministry of Environment's national giant-tree survey found it in good health when the register was compiled in 2000, and nothing else about it has been written down since. No age, no growth history, no story beyond a girth and a shrine. Ashuku is a hamlet inside Toyosaka-cho, a rural stretch of Higashi-Hiroshima with no train or bus stop nearby. The shrine takes its name from the hamlet, a small Hachiman branch of the kind that once served each of the villages under the larger Hongu Hachiman Shrine, five kilometres away. Whether that shared history reaches this particular tree, nobody has recorded. Twenty-six years have passed since the survey, long enough that the fir has either kept growing or come down without anyone updating the register. If you have stood beneath it and can say which, tell us.