The Fir of Hongu Hachiman Shrine

The hall at the centre of this grove was built in 1701 and is still standing, listed by Higashi-Hiroshima as an important cultural property. The trees around it are protected separately, as a Hiroshima Prefecture natural monument: fir, cedar, cypress and two evergreen oaks, with cedars by the dozen over three metres round. Hongu Hachiman sits at about 400 metres on a hill in Nomi, high enough that the air stays cool, which is what Abies firma wants, a warm-temperate country with an upland to escape into. The national giant-tree survey measured this trunk at 3.4 metres in 2000 and recorded good health. No age, as usual here. Three of the shrine's trees are in the register and all three stand on the one hilltop, so the walk from the car is short and the grove does the rest of the work. What this page cannot give you is a tight pin: the register supplied no coordinate for the site at all, so the marker sits on the centre of the Nomi district and you will be looking for a hilltop torii rather than a trunk. A visitor with a phone and a satellite view could fix that in one message.