The Hiba of Renkyo-ji

The Japanese name of this species is a joke at its own expense. Asunaro means roughly tomorrow I will be, as in tomorrow I will be a hinoki cypress, the timber tree it resembles and never quite equals. Higashi-Hiroshima made this particular asunaro a city natural monument, listed on the council's own cultural-properties register for Toyosaka-cho as the Asunaro of Renkyo-ji. The national giant-tree survey measured it at 3.3 metres round in 1988 and graded its health as partial dieback, so parts of the crown were already going then. No age has ever been published for it. The tree stands in the grounds of a small Buddhist temple in Kiyotake, deep in the farmland of the city's northern half, where the registered giants are otherwise almost all cedars around shrines. A designated asunaro is a different sort of entry, protected for what it is rather than for how big it got. Its foliage is the tell, flat sprays of scale leaves with broad chalk-white markings underneath, far bolder than the fine white lines a hinoki carries. There is no station and no bus. You drive, and you park at a temple that sees few visitors from outside the valley.