The Hinoki Cypress of Uneyama Shrine

Hinoki is the wood the shrines are made of. Japan has rebuilt its sanctuaries in Chamaecyparis obtusa for more than a thousand years, which is why old hinoki are scarce outside protected ground and unremarkable inside it: a tree on shrine land is not for cutting. This one is 3.15 metres round and stands in the grove that Hiroshima Prefecture made a natural monument in 1987, on the hill at Uneyama in Kiyotake, in the narrow clearing near the kagura hall where the sacred dances are performed. The national survey measured it in 2000. Its health grade is missing from that record, so unlike every neighbour it has no condition on file at all, good or bad, and this page will not invent one. No age either. What hinoki does carry is a smell, lemon and resin, the scent of a Japanese bath, which is the reason the timber has been prized for as long as anyone here has written things down. The typhoon of 1991 took several of this grove's protected trees. Five registered giants still stand on the hill, this among them, and you will see all five without walking more than a couple of minutes.