The Cedar of Matsukasa Kannon's Inner Sanctuary

There is no road to this one. The inner sanctuary of Matsukasa Kannon sits near the summit of Mount Matsukasa, 374 metres above northern Hiroshima, and the way up is a marked hiking trail from JR Tosaka station. What is waiting at the top is a Japanese cedar 4.80 metres round, measured by the Environment Ministry's giant-tree surveyors in 2000 and recorded in good health. The temple is Shingon and dates its founding to 1530. Its main hall is down in Tosaka, in Higashi-ku, while the oku-no-in, the inner sanctuary, stays up here, an arrangement common enough in Japanese mountain temples: the older and quieter half of a place is often the half you have to climb to. Walkers who have made the trip recently describe a well used path with a landslide detour in place since 2018, a Kobo Daishi well, a Shaka hall and a Mizuko Kannon. A second registered tree stands on the same ground, an oak of 3.10 metres that nobody has named. The cedar has no recorded age. No second source describes it at all, which is the ordinary fate of a tree only walkers ever see: the register measured it, and everything written about this mountain is about the temple rather than what grows beside it. If you have climbed up and know more, or have dated it, tell us and we will put it on the page.