The Ginkgo Growing Through the Gate at Anrakuji
In 1990 this temple built a new gate and cut a hole in the roof so the tree could carry on through it. The ginkgo at Anrakuji was 2,160 metres from the hypocentre, the farthest tree on this page, and distance did not spare it: it burned down to the trunk and put out shoots from a branch the following year. The temple's main hall came through the fire as a skeleton, and the accounts credit the neighbours who fought the fire and the big ginkgo in the grounds with slowing it. When the temple came to rebuild its gate beside the tree, the decision recorded is blunt and not sentimental: the tree would not be cut. So the roof was designed with an opening and the ginkgo grows up through it. The gate was repaired in 1994 and still leans north, which is the direction the blast came from, and it is on the city's register of A-bombed buildings in its own right. The tree is 20 metres tall with a trunk 4.55 metres round, the only one on this page for which anybody has published a measurement.
Autumn colour
late November, when the whole crown turns and drops through the gate roof
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Anrakuji, Ushita-honmachi 1-5-29, Higashi-ku, Hiroshima 732-0068You can recognise it without asking anyone: it grows up through a hole cut in the roof of the temple gate. It stands at Anrakuji, 20 metres tall on a trunk 4.55 metres round, beside a gate that leans north.
Free, temple grounds open in daylight
Bus or about 25 minutes on foot north from Hiroshima Station
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
