The Husband Camphor of Shinjo-no-miya Shrine

Nobody at this shrine calls this tree by its species. It is the husband, Otoko-gusu, and the camphor standing beside it is the wife. The two were a landmark for anyone leaving Hiroshima on the road north towards Kabe, a pair of crowns you steered by. This is the larger one. The national giant-tree register measured it in 2000 at 6.4 metres round and 35 metres tall, and recorded its health as good. The prefecture's own encyclopedia of Hiroshima publishes 6.5 metres, close enough to be the same tape read twice. The camphors and the grove around them carry a natural monument designation, and the paperwork behind it does not agree with itself. The encyclopedia calls it prefectural. The national register's own code reads municipal. Both are recorded here as they stand. The shrine keeps a harder record than either. Its main hall sits 2.9 kilometres from the hypocentre and is on the city of Hiroshima's list of structures that survived the atomic bomb. Nobody has dated the camphor. The register's age band is blank, and camphor growth varies too much between sites to run an age backwards off a trunk. If you know when this one went in, tell us. It is a separate errand from the downtown trees, about two and a half kilometres north and five minutes on foot from the Oshibacho bus stop.