The Persimmon on Peace Boulevard

There is a persimmon tree on Peace Boulevard that was 530 metres from the bomb and still fruits. It stands in the strip of planting outside Shirakami Shrine, one tree among a group the city registers together at that distance: two hackberries, two muku trees, five kurogane hollies, a bead tree and this persimmon, S05a6-11. A persimmon is an orchard tree, not a monument. It was somebody's fruit tree in a garden in a neighbourhood that no longer exists, and the boulevard it now stands on was cut through the burnt ground afterwards as a firebreak a hundred metres wide. Persimmons ripen hard and orange in late autumn and hang on the bare branches into December, and the fruit of this one is edible in the ordinary way, which is a strange thing to know while standing half a kilometre from the hypocentre. The city does not record its age and nothing about it is signposted as spectacular. It is on the list because it was here, and because it went on doing the only thing a fruit tree does.