The Nezu no Ki of Horaiji

Sources on this juniper disagree by more than a thousand years, and both figures are kept here rather than picking one to sound confident. A photograph on Wikimedia Commons describes it as more than 1,400 years old; the local newspaper, reporting on a Horaiji-san Museum exhibition of the city's designated natural monuments, says roughly 300, and calls it the largest and oldest Nezu juniper west of Kanagawa Prefecture. Three hundred years sits far closer to what is known of the species generally, a juniper claiming fourteen centuries would be an extreme outlier, so read the newspaper's figure as the likelier one and the museum's as the honest alternative. It grows on the public stone stairway up Mount Horaiji, one of the 1,425 steps' quieter landmarks, below the cedar known as Kasa sugi further up the same path. Restoration work in 1996 brought its vigour back after decline, and a dated 2021 photograph shows it alive and holding. Most people climbing past are headed for the temple at the top and the mountain's own fame as one of Japan's three great Tosho-gu sites; this tree is what you pass on the way, not the reason most people set out.