Nakakamado no Shidare Momiji

No one will say how old this maple is, and that is not an oversight. Japanese Wikipedia's own article speculates 400 to 500 years, but only if the tree dates to the founding of the temple beside it, a link no source actually makes, so that number is left off this page rather than repeated as fact. What Iwaki does know, and publishes every autumn, is exactly when the tree turns. The city government tracks this specific maple's colour change year by year, and its most recent update, posted in late November 2024, noted the leaves had just begun to shift. It has drawn that kind of attention every autumn since at least 1937, when Japan designated it a National Natural Monument. Ninety years on, it is still a named autumn-colour destination on Japanese travel and weather sites that forecast leaf-turning nationwide. The tree is really two trunks growing as one clump, a naturally occurring weeping, twisted form of the ordinary Japanese maple: the larger stem 6.8 metres tall and 3.5 metres round, the smaller 4 metres tall, together spreading 12 metres of branches into an umbrella shape over the grounds of Kannon-do temple. A nine-space car park a short walk away exists for exactly one reason, and it is not the temple.