The Great Camphor of Kamo

This is the largest tree in Japan, and it was already being worshipped when the shrine beside it was founded in 1123. That founding record is the hard part of its age: the lord of Kamo brought the Hachiman deity here from Usa and set up the shrine, and the camphor is written down as a sacred tree at the time, which makes it at least 900 years old without anyone having to guess. The shrine's own figure is about 1,600. The measurements are not in dispute. The trunk is 24.22 metres around at chest height and 33.57 metres around at the roots, the tree is 30 metres tall, and the Environment Agency's 1988 national survey of giant trees ranked it first in the country, ahead of the camphor at Kinomiya Shrine in Atami by 32 centimetres. Inside, the trunk is hollow for about 4.5 metres across, roughly the floor of an eight-mat room. It was made a Special Natural Monument in 1952, the highest grade Japan awards, held by only seven things in this prefecture including Yakushima's cedar forest. Legend gives it a different origin: Wake no Kiyomaro, exiled to Osumi in the eighth century, is said to have pushed his staff into the ground here.