The Sacred Cedar of Kirishima Jingu

Every cedar in southern Kyushu is said to descend from this one. Kirishima Jingu calls its sacred tree the Kirishima-sugi, or Kirishima measa, the ancestor of the region's cedars, and that claim is tradition rather than anything a laboratory has tested. The size is easier to check. The shrine's tourist association gives it 38.2 metres of height, 6.8 metres round the trunk and an age of about 800 years. Nobody publishes how those figures were taken, so read the age as the shrine's estimate rather than a count of rings. If the estimate holds, the cedar was here before the shrine was. Kirishima Jingu was re-established on its present site in 1484, and the shrine's own guide says this tree was already standing when it arrived. It has watched more than five centuries of worshippers walk the approach since. Eight hundred years is long enough to start leaning. By the early 2010s the trunk had tilted about ten degrees and the tree was in visible decline, and restoration work was carried out on it in April 2013. In October 2026 its crown was full and green. It stands inside a low wooden fence in the front courtyard, a straw rope hung with paper streamers tied round the foot of the trunk and ferns growing on the bark. It is a day trip from Kagoshima: the train to Kirishima-Jingu station, then about fifteen minutes on the bus.