Junihon-yasu

Twelve branches fork from this hiba's trunk about four metres up, splayed out like the barbed head of a fish spear, which is where its name comes from: yasu means spear. Local belief holds the number never changes. If a thirteenth branch starts to grow, one of the original twelve is said to die back to keep the count at twelve. The shape carries a legend. A young man named Yashichiro is said to have killed a monkey demon terrorising the area, and villagers planted this tree in his memory. Around 1912, loggers arrived to fell it, and the crew is said to have refused. It was left standing, and in 1990 it was named to the Shin Nihon Meiboku Hyakusen, Japan's national ranking of its hundred most famous trees. It has never received Japan's highest tree protection. A 2003 push for national Natural Monument status stalled when the landowner would not consent, and it carries only a city designation instead. That has not stopped people finding it. A forest road out of Kanagi leads to a torii gate marking the sacred ground around the trunk, and Japan's giant tree enthusiasts are documented driving out specifically to see it, trip reports and all. Sources disagree on its age: a 2008 city council record says about 800 years, a tourism board gives a wider 300 to 800. Both describe the same eight metre girth and 34 metre height.