The Chinquapins of Dogata

Two of them stand either side of a doorway, and they do not so much stand as sit. These are broad, low, heavily built chinquapins flanking the front entrance of the old Ishikawa prefectural office below the castle, and the state made the pair a National Natural Monument in August 1943. The signboard gives the right-hand tree 7.4 metres round and 12 metres tall and the left one 5.2 metres and 13, though anyone looking at the two of them would put them closer to equal. Both carry dead wood in the crown and neither has a hole in its shape. The name Dogata is older than the building. In the Maeda period there was an archery range on this spot built in imitation of the toshiya at Kyoto's Sanjusangendo, where archers shot the length of a long veranda, and it was known as the Dogata. The range went, rice warehouses replaced it, and the name stayed on the ground while everything on it changed twice. Nobody has published an age for either tree. If you know of one, tell us: the state protected them in wartime without recording how old they were.