Kozaki no Okusu

In 1674 the daimyo Tokugawa Mitsukuni, the man folklore knows as Mito Komon, stopped in front of this camphor and asked, in effect, what on earth is this tree. Nanja Monja no Ki has been its nickname ever since, and Nanjamon, built out of the same remark, is now the official mascot of the town of Kozaki. The tree takes a moment to read. In December 1907 a fire at the shrine destroyed the main trunk, which still stands cut off about seven metres from the ground. Five secondary trunks resprouted from the base and the roots, the tallest of them now around 25 metres, so what you meet is a multi-stemmed crown rather than one clean bole. At ground level the measurement is 8.5 metres round. Its age is given as roughly 1,300 years, a figure taken from the shrine's traditional founding in 651 or 673 rather than from anybody counting rings. The designation is firmer, if not entirely tidy: a National Natural Monument, dated 10 October 1926 by most sources and 2 October 1925 by Chiba Prefecture's own cultural properties page. It stands beside the main hall, on a low hill in Kozaki Forest above the Tone River.