The Great Kaya of Yokomuro

Japan keeps a short list of its three greatest kaya trees, and this one earns its place by sheer girth: 8.1 metres round, a trunk that makes even its two neighbours on the list, in Saitama and Hamamatsu, look modest. The age is genuinely contested. A 1991 government survey called it just over 300 years old. The shrine tradition on site says over 1,000. Nobody has settled it, and the honest answer is to give both figures rather than pick a favourite. What nobody disputes is the size, and a Japanese Torreya at this circumference is a rare thing on its own, superlative trio or not. A Suwa Shrine occupied this ground from 1749 until 1907, when it moved elsewhere and the Kanazawa family took over the plot. They have kept the tree as sacred ground in the century since, on land that is privately theirs, and let anyone come and look at no charge. The National Natural Monument designation is dated 1920 by most sources, 1933 by one. 1920 is the figure the government's own heritage database uses, and the one used here.