The Jindai-zakura of Suzakura Shrine

This is not the famous Jindai-zakura. Japan has several trees carrying that name, which just means age-of-the-gods cherry, and this one stands in a different prefecture from the well-known tree in Hokuto, about 100 kilometres away. It has its own legend: that the god Susanoo-no-Mikoto planted his walking staff here on his way through, and it grew into this cherry. A Noh play, Suzakura, is said to be based on it. It has been a National Natural Monument since December 1935, the only nationally designated natural monument cherry tree in Nagano Prefecture. Its trunk once had three major limbs; the southern one broke in a windstorm sometime in the 1910s or 1920s, and the two that remain now stand on supports. A tree doctor treated it in 1992 after it had visibly weakened. Measurements vary with where the tape goes. At breast height the trunk runs 11.3 metres round; nearer the roots, separate sources give 9 to 9.8 metres, which is the same tree measured at two different points rather than a disagreement. Its age is put at roughly 1,200 years, a broad tradition rather than a ring count, and this page keeps it that wide. Getting there means committing to it: a bus, then a shared taxi, then a thirty-minute walk, with no parking at the shrine itself. It still flowers every spring, from late April into early May, and a guide published this same year confirms it as a current, blooming destination.