The Camphor of Atsuta Shrine

Atsuta is one of the great shrines of Japan and it now sits in the middle of a busy city, with a wood inside the fence and traffic outside it. The camphor is on the approach past the second torii, on the left as you face the worship hall, 7.7 metres round and 21 metres tall, and it is the third thickest of the camphors in the precinct rather than the famous one; Atsuta's seven camphors are locally known as a set and only three of them are on ground visitors can reach. Low down near the roots this one carries a large burl that has gone green under moss, and there are old repair scars on the trunk, and it looks in good health regardless. The signboard tradition for Atsuta's camphors is a thousand years and more, sometimes attached to Kukai planting them. Take that carefully. People who have looked closely at the trunk of the shrine's most famous camphor put its real age nearer three hundred, and this page says so rather than repeating a number because a board carries it. Nobody has cored any of them.