The Great Camphor of Ota

Twelve metres tall and thirty-two metres across. That ratio is the whole tree: the great camphor of Ota went sideways instead of up, and the crown it carries is nearly three times as wide as the trunk is high. It stands just inside the stone torii of Omiya Shrine, on the right bank of the Ota river, a few hundred metres west of the Tokai city offices. The centre of the trunk has gone, and what holds the thing up is the ring of stems rising round the gap, which between them measure 9.5 metres. It is in good health. The shrine ground is also a public park, and the board there says the park was made as a green place for townspeople to rest in, which is a polite way of saying the park exists because the tree does. Tokai made it a Natural Monument in June 1968. The thousand years posted on the board is a tradition, without a method attached, and thousand-year claims on Japanese camphors do not usually survive a close look at the trunk. What survives inspection here is the shape.