The Great Camphor of Yakushiji

The tradition here is that Nobunaga's men tied their boats to this tree. Where Yakushiji stands there was a fort, Uguiura, thrown up by Oda Nobunaga to attack the Hattori faction of the Ikko sect who held this stretch of the delta, and the sea came up close to it in the 1570s. Nobunaga's younger brother Nobuoki was made its commander and was killed at Kogie castle in 1570; Nobunaga sent an army and burned the whole area out in 1574. The temple grew from the hall in the fort that housed Nobuoki's personal Yakushi image. All of that is on the board in the precinct. Whether the camphor was standing then is the interesting question, and the boat-mooring story is a claim about exactly that, which is why the page tells it as a story rather than as a fact. The tree is 18 metres tall, and the two available trunk figures disagree: the Environment Agency says 9.4 metres round and the temple's own board says 8.3, with the person who measured both by eye judging the board closer. Yatomi made it a city Natural Monument in December 1976.