Higashiomi maps three trees. Two are hananoki, Acer pycnanthum, standing 600 metres apart in neighbouring hamlets: the westernmost wild specimens of this rare maple known anywhere in Japan, both National Natural Monuments since March 1921, both having survived storms that took off their main trunks. The third, a kilometre from the pair, is a temple's stand-in for the Buddha's own bodhi tree, a linden that grew back from its own scorched stump after a 1573 fire. None of the three sit within sight of one another; Higashiomi's research is not finished.
0 / 3 bezocht in Higashiomi
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Minamihanazawa no Hananoki
Maple (Acer pycnanthum) · over 250 years · Minamihanazawa, Higashiomi
In August 2010 the main trunk of this maple rotted through from the inside, after lightning, and came down. The tree is still here.
It is a hananoki, Acer pycnanthum, a maple that grows wild in only a handful of wet valleys in central Japan. This one and its companion 600 metres north are the westernmost naturally occurring specimens known, and both were made National Natural Monuments on the same day in March 1921. It is the sacred tree of Hachiman Shrine at Minamihanazawa, 5.2 metres round at chest height and 21 metres tall.
Hananoki means flower tree, and the name is earned in early spring, when dense red flowers crowd the bare twigs before a single leaf opens.
Two things are disputed and worth saying plainly. Japanese Wikipedia puts the tree at over 250 years, a local account at over 450, and nobody has settled it. And the sources part company on what the 2010 collapse actually left: Wikipedia says the tree survived and pushed out new growth from the branches it still had, while a later account describes what remains as preserved rather than living. A photograph taken at these coordinates in September 2019 shows a tree standing, which is the reading this page follows. If you have been past more recently, tell us what you found.
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Kitahanazawa no Hananoki
Maple (Acer pycnanthum) · over 300 years · Kitahanazawa, Higashiomi
This maple has lost two trunks to storms and is standing on what was left over. It forked near the base originally. One limb broke in a storm in 1866, the other went down in Typhoon Jane in 1950, and the tree today divides into six limbs about three metres up.
It is a hananoki, Acer pycnanthum, and together with its companion 600 metres south at Minamihanazawa it is one of the two westernmost naturally occurring specimens known in Japan. The pair were designated National Natural Monuments together on 3 March 1921, in the same order, and they still read as a pair: a ten minute bus from Yokaichi Station reaches both, and the walk between them is about ten minutes more.
The numbers: 4.9 metres round at the base, 2.8 at chest height, 17.27 metres tall. Japanese Wikipedia estimates it at over 300 years, which would have it already grown when the first of those two storms took a trunk off it.
Hananoki means flower tree. In early spring the red flowers open on bare wood, before any leaf, and the crown turns red before it turns green. The rest of the year it looks like an ordinary maple standing above a small Shiga hamlet, which is a fair share of the appeal: this is a nationally protected tree with no gate, no ticket and usually nobody else there.
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The Sennen Bodaiju of Hyakusai-ji
Miquel's Linden (Tilia miqueliana) · roughly 1,000 years · Hyakusaiji, Higashiomi
Oda Nobunaga burned Hyakusai-ji to the ground on 7 April 1573, and the tree in the front garden grew back out of its own scorched trunk. The fire charred the bark and never reached the roots, so fresh growth rose around the burn. What stands in the old main hall's garden today is regrowth from the base of the tree Nobunaga's men torched. The temple still tells that story, and still offers the tree as a charm against misfortune.
Its name is Sennen Bodaiju, the thousand-year bodhi tree, and it is a substitute. The bodhi tree of Buddhism is Ficus religiosa, a fig that will not survive a Japanese winter, so temples here plant Tilia miqueliana instead and give it the same name and the same spot in the garden. This one measures about five metres round, with a trunk roughly 1.6 metres across. The thousand years in the name is a traditional round figure rather than a date anyone recorded, so read it as many centuries and not as a measurement. If somebody has properly aged it, tell us.
Hyakusai-ji is one of the Koto Sanzan, the three old temples on the eastern flank of Lake Biwa. Entry costs 600 yen and the gates are open from 8:30 to 17:00, which buys the halls and the garden as well as the tree.
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