Ikiki no Gomon (The Living Gate)

There is a footpath through this tree. The split and hollowed base of the camphor forms a passage about two metres wide, three metres high and seven metres long, and worshippers walked through it on their way to the inner sanctuary of Oyamazumi Shrine. The name records exactly that: Ikiki no Gomon, the gate of the living tree. How old it is depends on who you ask, and neither answer comes from a dating method anyone can check. The standard reference work on the island says 2,000 years. The board at the tree says 3,000. What has actually been measured is the size: eleven metres around the main trunk, fifteen and a half where the trunks meet, and thirty-two metres around the exposed root mass at ground level, which is the part you walk through. It nearly died in the Meiji era, and its own believers were the reason. Bark taken from it was used as a charm for long life, stripped away until the original trunk was failing. The tree recovered the only way a camphor can, throwing fresh growth from its own root base. That second trunk, four and a half metres round, carries the crown today while the original stands spent beside it. One organism, regrown from itself. Ehime Prefecture listed it as a Natural Monument in 1951. It sits five minutes from the shrine's main hall on Omishima, free and open at any hour, a short detour off the Shimanami Kaido.