Takachiho is where Japanese myth puts the cave the sun goddess hid in, and its three old trees all stand on ground that story made sacred. Two are in the precinct of Takachiho Shrine in the town itself: the Chichibu-sugi, a cedar 55 metres tall that legend says a Kamakura warrior planted around 1190, and the Meoto-sugi, two cedars grown from one root that couples walk round hand in hand. The third is an ogatama, the town's own tree, at Amano Iwato Shrine six kilometres east.
0 / 3 visitadas em Takachiho
Foto: sk01 (CC BY-SA 3.0)
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Chichibu-sugi (秩父杉), the Cedar of Takachiho Shrine
Japanese Cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) · roughly 800 years · Mitai, Takachiho
This cedar is named after a town in the hills north-west of Tokyo. Chichibu was the home of Hatakeyama Shigetada, a warrior of the Kamakura age, and the second sign at the tree's foot says he planted it about 800 years ago, sent to Takachiho as the envoy of Minamoto no Yoritomo, the first shogun. That is the shrine's account: a planting legend from around 1190, not a ring count, and the 800 years is held to be that legend's age rather than a measurement. The height is measured. The Environment Agency's giant-tree survey put it at 55 metres, one straight trunk rising clean through the canopy beside the Kagura-den, and the sign repeats the figure. The girth depends on who held the tape. The sign, from Miyazaki prefecture's hundred-giant-trees list, certified in 1992, says 7.15 metres; the older national survey recorded 9 metres, and one giant-tree database sides with the sign and remarks that it is not that thick. The town made it a natural monument in 1969. If the shrine's count is right, it went in when the first shogunate was being built and has stood through every century of samurai rule since. Its foot is fenced, so you look up from a few metres off. The Meoto-sugi, the shrine's wedded pair of cedars, stand about 35 metres away.
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Meoto-sugi (夫婦杉), the Wedded Cedars of Takachiho Shrine
Japanese Cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) · several hundred years · Mitai, Takachiho
Couples walk round these two cedars three times, hand in hand. The Meoto-sugi are two big trees west of Takachiho Shrine's hall of worship that grew from one root, so the shrine treats them as a married pair, and the custom says three circuits together bring harmony in the marriage, a safe household and descendants. The town's own page puts it more simply: two trunks that become one. Look at the base and you can see what it means. The two trunks fuse at the foot, bound together by a shimenawa, the twisted straw rope that marks something sacred, with a small roofed offering box beside them and a fence hung with ema, the wooden prayer plaques visitors write their wishes on. How old the pair is, nobody has settled. Travel pages give about 800 years, which would make them as old as the Chichibu-sugi, the shrine's 55-metre cedar some 35 metres away; another tourist page says 400. No survey, sign or designation we found carries a measurement, so the honest answer is several hundred years and a range of four centuries. That gap is the easiest one on this page to close. A tape round each trunk at chest height would tell us a great deal, and if you have done it, tell us what you found.
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Foto: sk01 (CC BY-SA 3.0)
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The Ogatama of Amano Iwato Shrine (招霊の木)
Ogatama Magnolia (Magnolia compressa) · not documented · Iwato, Takachiho
The kagura bell, by Takachiho's own account, began as a branch of this kind of tree. The story is the oldest in Japan: the sun goddess Amaterasu shut herself in a cave and the world went dark, and the goddess Ame-no-Uzume danced outside until she came out. What Uzume held as she danced, the town says, was a branch of ogatama, and the bells shaken in kagura today descend from it. The cave is across the river from the West Shrine of Amano Iwato Shrine, and this ogatama is the West Shrine's goshinboku, its sacred tree, standing inside the fence beside the shrine building. The ogatama is also Takachiho's town tree. The characters written for its name, 招霊, read roughly as calling the spirits. It is an evergreen magnolia, and this one rises as several stems from a single base, bound at the foot with a shimenawa rope beside its name board. Here the page has to be plain about what it does not know. No source we found gives its age, its girth or its height, so it is here for the myth and for the tree itself rather than for any record. If you have stood at the fence with a tape measure, or know when it was planted, tell us.
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