The Daimyo Oak of Hokkaido Shrine

This shrine was founded before it had a place to stand. In 1869 the Meiji government renamed Ezo as Hokkaido, in order to make it unambiguously part of Japan, and held a ceremony in Tokyo enshrining three deities for the opening of the north. The kami were then carried from Tokyo to Hakodate and on to Sapporo, and it took some moving about before they settled here on the slope facing Maruyama. Emperor Meiji was added as a fourth in 1964. The grounds run to 18 hectares of woodland, and what is striking to anyone arriving from the rest of Japan is that the big trees are kashiwa, the daimyo oak, rather than camphor or cedar. Kashiwa is a northern tree with enormous leaves that go brown and hang on all winter instead of falling, which is why it stands for continuity and why the leaf is used to wrap rice cakes at boys' festival. This one is 4.2 metres round and 24 metres tall, on the path between the third torii and the worship hall, and it is probably the largest here, though the source notes that big kashiwa are scattered all over these grounds and it may have missed one.