Shimokashiwa no Taihaku

This juniper was already more than 8 metres round when Japan made it a National Natural Monument in December 1924. Today its branches rest on a crowd of wooden props. The 1924 designation report measured it in the old units: 2 jo 7 shaku below a large burl about a metre up the trunk, roughly 8.2 metres, and 2 jo 1 shaku above it, about 6.4 metres. Later and larger figures have been published, but the 1924 ones are the only measurements we have been able to confirm. The tree is a Chinese juniper, ibuki in Japanese. A photograph from June 2016 shows it in full leaf, a huge conifer with fine scale foliage, its limbs held up by many poles, and a stone marker at its foot. One account says a Jizo statue has sat in a hollow at its base since 1783. Nobody has given it an age we could confirm. If you know where a reliable figure comes from, tell us. It stands on a small plot beside the road in Shimokashiwa, in Shikokuchuo, and you see it from the roadside; the photographs show no gate. Directions point to a drive along National Route 11, and you will want a car. The most recent dated photograph we know of is the one from 2016. It has stood here as a protected tree for a century, and if you pass, a new picture would tell us it still does.