What is the oldest tree in Shingu?
Shingu's only mapped tree, and its oldest, is the Sacred Nagi of Kumano Hayatama Taisha, a Nagi tree (Nageia nagi) reportedly the largest of its kind in Japan, about 17.6 metres tall with a trunk 4.45 metres round at chest height. It stands on the public approach path inside Kumano Hayatama Taisha, one of the three grand shrines of Kumano Sanzan in Wakayama Prefecture, part of the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage network.
Tradition credits the tree to Taira no Shigemori, a Heike-clan samurai said to have planted it in 1159 after praying at the shrine for victory before marching to suppress the Heiji Rebellion, using its own leaves as a battle charm. Designated a national Natural Monument in 1940, it is one of only a handful of Nagi trees so designated individually rather than as part of a grove. Nagi is a broad-leafed conifer unrelated to the pines and cedars common on Japanese shrine grounds, and this specimen is male. Up close the trunk does not read as one clean cylinder: deep grooves run its length, and from most angles it looks like several stems fused together, though all are confirmed to be one tree. Named to New Japan's 100 Famous Trees in 1990. In 1972 a sapling grown from it was planted in Okinawa to mark the prefecture's return to Japan, a living link rather than only an old legend. The shrine is a core constituent of the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage network, which carries UNESCO World Heritage status. Free to see on the approach path, about 15 minutes on foot from JR Shingu Station.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.