Mumaya Sanbonmatsu

The name means three pines. There is one tree. Mumaya Sanbonmatsu is a single Japanese red pine that divides about two metres above the ground into three trunks, a fork the surveyor who recorded it compared to Neptune's trident. All three run the full height of the tree and all three carry foliage to the crown. It stands 21 metres tall and measures between 3.3 and 3.5 metres round below the split, the lower figure from Takayama City's own monument list and the higher from the Environment Agency's giant-tree survey. The same two sources put its age at about 320 years and at 300 or more, so three centuries is the honest reading. It grew up in one of the snowiest inhabited valleys in Japan, on the road over Matsunoki Pass toward Hirugano. What was once a mountain track is now National Route 158, and the pine stands on the shoulder of it, roughly 1.5 kilometres below the pass. Takayama listed it as a city natural monument on 13 October 1971, and the marker beside it still carries the date. There is no station and no bus. You arrive by car, which is also how you reach the Shokawa-zakura, 8.7 kilometres further along the same road. Pull over, and the three trunks are in front of you.