The Great Ginkgo of Oji Shrine

The air raids of 1945 took the shrine, its halls and its other old trees. The ginkgo is what is left. Oji Shrine burned on one of the nights Tokyo burned, and the large camphor that once stood here went with the buildings; this tree came through and is now the biggest living thing on the grounds at 24 metres. The Toshima clan founded the shrine in the Genko era, between 1321 and 1324, and by the shrine's own account the ginkgo went in around the time of the founding, which is where the figure of roughly 600 years comes from. That is the shrine's claim about this particular tree rather than a ring count, so read it as tradition. Tokyo made it a designated Natural Monument in 1939; the registers say March and one local account says May, which is the sort of disagreement nobody is going to settle now. Its girth is the livelier argument. The trunk measures 5.2 metres round today, while a 1924 account of the same tree records 6.36 metres, and we cannot tell which way the difference runs: dieback, a different measuring height, or a number copied wrong somewhere. Both figures stand here until somebody with a tape settles it. The shrine is one of the Tokyo Ten pilgrimage circuit, three minutes from the station.