The Meoto Kusu

This is the youngest tree on this list by roughly six centuries, and also the one most people specifically travel here to touch. Two camphor trees were donated to Meiji Jingu when the shrine was built in 1920 to deify Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken, planted side by side just in front of the outer worship hall and bound together with a sacred straw rope, a shimenawa, that marks them as one connected being rather than two separate trees. They are called Meoto Kusu, the Married Couple Camphors, and generations of visitors have prayed here for good marriages and family harmony, a tradition now widened into a general wish for good relationships of any kind. Camphor trees can live over a thousand years, so at just over a century old these two are barely past childhood by the standards of their own species, let alone the 750-year ginkgo across town in Motoazabu. What they lack in age they make up in company: Meiji Jingu draws close to three million visitors in the first three days of January alone, more than any other shrine in Japan, and a large share detour past these two camphors on the way to the main hall.