Yogo no Matsu

Eight metres tall, and it takes eighty-two wooden props to hold it up. The Yogo Pine at Zenyoji in Edogawa grows sideways rather than upward: the limbs split about two metres off the ground and reach roughly twenty-eight metres east to west and thirty-one north to south, covering over eight hundred square metres. It is reputed to spread wider than any other pine in Japan. It became a National Natural Monument in September 2011, the country's top tier of protection, though Tokyo had already designated it back in 1926. It is older than the temple standing behind it. Zenyoji is traditionally dated to about 1500; the pine is said to be over six hundred years old, and a temple manuscript of 1745 already describes an old pine on the site. Nobody knows who named it. Yogo means a deity appearing briefly in worldly form. The best story about it is an argument. For decades it contested the title of Japan's finest pine with the Okano Matsu in Kagawa, and in 1980, after a row broke out at the temple, a sumo chief referee was asked to settle the matter. He ruled the two joint yokozuna. The plaque recording that verdict still hangs under the branches. The Kagawa tree died in 1993. This one nearly went too. A pond filled in nearby choked its roots from the 1970s on, and a ten-year soil and drainage rescue finished in July 2011, weeks before the national listing.