Yono no Okaya

By the temple's own history, this nutmeg-yew went into the ground in the 1030s, and four hundred years later, in the Oei era, it was already known as the largest tree in the Kanto plain and used by travellers as a landmark. That is tradition rather than measurement, and Saitama City's cultural properties page records it as tradition. Nobody has counted the rings. What has been measured, in a 1988 survey: 21.5 metres tall, a trunk about seven metres round, a root spread of 13.5 metres, forking into two limbs less than two metres above the ground. Both the city and the national Agency for Cultural Affairs describe the tree as vigorous. It has been a National Natural Monument since 25 July 1932. It is not in Tokyo. It stands in Suzuya, in Saitama City, about twenty-one kilometres north of the centre and a short walk from Minami-Yono station, which makes it a half-day rather than an afternoon. You will find it in the Konpira hall precinct on the south side of Myogyoji temple, and by local tradition the hall is there because of the tree: a Kamakura-period account holds that the kaya was enshrined as the sacred tree of the deity Konpira-ten, and the site is still worshipped as Kayagi Konpira. Torreya nucifera is a slow, dense evergreen conifer with the reputation of taking centuries to get anywhere. It looks much the same in February as in August.