What is the oldest tree in Ueda?
Aizen Katsura, in the grounds of Kitamuki Kannon temple at Bessho Onsen. Its age is genuinely disputed: published figures run from over 300 years to around 1,200, and none of them comes with a measurement attached. It is the only tree mapped here, published alone under the single-tree exception because the tree itself, not a list, is the reason to come.
Aizen Katsura takes its name from Kawaguchi Matsutaro's 1938 novel Aizen Katsura, filmed the same year, whose heart-shaped-leaf romance was set at this tree. Nagano Prefecture listed it as a natural monument in 1939, a year after the story made it famous, and the city of Ueda re-listed it as one of its own in 1974. It reaches 22 metres on a trunk 5.8 metres round, splitting upward into the crowd of vertical stems old katsura grow instead of one clean bole. What nobody has pinned down is the age: sources give over 300 years, 600 to 650, over 1,000 and about 1,200, agreeing only on 'several hundred'. The heart shape of its leaves is why couples still make the walk up, treating a botanical accident as a promise of luck in love, a tradition the film only amplified rather than started. It stands out in the open, in the temple grounds rather than behind anything, free to anyone who arrives during daylight, about a quarter of an hour on foot up from Bessho Onsen Station. If you know what actually dates it, tell us.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.