It acts as the hinpun for the whole town: the wall that screens the entrance and turns spirits away.
It stands in the middle of the road, at the entrance to the centre of Nago, and cars drive round it. It is nineteen metres tall and its crown is twenty-seven metres across. In Okinawan architecture the hinpun is the stone screen placed between the gate and the house, and it does two things at once: it stops people seeing inside and keeps evil spirits out. This tree does that job for an entire town, and people treat it as a sacred tree. Since 2002, when a typhoon tilted it, it has had a steel scaffold.
A monumental banyan in the centre of Nago, a national Natural Monument since 2 September 1997 and a prefectural one since 19 October 1956. The 文化庁 gives it a height of nineteen metres, a circumference of 10.1 metres at breast height, a crown of twenty-seven metres and an estimated age of two hundred and forty years.
ℹ️ You look at it from the road, at any time, free of charge. There is a free car park nearby.
Holidays in Japan? Plan them with us.Over 2,000 real places, a day-by-day itinerary.FreeOpen the map →Sources: online.bunka.go.jp · nago-tic.com
Nearby
Orion Happy Park400 mphoto by othree · CC BY 2.0
Neo Park Okinawa2.7 kmphoto by Collage made by Daiju Azuma · CC BY-SA 4.0
Todoroki Falls2.8 kmphoto by 次田和宏 · CC BY 3.0
Michi no Eki Kyoda4.2 kmphoto by Kugel · CC BY-SA 3.0