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Myōkō-Togakushi Renzan NP, Nagano
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In this local Yao Bikuni tale, the pilgrim is a father: after his children eat mermaid flesh, grow scales and die, he travels from Wakasa to Togakushi, plants 3 cedars, and prays at all 3 shrines for 800 days.
One of the cedars—the northern tree marked “i”—splits high into 3 enormous stems, like bundled arrows. The shrine notes that visitors often mistake this single tree for the whole Three Cedars; the name belongs to the trio.
Local tradition carries these trees beyond Chusha: some of the 300 Japanese cedars lining the approach to nearby Okusha Shrine are said to have grown from branches of the Three Cedars.
The cedars do not stand in a row: they mark the corners of an almost equilateral triangle, about 72 m on each side, with Chusha’s great wooden torii at its center.
Nagano City designated all 3 as natural monuments on January 1, 2005. Its records show their heights are 38, 42 and 37 m, while their trunk girths are 9.90, 9.65 and 7.9 m.
