Asama Jinja

Asama Jinja.

In the small valley of Yamanashi, looking out toward Mount Fuji rising in the distance, stands a shrine that may be two thousand years old.

Inside the grounds, two cedar trees have grown together, their roots fused at the ground, their trunks separating, then twining again as they reach upward. They are believed to be over twelve hundred years old. Local people call them the Husband and Wife Cedar.

Couples come here to ask for the strength of long marriage. New parents come to ask for the welfare of their children. Those who have lost someone come, sometimes silently, just to stand in front of the trees.

The trees do not know any of this. They simply continue to grow.

But somehow, year after year, the people of this valley have brought their most important moments to this spot. The births and the partings and the long quiet years between. The pattern, small and unheroic, has continued for so long that it has worn its own kind of channel into the earth here.

Mount Fuji is visible on clear days, framed perfectly between the trees of the avenue.

The mountain has been there forever. The cedars have been here since before any of us. The shrine has held the space between for almost two thousand years.

Stand quietly between the two cedars. You are inside something larger than your own life.