Ōyamazumi Jinja

Oyamazumi Jinja.

On a small island in the Inland Sea, halfway between the main island of Honshu and the island of Shikoku, this shrine has stood at the center of Japan's most important sea route for nearly two thousand years.

For centuries, the warriors who controlled the Inland Sea would stop here before any major engagement. They would dedicate their armor and their swords to the shrine. Survivors would return after victory, leaving more.

Walk into the shrine's treasure house. You are looking at, by some counts, eighty percent of all the surviving samurai armor and weapons designated as National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties in Japan.

Eighty percent. In one place. On one small island.

The objects are arranged quietly, in glass cases. The colors are still vivid — orange, deep blue, dark green silk thread, lacquered iron. Each suit was once worn by a man going into a place where his life was no longer his to control.

In the middle of the shrine grounds stands a camphor tree said to be twenty-six hundred years old. Its trunk measures eleven meters around. One person cannot reach across it. Two cannot. The tree was already ancient when the warriors arrived.

Place your palms on the bark. Stand still for a moment.

The tree has been here longer than anything in the treasure house. It outlasted the warriors. It will outlast us.

That is what trees do, when we let them.