“The Pine of Takekuma is truly an amazing sight. The trunk forks into two just above the ground,
confirming that this is just how the old tree must have looked. I thought immediately of the priest
Nōin. Long ago, a nobleman, newly appointed to serve as Governor of Mutsu, had felled the
tree and used the wood as pilings for a bridge over the Natori River. Nōin wrote in a poem, ‘No
trace is left now of the pine’. I was told that, generation after generation, the pine had been felled,
yet a new one replanted. After perhaps a thousand years, the present pine is still quite perfect in
shape.”