I heard a rumor that there is a 'Living Jizo' carved into a tree somewhere in the Kiriyama Area of Ehime Prefecture, an area famous in connection to the Heike Legend. Intrigued, I visited the place on November 1st this year, and found that it indeed exists.
The wonderful thing about this jizo statue is the fact that it's carved into a living tree. There was another living jizo here about 300 years ago, but it decayed over time, so a sculptor from Kagawa Prefecture remade it in 1979, in a different living tree. Later, the same sculptor was invited to Spain to carve a jizo statue in a walnut tree on the Way of St. James (The Camino de Santiago).
