Kayashima Shrine

Kayashima Shrine is a shrine located under the elevated tracks at Kayashima Station in Neyagawa City, just about a 1-minute walk from Keihan Kayashima Station. Until the mid-Edo period, this area was a sandbar in the Neyagawa River covered with plants such as reeds, but it was later reclaimed and has long been cherished by local residents as their guardian shrine. In 1972, construction began on the Keihan Railway’s elevated quadruple-track project, and the station was built directly above the shrine. The sacred camphor tree that remains today is a massive tree—about 700 years old, roughly 20 meters tall, with a trunk circumference of around 7 meters—and is still beloved by the community as a sacred tree. During station construction, strong requests from local residents led to the tree being preserved, and the station was built around it so that the tree passes up through the station structure without being cut down. The result is a rare sight in Japan: the tree appears to envelop the station, and it can still be seen from the station platform. This unique combination of modern infrastructure and a giant tree received the Osaka Urban Landscape Architecture Award (Encouragement Prize) in 1983 and was also selected as one of Osaka’s “100 Greenery Selections.”