The sakaki is the evergreen tree whose branches are the standard offering and ritual plant of Shinto, an unassuming broadleaf evergreen held sacred as a vehicle by which the kami is approached. Its glossy branches are set in vases before the sanctuary, used to adorn sacred space, and, most importantly, made into the tamagushi, the branch of sakaki dressed with paper streamers or strips of cloth that a worshipper or priest offers to the kami by presenting it at the altar with a bow, one of the central acts of formal shrine worship. The tree's evergreen constancy suits it to the sacred, and its very name is popularly connected with the idea of the boundary of the divine or of a flourishing tree. Where another tradition might offer flowers or incense, Shinto offers the living green branch of the sakaki, and cultivated supplies of it are grown to meet the constant ritual demand.
Facts
Use
Who May Handle ItClergy or ordained officiants only 1 Offered by the priest in shrine ritual ConsecrationNot consecrated; an instrument, not a consecrated object 2 Physical Form
MaterialEvergreen branch (Cleyera japonica) 1 Learn More
The Evergreen Offered to the Kami
The sakaki is the evergreen tree whose branches are the standard offering and ritual plant of Shinto, an unassuming broadleaf evergreen held sacred as the proper offering to the kami.
The branch that is offered
Branches of sakaki are the ordinary vegetal offering in Shinto worship: decked with paper streamers and strips of cloth they become the tamagushi, the offering branch that priest and worshipper present to the kami with a bow, and sprigs of the evergreen stand in vases on the household shrine and are used to adorn the sacred space. The plant is thus woven through the ritual of the tradition, from the great shrine to the home, as the standard green offering, and its use in this way is one of the constants of Shinto practice.
Why the evergreen
The choice of an evergreen carries meaning: its unfading green through the year suits it to the marking of the sacred and the enduring, and evergreens have widely been associated with the presence of the divine and with life that does not die. The sakaki grows in the warm-temperate forests of Japan, and where the true plant does not grow other evergreens are substituted, but the association of the sacred offering with the living evergreen branch is constant. That so ordinary a plant should be the fixed ritual offering is characteristic of Shinto, in which the natural world, a tree, a rock, a waterfall, a mountain, is the ordinary bearer and object of the sacred, and the humble sakaki branch is the everyday instance of it.
Grown for the Purpose, Not Simply Found in the Woods
Sakaki is a living plant offering rather than a manufactured object, and because shrines need a steady supply of fresh branches rather than a one time purchase, a number of shrines maintain their own sakaki groves specifically to guarantee that supply, treating the tree as cultivated stock for ritual use rather than something gathered incidentally from nearby forest.
Who cuts and presents it
Priests cut and arrange branches for the altar, and a formal tamagushi offering, a sakaki branch bound with shide paper streamers, is presented at shrine ceremonies in a specific order rather than by whoever happens to be present, the officiating priest typically presenting first, followed by honored guests, and then the general congregation in turn, an order that reflects rank within the ceremony rather than the order people happen to arrive.
Wilting and replacement
A wilted sakaki branch is simply replaced with a fresh cutting, removed and disposed of without the elaborate fire ceremony given to paper talismans, since the plant material itself carries no accumulated blessing the way an inscribed ofuda or omamori does, its role is to be fresh and living at the moment of offering rather than to be preserved afterward.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Element Of
Branches of the evergreen are offered at the altar, and the offering of one is the ordinary act of a worshipper at a formal rite.
Related To
Ritual objects can act as yorishiro, including a branch of sakaki.
Sources
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