Tamagushi
is a form of Shinto offering made from a sakaki-tree branch decorated with shide strips of washi paper, silk, or cotton. At Japanese weddings, funerals, miyamairi and other ceremonies at Shinto shrines, tamagushi are ritually presented to the kami (spirits or gods) by parishioners, shrine maidens or kannushi priests. Linguistic history The Japanese word tamagushi is usually written with the kanji tama 玉 "jade; gem; jewel; precious; ball; bead" and kushi 串 "string together; skewer; spit; stick", or sometimes written 玉ぐし with hiragana since the official Tōyō kanji do not include 串. The earliest recorded transcription of tamagushi is 玉籤, using kuji 籤 "bamboo slip; (divination) lot; written oracle; raffle; lottery" instead of kushi. The (c. 720 CE) Nihon Shoki "Chronicles of Japan", which repeatedly mentions a 500-branched masakaki 真榊 "true sakaki" tree (tr. Aston 1896:43, 47, 121), is the locus classicus for tamagushi 玉籤. This mytho-history records a legend that when the sun-goddess Amaterasu got angry with her brother Susano'o and closed the door on the "Rock-cave of Heaven", the gods decorated a giant sakaki tree in order to lure the sun out of the darkness. Then all the Gods were grieved at this, and forthwith caused Ama no nuka-do no Kami, the ancestor of the Be ["clan; guild"] of mirror-makers, to make a mirror, Futo-dama, the ancestor of the Imibe [weavers' clan], to make offerings, and Toyo-tama, the ancestor of the Be of jewel-makers, to make jewels. They also caused Yama-Tuschi [Mountain-god] to procure eighty precious combs of the five-hundred-branched true sakaki tree, and Nu-dzuchi [Moor-god] to procure eighty precious combs of the five-hundred-branched Suzuki grass. (tr. Aston 1896:47) This "precious combs" translation derives from tama 玉 (tr. "Toyo-tama" and "jewels") and kushi 櫛 "comb", which is a Nihon Shoki graphic variant of kuji 籤 in the goddess named Tamakushi Hime 玉櫛姫 (tr. "jewel-comb" Aston 1896:62). The (c. 645–760 CE) Man'yōshū "Myriad Leaves Collection" does not use the word tamagushi but one poem (tr. Pierson 1929–1938:199) describes making it with paper mulberry: "I tie pure white strands of mulberry to the branches of the sacred tree". Some common tamagushi collocations include: tamagushi o sasageru 玉串を捧げる "offer a tamagushi" tamagushi hōnō 玉串奉納 "dedicate/offer tamagushi [in front of a shrine altar]" tamagushi-ryō 玉串料 "[cash] offerings for tamagushi [presented at a shrine]" Tamagushi has an uncommon secondary meaning of "name for the sakaki tree". The (c. 1439 CE) Shin Kokin Wakashū "New Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems" (tr. Carr 1995:8) contains the first occurrence, "Holding the ornamented tamagushi leaves". The sakaki (Cleyera japonica) is a flowering evergreen tree, which is considered sacred in Japanese mythology. In the present day, Shinto shrines often plant it as a sakaiki (境木 "boundary tree") to demarcate sanctified space. Sakaki is written with the kanji 榊, which graphically combines boku or ki 木 "tree; wood" and shin or kami 神 "spirit; god", compare Shinboku (神木 "sacred tree"). Carr (1995:11) characterizes 榊 as "a doubly exceptional logograph"; it is an ideograph "character representing an idea" (which