Tamagushi

Tamagushi (^?, literally "jewel skewer") 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 or kannushi priests.

The Japanese word tamagushi is usually written with the kanji tama "jade; gem; jewel; precious; ball; bead" and kushi "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 "bamboo slip; (divination) lot; written oracle; raffle; lottery" instead of kushi. The (ca. 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)

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