Sakaki - Linguistic Background

Linguistic Background

The Japanese word sakaki is written 榊 with a kanji character that combines ki 木 "tree; wood" and kami 神 "spirit; god", depicting "sacred tree; divine tree". The lexicographer Michael Carr notes,

In modern Japanese, sakaki is written 榊 with a doubly exceptional logograph. It is an ideograph (in the proper sense of 'logograph representing an idea' rather than loosely 'Chinese character; logograph') and is a kokuji 国字 'Japanese logograph.' Ideograms and kokuji are two of the rarest logographic types, each constituting a small percentage of a typical written Japanese sample. First, the idea of sakaki is expressed with a melding of boku or ki 木 'tree' and shin or kami 神 'god; divine, sacred' ; comparable to a graphic fusion of the word shinboku 神木 'sacred tree.' Second, the sakaki 榊 ideograph is a kokuji 'national logograph' rather than a usual kanji 漢字 'Chinese logograph' borrowing. Kokuji often denote Japanese plants and animals not native to China, and thus not normally written with Chinese logographs. (1995:11)

Sakaki 榊 first appears in the (12th century) Konjaku Monogatarishū, but two 8th-century transcriptions are 賢木 "sage tree" (Kojiki, tr. Chamberlain 1981:64 "pulling up by pulling its roots a true cleyera japonica with five hundred from the Heavenly Mount Kagu") and 坂木 "slope tree" (Nihon Shoki, tr. Aston 1896:42–43, "True Sakaki tree of the Heavenly Mt. Kagu"). Sakaki 賢木 or 榊 is the title of Chapter 10 in The Tale of Genji (ca. 1021). It comes from this context.

"May I at least come up to the veranda?" he asked, starting up the stairs. The evening moon burst forth and the figure she saw in its light was handsome beyond describing. Not wishing to apologize for all the weeks of neglect, he pushed a branch of the sacred tree in under the blinds. "With heart unchanging as this evergreen, This sacred tree, I enter the sacred gate." She replied: "You err with your sacred tree and sacred gate. No beckoning cedars stand before my house." And he: "Thinking to find you here with the holy maidens, I followed the scent of the leaf of the sacred tree." Though the scene did not encourage familiarity, he made bold to lean inside the blinds. (tr. Seidensticker 1976:187)

The etymology of sakaki 榊 is uncertain. With linguistic consensus that the -ki suffix denotes 木 "tree", the two most probable etymologies are either sakae-ki "evergreen tree" (from sakae 栄え "flourishing; luxuriant; prosperous") or sakai-ki "boundary tree" (from sakai 境 "boundary; border"). Carr (1995:13) cites Japanese tradition and historical phonology to support the latter etymon. Shinto shrines are traditionally encircled with shinboku 神木 "sacred trees". In reconstructed Old Japanese, sakaki < sakakī and sakai "boundary" were "monograde" (一段) while sakae "flourishing" was "bigrade" (二段).