Sakaki Trees at Matsukami Shrine

A Sacred Grove on the Ridge Above Matsugami

On a wooded ridge south of Matsugami village in Tottori City, an ancient shrine forest harbours one of Japan's most distinctive evergreen groves. To reach it, visitors walk roughly 500 metres uphill from the southern edge of the village and climb a stone stairway said to number around 370 steps. The reward is the precinct of Matsugami Shrine, embraced by a stand of trees so unusual in its composition that the Japanese government designated it a National Natural Monument on 7 March 1944.

What makes this forest worth protecting is not its scale but its species. The valleys within the shrine grove are filled with sakaki (Cleyera japonica), a small evergreen that holds an exceptional place in Japanese religious life. Sakaki branches are used as tamagushi, the leafy offerings raised before the kami at almost every Shinto rite, from a newborn's first shrine visit to a marriage blessing. To find the same tree growing wild, in dense numbers, on the slopes immediately surrounding its own shrine is a rare alignment of botany and belief.

Why the Forest Is Protected

The designated area covers only part of the wider shrine grove, but it captures a clear vegetation pattern. Along the ridgeline and around the perimeter, the canopy is dominated by sudajii (Castanopsis sieboldii, a chestnut relative) and mochinoki (Ilex integra, a Japanese holly). Step down into the valleys cut into the hillside and the composition shifts: ura-jiro-gashi (Quercus salicina, a white-backed evergreen oak) and sakaki take over.

It is the sakaki stand in particular that drew the attention of botanists in the early Shōwa era. While individual sakaki trees grow throughout warm-temperate Japan, dense natural groves of the species are uncommon, and the grove at Matsugami is one of the very few of its kind to have received national heritage status. The 1944 designation recognised both that rarity and the broader integrity of the surrounding shrine forest, which has been spared the logging and conversion that altered most lowland woods in western Japan.

Sakaki itself reaches the northern edge of its natural Japanese range somewhere around Ibaraki and Ishikawa prefectures. Tottori sits comfortably within that range, but the cool, humid valleys of inland Inaba give the species particularly favourable growing conditions. The shrine grove has been treated as inviolable ground for centuries, which is why a forest of this maturity has survived in a region otherwise heavily worked for cedar and cypress timber.

The Sacred Tree Itself

For overseas readers unfamiliar with the plant, a brief introduction matters. Sakaki is a slender evergreen that reaches eight to ten metres at maturity, with thick, glossy leaves whose edges are smooth and slightly waxy. Small white five-petalled flowers open in early summer and turn pale yellow as they fade; the berries that follow ripen to a deep black in late autumn. Look closely at a sakaki branch and the leaves grow in two flat rows along the stem, fanning out horizontally in a way that makes them easy to identify even from a distance.

The cultural weight of the tree is greater than its modest stature suggests. The Chinese character for sakaki, 榊, is a Japanese-invented composite of 神 (kami, deity) and 木 (tree). One of the leading explanations of the name traces it to sakai-ki, the "boundary tree" marking the threshold between human and divine space. Branches placed in a household kami shelf are traditionally replaced on the first and fifteenth of every month, a practice still followed in many homes today.

Standing in the Matsugami grove, then, places a visitor inside the source material of a ritual that plays out every day across the country. The branches sold in supermarkets nationwide are usually imported from China, since domestic supply runs short; encountering the species in its natural setting, growing thickly under taller oaks, gives a sharper sense of why it came to be considered sacred at all.

What to Notice on a Visit

The climb to the shrine is steep in places, with the path twisting up the slope in tight switchbacks after passing the small Sakane Shrine partway up. A first inner gate, the zuijinmon, contains a pair of guardian deity statues visible through its lattice window. Just behind the gate stands the Hidehira-sugi, an enormous cedar named for the twelfth-century Ōshū warlord Fujiwara no Hidehira and counted among Tottori Prefecture's hundred designated notable trees. The cedar's deeply furrowed trunk and irregular silhouette make it the visual landmark of the upper precinct.

From the haiden (worship hall) at the top, the slope drops away to reveal a long view back toward central Tottori City. The sakaki stand itself flanks the approach in the valley sections, easily noticed by the dense, horizontal layering of dark green leaves at chest to head height beneath the taller trees. Visitors with an interest in plant identification can compare sakaki's smooth leaf margins directly against the finely toothed leaves of hisakaki (Eurya japonica), a related species often used as a sakaki substitute in colder regions of Japan.

The shrine itself is unstaffed. There is no admission charge, no closing time and no facilities for visitors beyond the path and the buildings. The walk up takes most people 30 to 40 minutes one way; sturdy shoes are essential, especially after rain.

Around the Site

Matsugami sits in the upper Sendai River valley south of central Tottori. The village is reached by local bus from Tottori Station, with the Sakane stop the most convenient drop-off; from there the trailhead is a short walk along the village road. Drivers can park near the bus stop and follow signs to the shrine entrance.

The wider area rewards visitors with time to spare. The Anzō Gorge to the south offers a riverside walk, and the small Anzō Shrine nearby is worth a brief stop. Further afield, the Wakasa-Kaidō post-town district preserves Edo-period townscape, and the famous Tottori Sand Dunes lie roughly 40 minutes by car back toward the coast. Shrine and grove are at their most photogenic in early summer, when fresh foliage is at its brightest, and again in late autumn, when the deciduous trees on the surrounding slopes turn while the sakaki and other evergreens hold their colour.