The god of trees, born in the great birthing of gods together with Kayanohime, goddess of the fields. The Kojiki names him Kukunochi; the Nihon Shoki writes him as Kukunochi in other characters.
'Kuku' is taken to mean a stem — something with a trunk that rises. He is the tree itself, made a god.
Nothing that reads as myth is told of him. His birth is recorded and he does not appear again.
Yet the chronicles set him beside the god of mountains and the goddess of fields. There are mountains, there are fields, and between them there are trees: trees were counted as a separate kami among the elements that make up a world. He has no deeds, perhaps, because he is a god of a condition rather than of an event.
Buildings, tools, vessels, boats, paper — most of Japanese daily life has been made from wood. That the god of trees has so little story is partly because trees were too ordinary to remark on.
What is most ordinary is least often named. His name was kept anyway.
Trees. Few shrines are dedicated to him alone, but he is enshrined alongside other kami at mountain shrines in forestry country and at shrines to Isotakeru.
Even where his name is not listed among enshrined kami, the pillars that hold up the hall, the torii, the offered sakaki branch, the object into which a god descends — a shrine is itself made of wood. This kami is at once something worshipped and the material through which worship is done.
An unremarkable stick: not broken, not burnt, not twisted — simply a branch.
The Bureau selects for this kami by the absence of distinguishing marks. Kukunochi settles on the stick that fits none of the other kami. When a stick asserts nothing beyond being a stick, it belongs to the god of trees.
Note: this section is the Bureau's own reading, not a record from the chronicles.
The share of issued certificates in which this kami appeared. It shifts as more sticks are appraised. Variant spellings are reconciled before counting.
No published certificate bears this kami yet.