When force is applied to a thick branch, the wood will always try to split somewhere. Wrapping with Raffia means reading those vulnerable points in advance and guarding them. Toshifumi Sato works through an actual branch step by step — from choosing anchor points to the direction of each wrap and where the layers overlap.
Before bending a branch, you wrap it with Raffia. Asked why, you could say 'for protection' — and that would be true. But it is not the whole story.
When force is applied to a thick branch, the wood will always try to split somewhere. Push it forward and the back side is at risk; bend it right and the left side threatens to give way — the tree already carries within it the place where it is meant to break. Wrapping with Raffia means reading that 'point of potential splitting' ahead of time and guarding it. Before memorizing any procedure, you need an eye that can read the flow of force through space.
No matter how carefully you wrap a section with nothing to grip, Raffia remains just a strip of cloth. Driving a screw into the Shari and Jin — only once you decide where to start does the wrapping become true protection.
Seeing through work that does not function, and choosing the method that reliably holds — the accumulation of those judgments lifts technique into design.
Force concentrates at the base — the origin of the branch. The first wrap matters most — this is not about procedure, it is about awareness. Identify the single point where force must be contained, and begin there. That mindset does not change whether you are Wiring, Pruning, or anything else.
Do not stop short. Work long, all the way to the tip, with no gaps. The density of the Raffia is, directly, the strength of the protection.
The base of the branch, the space between the Twin Trunk Style, the upper side of each branch — by tracing the vulnerable points in words before you begin, the hands no longer hesitate. Judgment comes before action, and imagination comes before judgment.
The habit of organizing your own thinking and shaping it into words you can pass to another person. When an invisible judgment is put into language, it becomes something that can — for the first time — be carried forward by the next person.
Bending a heavy branch and protecting the tree. Which you think about first changes how your hands move.
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