Jiu-roku-zakura

Saki ni keri!

In Wakégōri, a district of the province of Iyo (1), there is a very

ancient and famous cherry-tree, called _Jiu-roku-zakura_, or “the

Cherry-tree of the Sixteenth Day,” because it blooms every year upon

the sixteenth day of the first month (by the old lunar calendar),—and

only upon that day. Thus the time of its flowering is the Period of

Great Cold,—though the natural habit of a cherry-tree is to wait for

the spring season before venturing to blossom. But the

_Jiu-roku-zakura_ blossoms with a life that is not—or, at least, that

was not originally—its own. There is the ghost of a man in that tree.

He was a samurai of Iyo; and the tree grew in his garden; and it used

to flower at the usual time,—that is to say, about the end of March or

the beginning of April. He had played under that tree when he was a

child; and his parents and grandparents and ancestors had hung to its

blossoming branches, season after season for more than a hundred years,

bright strips of colored paper inscribed with poems of praise. He

himself became very old,—outliving all his children; and there was

nothing in the world left for him to love except that tree. And lo! in

the summer of a certain year, the tree withered and died!

Exceedingly the old man sorrowed for his tree. Then kind neighbors

found for him a young and beautiful cherry-tree, and planted it in his

garden,—hoping thus to comfort him. And he thanked them, and pretended

to be glad. But really his heart was full of pain; for he had loved the

old tree so well that nothing could have consoled him for the loss of

it.

At last there came to him a happy thought: he remembered a way by which

the perishing tree might be saved. (It was the sixteenth day of the

first month.) Along he went into his garden, and bowed down before the

withered tree, and spoke to it, saying: “Now deign, I beseech you, once

more to bloom,—because I am going to die in your stead.” (For it is

believed that one can really give away one’s life to another person, or

to a creature or even to a tree, by the favor of the gods;—and thus to

transfer one’s life is expressed by the term _migawari ni tatsu_, “to

act as a substitute.”) Then under that tree he spread a white cloth,

and divers coverings, and sat down upon the coverings, and performed

_hara-kiri_ after the fashion of a samurai. And the ghost of him went

into the tree, and made it blossom in that same hour.

And every year it still blooms on the sixteenth day of the first month,

in the season of snow.