Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

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.