Spirit in the Cherry-tree of the Sixteenth Day

Overview

Hearn’s Jiu-Roku-Zakura concerns an old cherry tree in Wakégōri, Iyo, said to flower only on the sixteenth day of the first lunar month, during the cold season. The narrator explicitly attributes its extraordinary life to a human ghost. This makes the account more specific than a general belief that unusually beautiful trees are sacred: a particular samurai’s life is said to have passed into this tree.

The tree had stood in the samurai’s family garden for generations. After outliving his children, he loses his last cherished companion when it withers and dies. Neighbours plant a replacement, but it cannot console him. On the sixteenth day of the first month he asks the old tree to bloom again and offers his life in its place. He dies beneath it; the narrative says that his ghost enters the tree, which blossoms that same hour. Its yearly flowering commemorates the event.

Hearn explains the story through migawari ni tatsu, acting as a substitute, and reports a belief that life could be transferred to another being through divine favour. The account does not name the samurai or describe a separately visible human apparition after his death. This is a historical literary account of sacrificial life-transfer and an inhabited tree, not a botanical verification of the flowering date or a claim that every cherry tree houses such a spirit.

Origins & earliest records

Japanese tales retold in English by Lafcadio Hearn

Records & interpretation

Entire named story and its separate notes read, with original and digitizer notes distinguished.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

1. 01

   Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

   Lafcadio Hearn · 1904

   Jiu-Roku-Zakura; Project Gutenberg1210 transcription; original work1904, no scanned pagination assumed

Family & connections

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Primary records and illustrations

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

1. Historical literary retellingHearn, Kwaidan, Jiu-Roku-ZakuraResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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