Explore "Jiu-Roku-Zakura" by Lafcadio Hearn on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Uso no yona,- / 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.