Page:Kwaidan; Stories and Studies of Strange Things - Hearn - 1904.djvu/163



Wakégōri, a district of the province of Iyo, 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 139