The Holy Cherry Tree (Japanese folktale)
"The Holy Cherry Tree" is a Japanese folktale set during the feudal Tokugawa period, centering on a young woman named Hanano, who rebels against her father's plans to arrange her marriage. As the only daughter of a wealthy merchant, Sodayu, Hanano is expected to comply with her father's wishes, yet she yearns for romantic autonomy and is deeply concerned that her father will choose someone she cannot love. In her quest for a suitable husband, Hanano seeks guidance from her servant, Yuka, who advises her to pray to Musubi-no-Kami, the god of love, at a local shrine for twenty-one days.
On the final day of her prayers, a mysterious and handsome young man appears before her, intensifying Hanano's feelings of infatuation. However, complications arise when another suitor, Tokunosuke, who is also interested in Hanano and has the approval of her father, becomes aware of her secret affections. The tale culminates in a confrontation that reveals the young man as a holy spirit residing in the cherry tree, leading Hanano to wrestle with her emotions and ultimately choose a life of devotion to the temple over earthly love. The story reflects the tension between individual desires and societal expectations, emphasizing themes of love, duty, and spirituality within the rich tapestry of Japanese culture.
The Holy Cherry Tree (Japanese folktale)
Author: Traditional
Time Period: 1501 CE–1700 CE; 1901 CE–1950 CE
Country or Culture: Japan
Genre: Folktale
Overview
“The Holy Cherry Tree of Musubi-no-Kami Temple”is a Japanese folktale about the rebellion of a young woman against her father’s wish to choose a husband for her. The tale pits seventeen-year-old Hanano’s interests and desire for romantic and sexual self-determination against the economic and patriarchal interests of her father, Sodayu. Set some centuries before the present, at an indeterminate time during Japan’s feudal Tokugawa period, “The Holy Cherry Tree” centers on a merchant family’s clash in a battle of wills that is rather unusual for traditional society.
When Hanano—referred to as O Hanano throughout, the O being an honorific—turns seventeen, her merchant father, Sodayu, takes it upon himself to seek a suitable husband for her. As Hanano’s mother has died, her father feels it is his right alone to find a perfect match. Sodayu assumes that once he has found the appropriate candidate, his daughter will simply “approve of him, for it will be [her] duty to marry him” (Smith 203). Hanano, however, is aghast at the prospect, fearing that her father will choose a man she cannot love. She is quite determined about the qualities she looks for in her potential husband, and she does not trust her father to find her such a man.
In desperation, Hanano turns to her servant Yuka, who counsels her to pray for twenty-one days in a row at the local shrine of Musubi-no-Kami, the god of love, in order to make her romantic wishes come true. Hanano does as advised. On the last day of her prayers, a handsome youth appears next to the trunk of the shrine’s holy cherry tree, called Kanzakura (Kansakura in contemporary transliteration). The youth silently offers Hanano a branch of cherry blossoms and walks away.
“You can go to the temple and pray at the shrine of Musubi-no-Kami, the God of Love. Pray him that the husband your father finds may be handsome and after your own heart. They say that if you pray at this shrine twenty-one days in succession you will obtain the kind of lover you want.”
“The Holy Cherry Tree of Musubi-no-Kami Temple”Hanano is smitten by the young man, but trouble brews as a young man named Tokunosuke calls on Sodayu. Tokunosuke has fallen in love with Hanano, and Sodayu finds Tokunosuke very agreeable, as he is from a wealthy family. However, compared to the young man under the cherry tree, Hanano finds Tokunosuke wanting. She dares to defy her father. Later, Tokunosuke spies on Hanano, secretly observing another meeting between her and the young man. He then finds out the true nature of the mysterious youth, leading to the climax of the folktale.
“The Holy Cherry Tree” is one of fifty-seven Japanese folktales collected by English amateur naturalist Richard Gordon Smith and published in his anthology Ancient Tales and Folklore of Japan (1908). Smith had traveled from England to Japan in 1897, and he stayed there until his death in 1918, apart from short return visits home. With the help of his translator, Yuki Egawa, Smith gathered stories from local storytellers. Yuki Egawa transcribed the tales and provided a first translation, which Smith then edited.
An analysis informed by cultural criticism, new historicism, and feminism reveals the reasons and forces behind Hanano’s rebellion against her father and grounds the father-daughter conflict within the social structure and fabric of feudal Tokugawa society. A cultural and theological analysis highlights how the beliefs of traditional Japanese Shinto religion are closely interwoven in the dramatic action of the folktale.
Summary
The title of “The Holy Cherry Tree”refers to “a magnificent old cherry tree” (Smith 202) that stands on the grounds of a temple housing a shrine to Musubi-no-Kami, the Shinto god (or rather, spirit) of love. It is here that a strong-willed young woman, Hanano, prays for a husband of her own liking. The storytakes place during Japan’s Tokugawa period, which began in 1603 and lasted until the Meiji restoration of 1868. It is set in the village of Kagami in the historic Mimasaka Province, part of what later became Okayama Prefecture. This area lies in the west of Japan’s central island of Honshu.
The tale opens with a reference to the temple at Kagami, which houses a shrine to the god of love. The temple is also the site of an ancient cherry tree referred to as Kanzakura, literally meaning “holy cherry tree” (with sakura the contemporary transliteration of the Japanese word for “cherry tree”). Living in Kagami is the crop trader Sodayu, who has become rich by buying and reselling the crops of the villagers. He is a widower with only one child, his seventeen-year-old daughter, Hanano.
Sodayu feels it is his duty to find an appropriate husband for his daughter. In turn, he expects that his daughter will approve of his choice and considers such approval to be her duty. Though she is outwardly submissive, Hanano soon turns to her favorite servant, Yuka, for help, describing her true feelings and concerns. Hanano, it turns out, has quite firm ideas of what her future husband should be like; she requires him to be a “handsome man . . . and not more than twenty-two years of age” (Smith 203). Asked by Hanano to help her in finding such a person, Yuka counsels her to pray to the god of love.
Hanano prays at the shrine to the god of love at the village temple. On the twenty-first day, as Hanano and Yuka walk beneath the Kanzakura tree, a handsome young man appears. He smiles at Hanano, bows, presents her with “a branch of cherry-blossom” (Smith 203), bows again, and walks away without uttering a word. Hanano is smitten. She believes the god of love has sent her this young man. She keeps the branch in a vase in her room, treasuring it, and asks Yuka to find out more about the handsome young man.
Yuka is unable to learn more about the man from the temple. However, she does discover that a young man from the village, Tokunosuke, has fallen in love with Hanano. When he finds out that Sodayu is looking for a suitable husband for his daughter, Tokunosuke decides to ask him for Hanano’s hand in marriage. Tokunosuke formally calls upon Sodayu in the early morning, and Hanano serves them tea. After Tokunosuke leaves, Sodayu informs Hanano that he has chosen Tokunosuke for her husband and explains his reasons: “He has money. His father is my friend, and he has secretly loved you for some months” (Smith 205). Faced with this paternal dictate, Hanano leaves the room in tears. When her father asks Yuka why she is crying, Yuka decides that it is in Hanano’s best interest to tell the truth. Sodayu then tells his daughter that she must either show her secret lover or allow Tokunosuke to woo her.
When Hanano meets Tokunosuke again, she tells him that she loves another man, even though she does not know his name. Tokunosuke is greatly insulted by the rejection and decides to spy on Hanano to find out more. In the afternoon, he follows Hanano and Yuka in secret as they meet the young man at the temple again. From below the cherry tree, the youth approaches Hanano. He smiles and gives her another branch of cherry blossoms, all without saying a word.
As soon as the two women have left, Tokunosuke turns upon Hanano’s suitor, threatening violence. However, the young man vanishes in a shower of cherry blossoms, and Tokunosuke hears “a strange moaning sound inside the cherry tree” (Smith 206). Tokunosuke is then confronted by a temple priest, who chides him for his violent behavior and informs him that “a holy spirit” lives in the sacred cherry tree and occasionally manifests itself as a young man (207). The priest forbids Tokunosuke to enter the temple ever again.
Tokunosuke reports his findings to Sodayu and Hanano. He hopes Hanano will agree to marry him now, reasoning, “She cannot marry a holy spirit!” However, Hanano blames herself, believing that she has committed a great sin by “falling in love with a god.” Instead of renouncing her unobtainable love, she prays for forgiveness and decides to devote herself to the temple, refusing to marry any man and “remain[ing] in the temple for the rest of her life, sweeping the grounds, and praying” (Smith 207). In the tale, there is no suggestion that the god appears to her ever again. “The Holy Cherry Tree” ends by affirming that the temple still stands at the time of the tale’s English publication in 1908. Richard Gordon Smith concludes that it is very likely that a new tree has been planted in the place of the original Kanzakura tree in order to continue to the tradition.
Bibliography
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