Furutsubaki-no-rei

What it is

The Furutsubaki-no-rei is a yōkai, one of Japan's many spirits and strange beings, said to make its home in a camellia tree that has grown old. In picture and story it steps out as a lovely woman in a kimono, though its true shape is described as a gnarled trunk bearing red, misshapen heads. Travellers are said to be drawn in by her beauty or moved to pity by her weeping; most are frightened away when they come close, while a few vanish with her altogether. A cry after dark is heard as an omen that trouble is coming to the village or town. Toriyama Sekien drew the spirit in his Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki, and camellia-spirit tales were widely told from the era of kaidan storytelling through the Bunsei era.

Where it comes from

Sekien pictured it in his Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki, a printed gallery of yōkai, and accounts of camellia spirits circulated from the era of kaidan storytelling to the Bunsei era. Local tradition places the creature's birth in a village near the Kuju Plateau. There a grand tree bloomed for decades until villagers began stripping its flowers for ornament; left to wither, the tree was said to fill with rage, bloom more beautifully than ever, and kill those who came back for the blossoms. After a woman returned screaming that a ghost had taken her lover, survivors spoke of a beautiful woman standing by the tree. The folklore itself has been traced to the strange image the flower carries.

How it is done

The tales show a consistent pattern of enticement. A young woman appears beside a traveller on the road, beautiful in a kimono, or weeps so mournfully that the hearer pities her. Those who approach the tree are usually driven off in fright; in rarer cases a victim disappears with the spirit. In the Yamagata story the woman breathes on a merchant, turning him into a bee that follows her into a camellia bloom; when the flower drops, the bee inside is dead, and even sutras chanted by a priest cannot restore him. A Higo tale adds that a pestle carved from camellia wood is said to bring the tree rebirth.

Tools and materials

The marks of this spirit come from the tree itself: an aged camellia, its red blossoms, and the kimono of the woman who steps out from it. The camellia sheds its flowers whole, petals and all, where other flowers scatter petal by petal. A red bloom dropping from a branch was likened to a head leaving the neck at a sword stroke, and this likeness is said to give the flower its hint of death and the spirit its grim look. In one tale the tree grows over a burial mound that neighbours had restored.

Peoples and places

Stories cluster in particular places. In Kisakata, Nikaho City, Akita Prefecture, a camellia at Kanmanji temple was heard weeping at midnight; misery soon struck the temple, and the tree, said to be 700 years old, became known as the Night Crying Camellia and counted among the temple's seven mysteries. In Aohaka Village, now part of Ogaki City in Gifu Prefecture, a tree planted over a mended burial mound was said to shine by the roadside as a woman, earning the name Masquerade Camellia. Higo Province, today's Kumamoto, kept the Kishinbo tale of the camellia pestle. And in Yamagata, a Tenmei-era account called Tsubakijo tells of the merchant who became a bee.

What people believe

Behind the tales stands the idea that an old tree can gather a spirit within it: the Furutsubaki-no-rei is said to take up residence in a camellia that has stood for years, and to develop out of it. In the Kuju Plateau story the tree's feelings matter, constant picking leaving it withered and full of rage, and that rage becoming a deadly lure. The night cry works as an omen for the whole settlement, warning before tragedy arrives. Around the same flower hangs a quieter rule: blossoms are not carried to people staying in hospital, because the petals leaving all together recall a death.

Compare and confuse

The same idea of a camellia that acts carries different local names: the Night Crying Camellia at the Akita temple, the Masquerade Camellia of Gifu, the Kishinbo pestle tale of Higo Province, and the Tsubakijo ghost story of Yamagata. The being belongs to Japan's wider yōkai lore, catalogued by Toriyama Sekien, and to kaidan, the tradition of told ghost stories.

Today

Part of the folklore still guides behaviour: camellia flowers are not taken as gifts to people staying in hospital, since the sight of them dropping whole brings human death to mind. The Kanmanji tree is also still there, said to be 700 years old, and is reckoned one of the temple's mysteries. Elsewhere the yōkai lives on chiefly in story, through Sekien's picture and local accounts such as Yamagata's Tsubakijo.

Questions people ask about Furutsubaki-no-rei

Good reading and sources

• Furutsubaki-no-rei on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data