Who Is Aoyagi (willow spirit)?
A willow spirit who married a young samurai
Aoyagi is the beautiful girl in "The Story of Aoyagi" from Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan. She is really the spirit of a willow tree. She lived with her elderly parents in a cottage beside the willows in the mountains of Echizen.
When the young samurai Tomotada, sheltering from a snowstorm, tells her of his love in a poem, she answers with a poem of her own. With her parents' permission, she becomes his wife. In Kyoto she is taken into the Hosokawa household and the two are separated, but Lord Hosokawa, moved by Tomotada's poem, holds a new wedding for them, and they live happily.
One morning five years later, Aoyagi suddenly falls ill and says, "I am the spirit of a willow tree. Right now my tree is being cut down," then collapses. When Tomotada lifts her up, only her clothes and hair ornaments remain. Later, when he visits Echizen, he finds three willow stumps where the cottage stood. The two old trees were her parents, and the one young tree was Aoyagi.
