It’s a Japanese legend of a disease that has the ability to make someone whose heart is broken literally die from crying.
There was once a fisherman who had six daughters and they were all most cheerful and good-natured girls, but the youngest of them always stayed more quietly at home than any of the others. “What makes you so lazy?” her sisters would say to her; “when we want to play, with whom do you play?” But she only grew prettier day by day like flowers in water until oneday, when she saw herself reflected in a mirror , she thought to herself: “If I play out of doors with the others, they will laugh at me for being so dark and ugly.” But her sisters made fun of her more than ever when they saw her sad face. So the girl went away to the forest and sat by an oak tree until the moon came out over the treetops. She sat there thinking about her sister’s words and then she was overcome by such an overpowering longing for somebody that she fainted away. The next morning at sunrise, when people were making their way through the forest to go to work in the fields, they found her dead under the oak tree and they knew that it must be the Hanahaki Disease.
What happened to her? “Why would you even ask such a thing?” Of course, she died from crying! That’s why the disease is called the Hanahaki Disease (Hanaha = tears; ku = sickness).
