The One Left on the Branch

When an old mountain persimmon tree is harvested at the end of autumn, you are not supposed to pick it clean.

Down on the lower branches, every fruit goes into the flat bamboo baskets—some to be eaten crisp while the afternoons are still mild, the rest peeled and hung by their stems on long strings of hemp twine under the eaves until the mountain wind turns them dark, sugary, and dusted with white bloom. But up on the highest bare fork against the sky, the picker always leaves one or two of the brightest vermilion persimmons behind on the twig.

They are called komori-gaki—the tree-guardian persimmons. Half of the custom is a quiet thank-you to the tree itself, so its branches are not stripped completely naked all at once before the cold sets in; the other half is an unspoken arrangement with the birds that stay in the valley after the leaves are gone.

On a clear November morning after an overnight freeze, when only a single curled russet leaf is left clinging to the lower spur and the first rose-carmine sazanka camellias have opened along the stone wall below, the morning sun reaches that top branch first. The white hoarfrost along the woody four-pointed cap melts into a single drop at the bottom of the fruit, the orange skin softens in the sun, and within minutes a pair of olive-green mejiro—with their bright lemon throats and stitched white eye-rings—swing upside down from the twig to claim the share that was left for them.