The story
The most famous yamabuki story is about the warlord Ōta Dōkan, caught in the rain: a peasant girl silently offered him a yamabuki branch instead of a straw coat, alluding to a court poem — 'the yamabuki bears no seed/mino (=no raincoat).' He missed the allusion, was ashamed, and by legend took up poetry. Gold coins were nicknamed yamabuki-iro in Edo, which is why bribes in period dramas arrive as 'yamabuki-colored sweets.'
