HanaHaki: A health condition where the victim coughs up flower petals 

If you are someone who feel angry, sad, excited or nervous really fast, you might come across as an emotional person. But, be rest assured that you aren’t alone. Now, while experiencing such strong emotions, have you ever felt physical changes? For instance, when you were overjoyed, your chest may feel warm and full; or when you are tensed (before exam results for example), you may feel butterflies playing a match in your stomach. Well, believe it or not, these are natural responses of your body, while you indulge in emotions.  

Now imagine this – you are experiencing heartbreak and all of a sudden you start throwing up flower petals. Sounds weird and too far-fetched, isn’t it? Well, it is! Guess what, this far-from-reality condition has a name too! It’s known as HanaHaki disease. But does it really exist in the real world? Let us find out! 

HanaHaki: A fictional malady 
If you think that throwing up flower petals due to heartache is odd, you aren’t wrong. Why? Because it isn’t real at all. Okay, so if it isn’t real, how come dies it exist? It exists in the sense Batman or Sherlock Holmes exists. Yes, we mean fictions. In fact, its definition also says so. It’s a fictional disease people suffer from when they experience unrequited love. The name HanaHaki derives from two Japanese words: ‘Hana’ meaning ‘flower’ and ‘hakimasu’ meaning ‘to throw up.’ So, when you put the two words together, you get the main symptom of HanaHaki disease, that is, coughing up flower petals.  

When and how did HanaHaki disease emerge? 
That would be in 2009. HanaHaki disease emerged in a shoujo manga (Japanese comics addressed to 8- to 18-year-old girls) named Hanahaki Otome or The Girl Who Spit Flowers. It was written by popular manga author Naoko Matsuda.  

Here, the protagonist suffers from a slow and painful malady that begins with sharp pain in the chest, like flowers blooming in the heart and lungs. It slowly turns into stomach gurgles and eventually vomiting. The plot revolves around a teenage girl named Katsuki who experiences a heartbreak. Initially she develops normal heartache symptoms as that of mild depression. However, over the months, it grows into something more serious when she coughs up flower petals. There even comes a time when she throws up an entire flower at once, reaching the climax of her disease. Unfortunately, she succumbs to HanaHaki even though she is immediately diagnosed.  

What’s interesting here is that, despite the fatal end, the book as well as its trope became popular for its sheer melodrama, beauty and angst. In fact, death by HanaHaki was considered to be a tragic but an aesthetic theme. Later on, the HanaHaki disease became a rage, thanks to the obsession of manga and anime creators and readers all across East Asia, especially Korea, China and Japan.   

Is this fictional disease curable? 
Yes and no! It’s curable if the other person changes his or her mind and returns the victim’s romantic feelings. There’s another option: Surgery. Just like the disease, there are also trained fictional doctors who can remove the flowers by performing an operation. This in turn removes the love emotions completely with zero chance of relapse. Now that is intriguing, isn’t it?