Today begins a new microseason! If this is your first time joining us, scroll down past the forecast to read about what exactly a microseason is. For the rest of you, let’s jump in!
The Current Microseason: Salmon Gather
Today, Dec 17, begins 鱖魚群, the 63rd microseason (候, kō) which is read sakeno uo muragaru and means Salmon Gather. This is the third microseason of Taisetsu, which is itself the third solar term of winter.
This is when the salmon migrate upriver to spawn. This has long been a reminder of winter.
Seasonal Event: Hagoita Ichi
This is held at Senso-ji Temple in Asakusa, Tokyo from Dec 17th to the 19th. There are a lot of shops open, many of them selling some kind of hagoita. They are decorated in numerous ways: from kabuki figures, women in kimono, and other more traditional things to popular anime characters or even public figures who were in the news this year.
Hagoita (羽子板) are a kind of wooden paddle. They are used to play a traditional New Years game called hanaetsuji which is similar to badminton. Hagoita are also said to ward off evil, making them popular to buy and to gift around this time.
Here is a haiku for this microseason:
yakusha-e hagoita ni umi miyuru kana
on a hagoita—
watching the ocean
—Hagiwara Tokiya
This haiku is pretty straight forward. Yakushi-e is typically a woodblock print of a kabuki actor. Trditionally these were common images to see on hagoita.
Will move this info to another post one of these days, but for now, briefly:
- Each month has two seasons, called solar terms (節気, sekki), giving us a total of 24 seasons. This gives the system its name, the 24 Sekki (二十四節気). I usually refer to this entire system as The Japanese Almanac. It is more than a little similar to the American Farmer’s Almanac.
- Each of these 24 seasons is further subdivided three more times, giving us a grand total of 72 seasons, or microseasons (候, kō).
- Each microseason is about 5 days. With time periods so short, they can get pretty specific about what in nature we might expect to be happening around now.
- The system was originally from China, but it was reformatted during the Edo Era (1603–1868) to fit better with Japan’s climate. I find it also fits fairly well with much of the Midwest in the Eastern half of the US. But if you live in a different area, your milage may vary.
- The entire system is based on the equinoxes and solstices, so it is fluid and the exact dates will vary by a day or two from year to year. Luckily there are a great many Japanese sources that do the astrological computations for us and tell us exactly when each one starts and ends every year.
The next microseason starts on Dec 22. See you then for the next forecast!
❦
 |
David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. |
If this blog post has entertained or helped you, please follow/upvote/reblog. If you want to further support my writing, donations are welcome.