Yesterday began 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: Deer Sheds Antlers
Yesterday, Dec 27th, began 麋角解, the 64 microseason (候, kō) which is read sawashika no tsuno atsuru and means Deer Sheds Antlers. This is the second microseason of tōji, which is itself the fourth solar term of winter.
This is referring to an elk or a moose, according to most sources I can find. This may reflect the Chinese origins of this system, as elk and moose are not found in Japan. It’s suggested they kept the reference to a foreign beast when they updated the system in the Edo era (1603–1868) because the idea of giant creatures with equally giant antlers caught their imaginations.
Seasonal Vegetable: Black Soybeans
These are considered good luck and are a major ingredient in New Year’s cooking. They are tasty too. My in-laws grow these and so at our New Year’s there are always plenty of them.
Seasonal Vegetable: Ebi-imo
I’ve always heard these referred to as sato imo (or Sato Potato, I suppose), but they are called Ebi-imo in my almanac, evidently because they are thought to resemble the tail of a shrimp (shrimp is ebi). Whatever you call them, they are tasty. There are many dishes that use them, or just heating them up and eating them plain is great too!
(I’m sure 
Seasonal Event: New Years Preparation
Everything has to be cleaned before the New Year comes, so housewives everywhere are in the cleaning mood. This is a bit like spring cleaning in the west—in fact it is exactly that, as the New Year used to be at the beginning of spring.
Also the traditional New Year decorations are put out, sticky rice is pounded, soba is made, and osechi is prepared.
Well, the last few aren’t as common these days. If people pound their own sticky rice, they likely use a machine to do it instead of pounding by hand (tho you can see this at traditional events, and it’s fun to participate yourself), they are likely to buy soba from the store, and not so many people even know how to make osechi these days. But these are all traditional activities that people might or might not do.
I’ve had the privilege of making and cutting the soba myself, and it is an interesting experience. Osechi is pretty good too!
When the new year arrives, the Buddhist temples will strike the temple bell 108 times, timed so that the last strike happens exactly at midnight. This is supposedly to drive out all desire.
(I’ll give more info about this bell ringing in a haiku I post tomorrow)
Here is a haiku for this microseason:
yuki no higure wa ikutabi mo yomu fumi no gotoshi
like a letter
read many times
—Iida Ryūta
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 Jan 1st. See you then for the next forecast!
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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. |
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