Japan's 72 Microseasons - #26

"Dying Grass Begets Fireflies"

June 11 - 15
腐草為蛍
くされたる くさ ほたると なる
Kusaretaru kusa, hotaru to naru
Dying grass begets fireflies

A haiku from Toshiyori Minamoto, a poet writing in the 12th century during Japan’s Heian Period:

おちこちの　夜河にたける　篝火と　思へば澤の　ほたるなりけり

ochikochi no | yogawa ni takeru | kakaribi to | omoheba sawa no | hotaru nari keri

The night-dark river
with lights all along its banks
dancing here and there—
Not campfires, we realized,
But fireflies born from the marsh

(Utagawa Yoshitora, c. 1860)

The Boshū theme of death and new life continues with this kō, which conjures vivid summer imagery in just a few words. The lush green grass that flourished through spring is slowly wilting, and from the dying vegetation rises tiny, flitting dots of living light.

At the time when they appear in meadows, groves, and riverbanks, a firefly’s remaining time on Earth is short—about 1-2 months when they reach adulthood. They burn bright and fade, like tiny terrestrial stars in a low-lying galaxy. The light they glow with is intended to attract a partner so they can lay eggs before the summer’s end. Cycles within cycles of life and death and life again, with the hope that when you do go into the dark it won’t be alone.

It’s impossible not to wax poetic about fireflies, and Japan has certainly been doing so for centuries, as with our haiku at the start. Towards the start of this project, we talked about kigo: seasonal words that are evocative of specific times of the year and are key to writing Japanese poetry. Given the short time they’re floating around, hotaru (蛍)¹, as they’re called in Japanese, are a classic kigo concept for mid- to late-summer, and appear in far more than just Minamoto’s poem above.

Here’s a modern haiku with them from Nobuko Katsura (1914-2004), an award-winning poet renowned for her mixture of classical form and feminist viewpoint²:

ゆるやかに　着て人と逢ふ　蛍の夜

yuruyaka ni kite | hito to au | hotaru no yo

wearing my kimono loosely
to meet him
firefly night³

(Mizuno Toshikata, 1891)

Romantic not only in a metaphysical or aesthetic sense, firefly viewing (蛍見) and firefly catching (蛍狩)⁴ have long been popular date activities for couples spending a warm summer night courting, as in the poem and painting above. These brief glimpses of delicate lights are yet another way in which a small bit of nature playing out can give us a bit of everyday magic, should we take a moment to seek it out and appreciate it. Not as practical as advice on planting and harvesting schedules, but equally important to a healthy life, I’d say.

If you’d like to indulge and happen to be in Japan during this brief season in which the fireflies are seeking each other out, here are the top places in the country to do so (although really any slightly wet, wooded area will probably work!):

• Hotaru Park in Tokyo

• Okuyama Ameyama Nature Park in Osaka

• Yuki Onsen in Hiroshima

• Hotaru Dōyō Park in Nagano

• Genji-botaru no Sato in Chiba

(Hotaru Park in Tokyo, from their website)

When you’re done with your romantic evening stroll or soak, you can pull up a chair at a fancy restaurant and see if they’re serving any of the seasonally appropriate items for this kō:

● Seasonal vegetable
tomato, トマト, tomato

● Seasonal seafood
surume-ika, スルメイカ, Japanese flying squid

● Seasonal flower
hotarubukuro, ホタルブクロ, spotted bellflower

(tomato, surume-ika, and hotarubukuro)

One last hotaru-related tidbit before we go, which I couldn’t find a natural point to bring up above but felt necessary to share: among the many artistic creations inspired by fireflies over the centuries in Japan is the ōdachi greatsword named Hotarumaru. Forged in 1298 by a famous swordsmith of the legendary Raiha school, it was so-named after a bit of folklore that said its flaws were patched to perfection overnight by fireflies. It was kept as a national treasure inside Kyūshū’s Aso Shrine for over six centuries until it was lost in WW2 to confiscation by Allied forces during post-war occupation.

That changed in 2015 when, thanks to the popularity of a character from the mobile game series Tōken Ranbu (which features personified versions of historical swords), a massive crowdfunding campaign successfully raised over $400,000 USD to forge a new Hotarumaru. The character, of the same name, and with a nice firefly design motif, looks like this:

thanks, video games!

With enough gathered together, even small fireflies can light up the night, and what was lost can be remade again.

See you next kō~

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[Images & info by kurashikata.com, kurashi-no-hotorisya.jp, 543life.com, and Wikipedia except where otherwise noted]

1. The modern kanji character for firefly is a simplified version of 螢, which is made of two sets of radicals (the 214 “pieces” that combine make more complex characters): 虫 meaning “insect” and two 火 meaning—what else?—“fire”

2. Katsura wrote openly and humorously about life as a woman, as in this haiku which is similarly seasonal: ふところに　乳房ある憂さ　梅雨長き (“The nuisance | of breasts— | a long rainy season.”) translated by Leza Lowitz, who also edited this collection of modern female poets from Japan in which it features

3. Translation by David LaSpina

4. Hotaru-mi and hotaru-gari, respectively—some other fun firefly vocab are keikō (蛍光, “fluorescence”) and keisetsu (蛍雪, “to study diligently late into the night, even by the poor light given by fireflies or moon-reflected snow”)