Japan's 72 Microseasons - #4+

"Falling Rain Awakens The Soil" and Snow Soup

February 19 - 23
土脉潤起
つちの しょう うるおい おこる
Tsuchi no shō, uruoi okoru
"Falling rain awakens the soil"

(This is the second post about this microseason—if you missed the first one, you can find it here to catch up!)

Most people’s image of a winter landscape includes frozen water in some form: snowflakes settling into drifts, lakes frozen over, icicles hanging from the eaves and the like. But less visible is the soil. The freezing touch of winter penetrates down into the wet dirt and even the pores of rocks.

Yet, as the air above warms, and snow turns to rain, gaps appear in the icy surface of the ground just as they did last kō on the lakes and rivers.

One of the Koyomi handbooks popular in the Edo period describes the way to identify this kō as such: “When cheerful sunlight livens up the topsoil, and snow and ice become rainwater” There is, of course, a kigo¹ for this phenomenon as well: itedoke (凍解), literally “ice clears,” but more specifically it refers to this thawing of the ground during early spring.

Here’s a haiku it features in, from the master poet Basho:

凍どけて筆に汲干す清水かな
itedokete / fude ni kumihosu / shimizu kana

The soil clears of snow
clean, pure water rinsing off
a used writing brush

The ground revealed during the spring thaws is fresh and ready for new growth, much as a clean brush is necessary for a blank sheet of paper. The muddy canvas that lies beneath the cover of snow may not look like much right now, but it’s ripe with possibility, and soon will host the art of nature.

Sometimes, within these gaps in the snow (called yukima/雪間), bits of green can already be spotted. These eager bits of brave plantlife are called yukima-gusa (雪間草).

This may seem strange or unseasonal without knowing the effect that snow and ice have on the surrounding temperature. They actually provide something of an insulating effect, so when snow remains on the ground but the soil itself has already thawed out, it can protect budding plants from colder temperatures above and harsh winds.

This melting water doesn’t just nourish plant growth. Historically, water collected from melted snow in the forests and mountains (yukishiro, 雪代) was considered to be full of nutrients and minerals and called yomigaeri-no-mizu (蘇りの水), “revival water.” There does seem to be a fair amount of truth to this: plants watered with snowmelt produce stronger growth, and chickens given this water to drink lay more eggs.

Another way to write yukishiro is 雪汁, which instead uses the character for soup or broth.² And you can indeed use snowmelt (or any reasonably clean water, really) to make a disaster-avoiding soup specific to the season. During the Edo period, the widely consulted cookbook Manbō Ryōri Himitsu-Bako (万宝料理秘密箱, “Secret Box of Many Cooking Treasures”) introduced a recipe called daikon-yukishiro (大根雪汁). Made with grated daikon radish and white miso paste, it’s said to thaw out and rejuvenate a cold, tired stomach.

Rejuvenation is a large part of what this kō represents. The water that was solidly locked up in snow and ice is now flowing back into dry soil, hydrating patient vegetation so that it can finally grow again. The rain that melts the snow so it may rejoin the soil is yukige-ame (雪解雨, “snow-clearing rain”), or dan-u (暖雨, “warming rain”). Whatever they’re called, and whether it comes from high up in the sky or drips from a melting icicle, it’s all the water of life. Which is perhaps why the rains of spring are collectively called banbutsu-shō (万物生), “life for all things.”

This newsletter stayed frozen for a little longer than scheduled owing to some sudden changes in travel plans, so we’ll be catching up with a slightly condensed one for the next kō. I suppose the changes in seasons aren’t always totally on time, either. In fact, snow melted into a stream too quickly can rush at a dangerous speed.³ Better a gentle, gradual thawing.

See you next kō~

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

1. Kigo (季語), literally “season words,” are often used in Japanese art to set the scene to specific time in nature and haiku poetry requires at least one to feature in its short stanzas

2. The 代 character in the first yukishiro has a number of meanings: “generation,” “cost,” and “in place of” among them—this instance is possibly the rarer meaning of “a composite material of”

3. The frothing white appearance of such bodies of water rushing with too much sudden water is referred to as yuki-nigo (雪濁), “snow murkiness”