Japan's 72 Microseasons - #68

"Underground Springs Thaw" and the New Year begins in true

January 11 - 15
水泉動
しみずあたたかをふくむ
Shimizu atataka wo fukumu
”Underground springs thaw”

The changing of the seasons usually happens in the places we can’t see. Underneath our feet, the veins and bones that make up the body of the earth begin to warm back up. Water, the lifeblood of nature, gets pumping in the heart of the soil long before winter ends for us.

The end of this kō officially marks the end of Japan’s New Year holiday season. Of course, in today’s modern Japan most folks have been back to work for a week or more—the ever-turning wheels of capitalism certainly couldn’t allow for half a month of time off work. Regardless, some still mark the end of the Shōgatsu period by observing Koshōgatsu (lit. “little New Year’s” or even “New Year’s Jr.” if you like). And the way it’s observed is a very vivid example of “out with the old, in with the new.”

On the first full moon of the new year, households take down their New Year’s decorations and bring them to the local shrine or waterside to be burned in a ritual called Sagichō (左義長), or Dondo-yaki (どんど焼き).

The ritual held at Ōsaki Hachimangu Shrine in Sendai, called Donto Sai, is one of the best known and is still celebrated traditionally

This signals a proper end to the transition between the years, and serves as a sending-off for Toshigami, the kami of the New Year, who visited households that were clean and decorated to bless them¹. Alongside the decorations on the pyre are O-mamori (お守り) amulets and other good-luck charms such as daruma (だるま) statuettes from the year past. These are all sent back to the realm beyond here to the kami, so their power can be returned and portioned out anew². As the fire burns down to embers, the last of the decorations—colorful mochi rice cakes stuff to branches—are roasted and eaten. A little bit of the old stays with you.

Traditionally, the Coming of Age Ceremony for the newly-turned twenty-year-olds was held as part of these festivities³. For them, Koshōgatsu marked not only the start of a new year, but the start of adulthood.

the bundles of straw and wood, called yagura (櫓) are gathered up and adorned with decorations to send off

Even without these rituals, one way or another the feeling this far out into January is that the new year has unmistakably begun. The waiting, resting stillness is broken and things begin moving again. The old hopes and precautions of the old year have been burned away and sent off to the cosmos.

Which brings us back to this kō. Just as the flow of daily life begins to resume on the surface, so too do the frozen channels of water underground. As part of this microseason, there has long been a tradition that water drawn and drank in these days is the cleanest and most healthy you can get. Even today, it’s popular to pull fresh spring water during this time for brewing saké and making miso.

Although temperatures aboveground continue to dip, with snow piling up and frigid winds cutting through layers of clothes, the hardened soil and iced-over lake surfaces provide protective insulation for what’s far beneath. As if awakening from a cozy slumber, the groundwater lazily begins moving and heating up under this frozen blanket. The Japanese name for this kō speaks to warmth (atataka/暖か) working its way in (fukumu/含む).

Springs, called izumi (泉) in Japanese, are exit points for underground bodies of water, or “aquifers.”⁴ During the water cycle, when water falls from the sky to the ground, water in aquifers gets purified as its forced through fine, porous layers of rock and sediment (much like a natural filter). A spring produces water when some form of pressure brings what’s stored in the aquifer back to the surface, a process which can take hundreds of years and come from as far as 9,000 meters below ground. This newly emerged water is called shimizu (清水), “pure water.”

When the pressure comes from geothermal activity, you get one of Japan’s favorite types of spring: the hot spring (onsen/温泉).

Of course, things are still plenty cold out there and I wouldn’t recommend burrowing under the snow and ice to observe the reviving waterflows in person. So if you can’t find a nice onsen to relax in, how about enjoying a bit of seasonal flavor in the warm indoors?

● Seasonal seafood
komai, 氷下魚, saffron cod⁵

● Seasonal flower
hīragi, 柊, holly olive

● Seasonal rice and fruit combination
kagami-mochi, 鏡餅, stacked mochi cakes with a daidai orange on top⁶

charcoal-grilled komai, flowering hīragi, various sizes of kagami-mochi

In the ancient capital city of Kyōto, the famous temple Kiyomizudera (清水寺, lit. “clear water temple”) is dedicated to a mountainside spring. Its flow is divided into three streams, and for over a thousand years visitors have come to drink from one of them depending on if they seek health, wealth, or love.⁷

The crisp, clear water provided by springs has long been trusted, even revered. From the mythological “Fountain of Youth” sought by Ponce de León to the Pierian Spring at the foot of Mt. Olympus in Greece, home of the Muses and said to be the source of creative inspiration, these seemingly endless sources of safe drinking water are naturally important to us.

And even though the water underground never stops flowing, the authors of the microseasons must have felt enough relief and reassurance at the sight of restarting springs to remark on it and fill their cups. A toast, then, to clean, refreshing water and the true start of the new year.

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. It’s nice that Toshigami gets to take about two weeks to visit all the households in Japan, which is a much more relaxed pace than Santa’s one night marathon

2. So if you have a souvenir charm or amulet you bought at a shrine, make sure to hand it in and swap it for a new one next time you visit Japan!

(This is of course not a hard rule)

3. In 2000, its date was set as the second Monday of January as part of holiday adjustments known as the “Happy Monday System,” which moved a couple annual holidays around to Mondays throughout the year to create guaranteed three-day weekends

4. The scientific word is taisuisō (帯水層, “water-layer belt”) in Japanese, if you’re curious—although the common term chikasui-myaku (地下水脈, lit. “underground water vein”) was used prior and still sometimes is in non-academic spaces

5. The term can also be generally applied to any fish caught under frozen lakes

6. These, too, are kept as decoration through the New Year’s holiday period, then on the 11th day are cut open and grilled

7. Drinking from more than one is considered greedy, and will cancel any benefit