THE 72 MICRO SEASONS
My mind is a very wafty and romantic place when it comes to the magic of the seasons and mother nature. I have been like this ever since I was a rural child when I first noticed the energising effect the gloaming had on racing lambs in the paddock. I’d collect and carefully display gum crystals from the old pines across the road and evoke storybook living by calling my tree hut ‘Rosehip cottage’. These tendencies were also where the urge to write sprung from, as stringing together outrageously sentimental describing words helped dig me deeper into my pretend magic world.
In adulthood this all still exists for me, saving most of the describing words for my own mind when under a starry sky or being whipped about in a warm summer wind. Constantly photographing my garden feels like it plugs me in even deeper, recording each moment in my little space in a way that might mirror how I see it through my fluffy fairy-tale eyes. Pointing my lens into a low sun to backlight plants, capturing the cotton wool of bursting Japanese anemone seedheads or filming the floaty tick-tock of my autumn miscanthus in the wind are micro-moments in time that I relish and reflect on.
So my ears pricked when Jenny Cooper referred to the state of her garden as being amid ‘one of 72 micro seasons’. I immediately fell down the researching rabbit hole of this Japanese concept – and my overly romantic little mind was immediately satisfied. The whole thing reads like seasonal poetry!
The concept of 72 micro seasons is essentially an ancient almanac of Japanese horticulture and agriculture – recorded and tweaked over centuries to indicate what growers might expect from their environment and ecosystem based on calendar dates. This is information that I would guess is an averaged-out result of generations of knowledge procured from the memory and experience of those closely connected to the land.
As observed in China, Japanese culture subdivide its four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter into 24 Sekki, driven largely by farmers in planning their work. For instance, instead of our casual reference to ‘early, mid and late spring’, within the sekki system these are further delineated into approximately 15-day segments as shown below using spring as an example.
NOTE - Northern Hemisphere seasons – dates may vary depending on the year.
SPRING SEKKI
Feb 4-18 – Risshun
Beginning of Spring
Feb 19 - March 5 – Usui
Rainwater
Mar 6-20 – Keichitsu
Insects awaken
Mar 21 - Apr 4 – Shunbun
Spring equinox
Apr 5-19 – Seimei
Pure and clear
Apr 20 - May 4 – Kokuu
Grain rains
With a want to magnify each seasonal change more closely, the Japanese culture took their seasonal almanac a step further and defined each of the 24 sekki into 4-day segments called kō. A total of 72 micro seasons spanning the year.
SPRING KŌ
Risshun - Beginning of Spring
Feb 4-8 - Harukaze kōri o toku
East wind melts ice
Feb 9-13 - Kōō kenkan su
Bush warblers start singing in the mountains
Feb 14-18 - Uo kōri o izuru
Fish emerge from the ice
Usui - Rainwater
Feb 19-23 - Tsuchi no shō uruoi okoru
Rain moistens the soil
Feb 24-28 - Kasumi hajimete tanabiku
Mist starts to linger
Mar 1-5 - Sōmoku mebae izuru
Grass sprouts, trees bud
Keichitsu - Insects awaken
Mar 6-10 - Sugomori mushito o hiraku
Sparrows start to nest
Mar 11-15 - Momo hajimete saku
First peach blossoms
Mar 16-20 - Namushi chō to naru
Caterpillars become butterflies
Shunbun - Spring Equinox
Mar 21-25 - Suzume hajimete sukū
Sparrows start to nest
Mar 26-30 - Sakura hajimete saku
First cherry blossoms
Mar 31 - Apr 4 - Kaminari sunawachi koe o hassu
Distant thunder
Seimei - Pure and clear
Apr 5-9 - Tsubame kitaru
Swallows return
Apr 10-14 - Kōgan kaeru
Wild geese fly north
Apr 15-19 - Niji hajimete arawaru
First rainbows
Kokuu - Grain rains
Apr 20-23 - Ashi hajimete shōzu
First reed sprouts
Apr 25-29 - Shimo yamite nae izuru
Last frost, rice seedlings grow
Apri 20 - May 4 - Botan hana saku
Peonies bloom
And so on!
If you’d like to read all 72 kō, click here.
Browsing through the entire collection of kō was completely poetic with definitions like ‘Worms surface’, ‘Rotten grass becomes fireflies’, ‘Dew glistens white on grass’ and ‘Great rains sometimes fall’. This incredibly close consideration and examination of our broadly referred to seasonal movement reminded me that nature’s cycles are far more complex and gradual than a 3-month ‘spring’ slapped on a calendar.
I even searched the ‘72 micro seasons of New Zealand’ to see if anyone had tried to explain our own seasonal markers, but alas – none I could find. Like Japan, Aotearoa is a long and thin island nation with some stark climatic differences which I am sure muddies the water a little on the very specific definitions in the Japanese almanac. But I think perhaps the lesson to be found here is in dialling deeper into our own garden spaces and landscapes. In a way, this is mindfulness and with deliberate observation, pulling ourselves back into the moment.