Knocked out by the beauty of micro-seasons

I think we all could do with more beauty in our lives. Nobody ever died of too much beauty but if they did, they surely died happy. There are worse ways to go than Death by Beauty.

So, this week I was charmed to discover the most beautiful, tiny thing: the Japanese concept of micro-seasons. Encompassing much more than the usual four seasons of the year (or four in one day in Ireland) this calendar embraces 72 perfect little seasons annually, each only about five days long, and each of them reading like poetry.

These time divisions, known individually as kō, are an advancement on an ancient Chinese lunisolar calendar that splits the year into 24 distinct seasons and was adopted in much of the Far East.

In Japan, the original 24 seasons, or sekki, go from Beginning of Spring, through Insects Awaken, Lesser Ripening, Greater Heat, White Dew, and Lesser Snow, to the final Greater Cold.

Each is then further delineated into kō, and named marking the natural changes at the time. Right now we are – or Japan is – in the season of, or “Silkworms start feasting on mulberry leaves”.

Come Thursday, “Safflowers bloom”. On 11 June, “Rotten grass becomes fireflies”. On 17 July, “Hawks learn to fly”. Each feels like a meditation. And so it goes, a year in tiny poems.

I was born at the beginning of when “Wild geese return”, which fills me with joy. The calendar should probably be reversed for the southern hemisphere: today that would mean South Africa is in the season in which “Rainbows hide”, heading into the period when “North wind blows the leaves from the trees”.

Soon “Bears will start hibernating in their dens” and then “Salmon will gather and swim upstream”. It will grow colder until once again “Parsley flourishes”, then “Hens start laying eggs”, and finally, “East wind melts the ice”.

This seems a most pleasing way of saluting the passage of time, of marking that over which we have no control, acknowledging there is always something else, something happening greater than ourselves, and the world will continue, better or worse, when each one of us inevitably falls silent.

And when we are gone, still “Evening cicadas sing” and “Dew glistens white on grass”.

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