Autumn Eyes

Autumn in Japan does not arrive all at once — it steals in quietly at night, when even the stars seem to open different eyes.

星既に秋の眼をひらきけり
hoshi sude ni aki no manako wo hirakikeri[1]

already the stars
have opened
autumn eyes…
—Ozaki Kōyō[2]

Night of Stars and Comets - Namiki Hajime
“Night of Stars and Comets” – Namiki Hajime

On the traditional calendar which the haiku world still uses, autumn starts around the second week of August.[3] In the old idea, the peak of the season is the end of the season, and the downward journey towards the next one is included in the next one. That may seem strange to us today, but it’s really no stranger than the way we divide the seasons, just different.

As we move from the peak heat of summer slowly down towards the cooler autumn weather, we primarily notice the change at night first. Long before the leaves start to change or we feel the need to get the scarves out, we might notice a slight hint of cold in an evening wind or a chill at night. It’s more of a vague feeling at first, but when we notice it, we get that feeling: ah — autumn is here.

This poem I think highlights that well. Day time might still be burning hot, but when the stars come out and bring the cooler temperature with them, we notice the season is shifting.


Born in 1868 in Tokyo as Tokutarō Ozaki, Ozaki Kōyō was a novelist and poet who also left behind a small but striking body of haiku. While he is best remembered as a central figure of the Ken’yūsha literary group and for novels such as Konjiki Yasha (The Golden Demon), Kōyō’s sensitivity to seasonal imagery and emotional nuance also found expression in his haiku. His verses often blended classical elegance with the realism of the modern age, reflecting his broader literary style. Despite poor health, he continued writing until his death in 1903 at the age of just 35.


  1. See: Pronunciation of Japanese  ↩

  2. See: a note on translations  ↩

  3. This is called risshū (立秋) under the old system which also named 24 miniseasons and 72 microseasons.  ↩

The King of Japan

I went back and updated this old post I wrote about Yoshimitsu. Japan is unique in that there has only been one dynasty ruling it since the beginning. Often that “ruling” was more like being kept in a golden prison by the real power that be, but still. There have, however, been several figures who may have been close to trying to completely take power and starting their own dynasty. Yoshimitsu may have been the closest to accomplishing it.

Anyway, like I said I updated the post just now. Go back and give it a read.

LINK: Ashikaga Yoshimitsu: Shogun, Sovereign, and the Dream of Dynasty

Komainu and Red Spider Lilies

Autumn is near. It’s hard to tell from the temperature (at least where I am), but we can definitely notice a faint nip in the air. The other day I was at the local shrine and wrote this.

狛犬や無言に見つむ彼岸花
komainu ya mugon ni mitsumu higanbana[1]

komainu — 
silently watching them grow
red spider lilies
—Tenjōka[2]

Komainu Watching Spider Lilies - generated using ChatGPT
Komainu Watching Spider Lilies – generated using ChatGPT

Komainu are the lion-dogs that guard Shinto shrines in Japan in pairs. They are silent guardians, watching, ready to prevent evil from entering what is considered holy ground. I visit the local shrine often enough that the komainu there are like old friends.

Higanbana are flowers of the equinox; their name literally means that. Whatever the weather may be, they always seem to emerge at the right time — just in time to greet the equinox. Maybe that’s one reason they’re so central in Japanese mythology, where they grow on the far side of the River Sanzu,[3] the boundary of the afterlife.

They need a lot of water, so they usually grow near rivers and other places that flood, like rice paddies. But you can also find them around temples or shrines — or cemeteries.

Spooky mythology aside, they are a striking flower. Their delicate stems and blossoms spread into thin curling petals that resemble spider legs. That’s where their English name comes from: red spider lilies. You can find white ones, and I swear I’ve seen yellow before as well, but red is by far the most common variety.

For this haiku, I found a few of them growing at the local shrine, near enough one of the komainu statues that I imagined the old boy had been patiently watching them grow from the moment they appeared above the ground.


  1. See: Pronunciation of Japanese  ↩

  2. That’s me! I’m playing with using it as a penname. See here  ↩

  3. Basically Japan’s version of the River Styx.  ↩

Dawn Moon and Bowl Beating

A dawn moon, a chanting monk, and a blossoming plum — what could they possibly have in common? You’d be right to guess “nothing”, but Issa thought otherwise. Read on!

有明や梅にも一つ鉢たたき
ariake ya ume ni mo hitotsu hachi tataki[1]

dawn moon — 
by the plum tree, another
monk beating his bowl
—Issa[2]

Morning at Beppu, by Kawase Hasui
Morning at Beppu, by Kawase Hasui

In winter, monks of the Pure Land sect would beat their bowls and chant for 48 days. The ritual honors Kūya (903–972), who first performed it in commemoration of a deer killed by a samurai. That may seem like a silly reason to make a racket for 48 days, but the deer isn’t really important: compassion for others is the point. Hearing these sounds would have been a familiar feature of life back then.

The haiku itself layers several kigo. We have “dawn moon”, a traditional kigo for late autumn when the moon lingers in the morning sky. It suggests the waning of autumn. Then “plum tree”, a kigo for spring, hinting at new life. Finally, “bowl beating”[3], a kigo for winter.

Maybe Issa wrote this in late autumn, when the morning moon suggested the season’s end and he could imagine the bowl beating soon to begin. Or perhaps it had already started. I’m not sure how precisely these events would have lined up in 1813 when he wrote this.

That year was momentous for Issa: his first daughter was born, only a year after his first son had died in infancy. His household would have been filled with both grief and hope. Maybe thoughts of that were in his mind when he wrote this.


  1. See: Pronunciation of Japanese  ↩

  2. See: a note on translations  ↩

  3. There really isn’t a good way to translate 鉢たたき (hachi tataki), so just telling the action might be the easiest way.  ↩

A Universal Language

Chinese characters have long fascinated me. That fascination isn’t unique to me, I know — Westerners have been drawn to them for centuries, sometimes with questionable results. Think of the tattoos inked across arms and backs that, to anyone who can actually read them, range from nonsensical to downright embarrassing. Strength often turns out to say “noodle soup”. Love might really be saying “cheap”. Winner might actually be rendered as “Stupid foreigner”. Still, their visual pull is undeniable. Even when they’re wrong, they look right enough to impress someone at a bar.

What interests me most, though, isn’t the aesthetic but the history. For centuries, Chinese characters functioned as a kind of universal written language across East Asia. Japan, Korea, and Vietnam each pronounced words differently, but the characters themselves carried shared meaning. A merchant traveling across the region might be unable to follow the chatter in a marketplace, but if he saw the character for “rice” written down, he knew exactly what was being sold. It was a remarkable bridge: one symbol, many voices. If you’ve ever struggled to order food in a foreign country, you can appreciate how miraculous that must have felt.

It’s easy to forget how unusual this was. Europe never had anything like it. Latin spread widely, yes, but you still had to learn Latin. No shortcuts. Chinese characters worked differently. They were like a plug adapter: whatever your language’s shape, they fit. Japanese layered kanji onto their own syllabaries; Vietnamese combined them with chữ Nôm; Koreans used hanja. The spoken languages diverged, but the written ones held steady. For the literate, crossing borders didn’t mean starting from scratch.

Of course, all good things eventually end. Japan simplified characters one way, China simplified others another way, and Korea and Vietnam eventually abandoned them in favour of alphabets. The result? A traveller who once could decode menus and poems across the region would now be reduced to staring at squiggles wondering if that dish was beef or blowfish. Progress is rarely as tidy as historians pretend.


Fast forward to the modern world. In 1964, preparing for the Tokyo Olympics, Japanese designers faced a problem: millions of visitors, hundreds of languages, not nearly enough translators. Their solution was pictograms: simple images that spoke for themselves. A swimmer meant “pool”. A stick figure pedalling meant “cycling”. A person on skis meant “broken ankle waiting to happen”.

The idea worked so well that a decade later the American Institute of Graphic Arts adapted it for U.S. airports, and soon the icons went global. Wherever you land, a knife and fork means food, a plane silhouette means departures, and a bed means hotel. For the jet-lagged traveller who can’t remember how to say “toilet” in French, it’s a lifesaver.[1]

Which brings us to today. Emoji. Born in Japan in the late 1990s as a cute pager gimmick, they’ve become the closest thing we have to a universal script. A red heart works in Paris, Bangkok, or Nairobi. A crying face is instantly understood. Admittedly, nuances creep in (some cultures use 🙏 as “please” or even “thank you”, others as “pray”, and still others as “high-five”, which must make for some very confusing text exchanges) but the core idea holds. Tiny images cut through linguistic noise.

And unlike kanji or Olympic pictograms, emoji have personality. They’re playful, ironic, sometimes absurd. They let us say “I’m fine” while attaching a face that clearly says “I’m not fine at all”. They carry tone in ways words often fail. It’s not inconceivable that they’ll someday slip into formal writing the way punctuation did — how soon before you come across an academic paper ending with 😂?

The urge to find a universal language never seems to die. From brush strokes on bamboo to glowing screens in our palms, we keep inventing new sets of symbols that everyone can share. We just change the medium. And, inevitably, someone gets them tattooed.

So yes, I wonder: how long until we see the first emoji sleeve tattoo? Probably it’s already out there. A row of 🍕🍔🍟 down one arm. A tasteful 💩 on the ankle. Some future archaeologist will dig up these remains and conclude our civilisation worshipped hamburgers and poop.

Hmm… and that wouldn’t be too far off.


  1. During WWII, my grandpa was in a French village and needed to use the toilet. He asked as best he could, but the result was ending up in a room with only a sink and no toilet. Luckily, men have a solution to this problem.  ↩

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