We have an interesting phenomenon this year, illustrating one of the complexities in Japan’s old calendar systems. It’s not an uncommon thing, and as he often was, Bashō was there about 360 years ago to write about it.
is the year over?
second-to-last-day
—Bashō
Today is Setsubun! It seems like I write about this day every year, so go read the write up I did last year. Suffice to say it is a spring celebration. Tomorrow is the start of spring, called Risshun!
Now the system that gives us Setsubun and the other microseasonal events I often post about (２４節気) is a solar system, whereas the old calendar is a lunar system, so the first day of spring doesn’t always line up with Lunar New Year. This is what Bashō is talking about in his haiku above. He’s expressing some playful confusion at how it can be spring when the year isn’t over yet.
In his case, the two systems were only out of alignment by two days. This year is one of those years when it doesn’t line up, but it’s out of sync by more than two days for us. Lunar New Year isn’t until Feb 10th this year.
(Keep in mind Japan celebrated New Years with the Lunar New Year before switching to the Gregorian calendar in 1871 and changing the day to Jan 1st)
Most normal people didn’t really care. It was a curiosity when the two dates didn’t line up, but nothing to waste time thinking about. Poets, however: we tend to notice such things. In the haiku world, there are many kigo (season words) to describe times like this, when spring begins a few days before the New Year. This one from Bashō may be the most famous.
This is actually the first dated haiku we have from Bashō, written in 1662 when he was only 19 years old. At this time in his career he was all about the clever wordplay and allusions to older poetry, and that is on full display here as he is borrowing phrasing from one classic poem from the Ise Monogatari and is also pointing at another famous poem from the Kokin Wakashū. Both of these poems would have been fairly well-known in his day, so many readers would have easily gotten his jokes.
The second of those poems he is alluding to is by Ariwara no Motokata:
年のうちに春は来にけりひととせをこぞとやいはむことしとやいはむ
toshi no uchi ni haru wa kinikeri hitotose o
kozo to ya iwan kotoshi to ya iwan
spring has come
before the year’s end
the remaining days
do we call them
this year or last?
—Ariwara no Motokata[3]
Bashō would later move away from this kind of word play, but in his early years he loved it.
These days Japan no longer follows the same lunar calendar that much of Asia still does, so mention of this idea in haiku has probably all but disappeared. Japan does still follow the system of microseasons for many events, so celebrations of days like Setsubun are still pretty common.
By the way, if you are eating a sushi roll for Setsubun this year (again, see that linked post) then the lucky direction for 2024 is east-northeast.