“Spirit of Shizen – Japan’s nature through its 72 seasons” is an exhibition to be held this summer at Luxembourg’s Natural History Museum (www.mnhn.lu). The accompanying catalogue constitutes an anthology featuring essays and contributions by several WiK members (Amy Chavez, Karen Lee Tawarayama, Mayumi Kawaharada, Ted Taylor, Ed Levinson, Rebecca Otowa, Amanda Huggins, Jann Williams, Robert Weis, John Einarsen, Mark Hovane), as well as other writers of international fame (Pico Iyer, Naoko Abe, Yuri Ugaya, Sébastien Raizer, Bruce Hamana, Patrick Colgan, Marc Peter Keane). 

We are pleased to introduce here an excerpt by Amy Chavez, who takes us on a journey through a year’s worth of seasons on a small island in the Seto Inland Sea. (Robert Weis)

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Seasons of the Seto Inland Sea
by Amy Chavez

Spring comes early to Japan’s Seto Inland Sea. During winter, the 250 inhabited islands lay hunkered under a blanket of cold clouds. In line with the Chinese calendar, spring arrives in February, when the islands emerge from the mist like stars in a twilight sky.

On Shiraishi Island, plum trees reach towards the nascent rays of the sun and when the fragrance of plum blossoms mingles with the smell of the sea, the elderly are drawn from their cold dark houses to search for spring in their Japanese gardens. In the morning sun, they sit on the edge of the wooden veranda at the back of the house, slippered feet propped on the top of stepping stones. There they gaze upon wrinkled pines, leafy azalea bushes, melting pond ice and stone lanterns still too cold to touch. Beyond the garden, wild mountain cherries will soon sway pink next to stalks of young bamboo. In the front yards of these grand old homes, beyond their entrance gates, the lonely beach waits for summer.

When shore birds steal fruit from mulberry trees and splotches of lavender guano appear on the docks, spring is giving way to the wet season. Rain dribbles down masts, soaks hydrangea stems, and lotus leaves bead up. Dampened weeds—nourished—stretch taller, insects frolic in the growth.

It’s time for the locals to shoulder a wooden boat and carol through the fields: “Root eaters, leaf-eaters, we send you all away!” The vessel, once full of the guilty pests, is carried to the beach and pushed off-shore. Rid of crop-destroying insects for another year, the planters plant and the fishermen make offerings to the Goddess of the Sea. The Shinto priest blesses the water to make it safe for swimming.

In the port, mullet fish jump: once, twice. A raptor trills, a seagull swoops, a heron screeches in the summer night. Fishermen clamber into boats, glide out past the lighthouse, out with the tide, out until they can no longer be seen. They return in the dark of the night; still they cannot be seen. Voices carry across the water as they chatter away half-hitching their boats, sorting their catches—tonguefish, sea bass, red snapper—and lay them in shallow wooden boxes. They’re stacked, loaded (ice jiggling), and readied for the fish markets on the mainland. As the captain leaves the port, the mast light bobs and blinks like a firefly crossing a stream. The fishermen’s day complete, they walk home to dream the rest of the night away with their families. 

When the birds pluck figs from branches and drop the seeds onto the decks, the typhoons are nigh. The swirling storms warn ferries to stop and fishermen to secure their boats with long hawsers fore and aft; they stretch across the port like giant spider webs. Gales mount, halyards clink against masts, islanders crouch inside their dark houses. When caterwauling waves flatten to foam and the tailwinds disappear, red spider lilies bloom. 

It’s almost the Autumn equinox, a time to visit the ancestral graves on the hill. Chrysanthemums placed, mantras intoned, incense burned next to beer and sake. The wind stirs, the sea wells, crested waves jump over the sea like white rabbits.

“Washoi, washoi!” shout costumed islanders to the background of screechy festival music. They are pulling a mikoshi, wooden and wheeled, up the steep slope to the Shinto shrine. They haul from the front, they heave from the back, they strain against the creaking weight. When the procession passes under the stone torii gate, they bow to the four main gods, protectors of the island, and invite them into the palanquin. The exalted guests of the day are escorted to Ebisu Shrine (deity of fishermen), Kompirasan Shrine (deity of seafarers), and treated to a dance of shrine maidens performed on the beach by elementary school girls wearing scarlet lips, red robes and white tabi socks. 

Mikan oranges, chestnut rice, the sweet potato harvest. With full bellies, folks lay on the ground and watch the pampas grass plumes nearly touch the sky and the Harvest moon rise over the sea.

It’s the height of kōyō, but the trees don’t dare flaunt their autumn colors in front of the stately green pines posing in front of the blue Seto Inland Sea. In the offing, flat topped boats crouch under long nets as they’re lifted over frames to release their green-jeweled strands: ichiban nori—the first seaweed harvest of the season. Closer to shore, a fisherman muscles his net of flopping sea bass into his boat’s fishhold, while an octopus tentacle stretches out of the opposite hold, testing the possibilities of escape. 

Rice cakes, temple cleaning, the toll of the New Year bell. Tossing aluminum coins into offering boxes: they bounce on their sides, heads and tails, down the sloping pallets until they land “toink!” on the bottom. Hands clapped together, eyes closed, prayers recited. They pay their debts, wish their neighbors well.

Battledores melt into black smoke, sacred sakaki branches curl and sizzle, Shinto ropes fray and smolder, and bamboo stalks pop as New Year decorations are cremated, sent back up to the gods in puffs of smoke. Rice cakes and orange dai-dai fruit slump in the ashes. From the final embers, they will be skimmed out, pulled open between gloved fingers, and their warm flesh shared among the participants. The pearl white drops of melting rice and the dripping orange pulp are treats to bring them health and good luck for the coming year. 

The elderly amble home in the evening, step onto their wooden verandas and into their homes, not to emerge again until the fragrance of plum blossoms mingles with the smell of the sea. The islands retreat into the silver-blue mist, snuffed out like stars on a cloudy night.