Journal · · 5 min read
An old calendar that divides the year into five-day seasons, and why it still shapes what you eat.
Most of the world has four seasons. The old Japanese calendar has seventy-two. Each lasts about five days, and each has a name that describes something small happening in nature: "east wind melts the ice", "frogs start singing", "first cherry blossoms". It is the most precise way of noticing the year we know.
Where it comes from
The system began in China, where the year was divided into 24 solar terms, the sekki, each about fifteen days long. Each solar term was split into three shorter periods, the kō, giving 72 in all.
When the calendar came to Japan, the names did not always fit the local weather. In the 1680s, the astronomer Shibukawa Shunkai revised them to match Japanese nature more closely. The names most people use today come from a later revision in the 1870s.
The solar terms are still printed on many calendars, and still mentioned in weather forecasts. The 72 micro-seasons are less widely used day to day, but they have had a quiet revival, in books, on calendars and in kitchens.
What the names sound like
A few, to give the flavour:
- Harukaze kōri o toku, early February: east wind melts the ice.
- Sakura hajimete saku, late March: first cherry blossoms.
- Kawazu hajimete naku, early May: frogs start singing.
- Kusare taru kusa hotaru to naru, early June: rotten grass becomes fireflies.
- Momiji tsuta kibamu, early November: maple leaves and ivy turn yellow.
- Sake no uo muragaru, mid December: salmon gather and swim upstream.
Some are poetic. Some, like the fireflies, reflect old beliefs about nature. All of them ask you to look closely at something specific, for five days, before it changes.
Dates shift slightly from year to year, because the solar terms follow the sun rather than the calendar month.
Why it matters at the table
This is where the 72 seasons stop being a curiosity and start being useful. Japanese cooking is built on shun, the moment when an ingredient is at its best. A good kaiseki kitchen thinks in weeks, not months.
That means:
- Bamboo shoots in April, dug at dawn and cooked the same day.
- Ayu, sweetfish, from early summer, grilled on skewers over charcoal.
- Hamo, pike conger, in Kyoto in July, around the Gion festival.
- Matsutake mushrooms in autumn, briefly and expensively.
- Yuzu in winter, its peel shaved over almost everything.
The menu changes when the season does. In Japan, that is about every five days. A dish you eat on 1 May may be gone by 20 May. The garnish on your plate, a leaf, a flower, a sprig of something, is often telling you exactly which season you are in.
Beyond food
The same attention runs through everything. Sweets in a tea room are shaped like the flower of the week. The scroll in a ryokan alcove changes. Kimono patterns move with the calendar, and wearing cherry blossoms after they have fallen is considered slightly behind the times.
None of this is a performance for visitors. It is simply how a lot of people in Japan have paid attention to the year for a very long time.
How we use it
We plan journeys around the micro-seasons, not just the four big ones. If you are travelling in early June, we want you near water at dusk, in case the fireflies are out. In late October, we look at the maple forecasts week by week and move you uphill or down to meet them. In mid-winter, we find the inn where the yuzu bath is drawn on the solstice.
Nature does not keep a schedule, of course. Blossom comes early in a warm year, fireflies vary, and forecasts are only forecasts. We plan for the likely, and stay flexible for the real.
Try it yourself
You do not need to learn all seventy-two. Before your trip, look up the two or three that fall while you are there. Then keep an eye out. Ask the chef what is in season. Notice what the sweet in the tea house is pretending to be.
It is a small habit, but it changes how a trip feels. You stop seeing Japan in general, and start seeing it this week.