The season now
東風解凍
East wind melts the ice
Harukaze kōri o toku
No. 1 of 72 · February 4 – 8
The old Japanese calendar does not stop at four seasons. It divides the year into seventy-two short seasons of about five days each, named for small changes in nature.
A year in seventy-two seasons
The old Japanese calendar does not stop at four seasons. It divides the year into twenty-four solar terms, the sekki, and each of those again into three, giving seventy-two short seasons, the shichijūni-kō, of about five days each. Their names are tiny observations of nature: the east wind melts the ice, the first peach blossoms open, the swallows leave, the bears retreat to their dens.
The list came to Japan from China. In 1685 the court astronomer Shibukawa Shunkai rewrote it for Japanese weather, and his version is still printed in almanacs and followed today by cooks, gardeners and poets.
The seasons
One print for each. Select a print to read about its season.
About the prints
The pictures come from another meeting of Japan and the outside world. Philipp Franz von Siebold, a German physician, lived at the Dutch trading post of Dejima in Nagasaki from 1823 to 1829. He collected plants and animals across Japan, and back in Europe they became two great illustrated works, Flora Japonica and Fauna Japonica, many of them painted by the Japanese artist Kawahara Keiga.
Each print takes a plant or animal from those plates, now in the public domain, and sets it in a new scene for its season, with the season's name in brush calligraphy. Where Siebold drew nothing that fits, a plant or bird of the same days stands in, and the text says so.
Takagi Creations is a small two-person studio in the Netherlands. The dates are those of the modern calendar and may shift by a day from year to year.
Where to buy
We don't sell directly. The prints are made and shipped to order by these shops, which handle payment, delivery and returns.
Write to us
Questions about a print, a season, or something you'd like to see? We read every message.