Seasonal Japan: Emi H. Takahashi on the 72 Micro-Seasons and Their Hidden Meanings

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BY TRENT THOMSON

A ginkō is a nature-inspired haiku walk, a meditative and poetic journey within the natural world. It is an integral part of the haiku tradition, offering poets the opportunity to tap into the inherent wisdom of nature and deepen their experience, while finding inspiration for their art. The ginkō is an intentional, mindful, and meditative experience of the present-moment, much like a haiku.

This same nature-inspired journey can be experienced and expressed through prose and poetry. 

Emi H. Takahashi’s poetic book, Seasonal Japan: 72 Micro-seasons and Their Hidden Meanings, takes us along one such ginkō, with quiet elegance and attention to the subtle movements within nature. In the western world, we tend to think of the year as being divided into just four seasons, while in old traditional Japanese culture, the calendar was divided into no less than 72 sections, known as micro-seasons or kō. In Seasonal Japan, Emi Takahashi guides us through a detailed and vivid amble through each of these tiny seasons (kō).

“The 72 kō don’t announce themselves like loud guests; they arrive like perfume in a hallway – faint, deliberate, unrepeatable.”

– Emi H. Takahashi

Within the micro-seasons are 72 poetic words and phrases, each representing moments within the impermanent cycle of nature and existence. The 72 micro-seasons, simply and succinctly referred to as kō, come from the ancient Chinese lunisolar calendar, which was made up of 24 sekki (approximately 15 days each – in contrast to the Gregorian Calendar of 12 months) and further developed in 1685 by the Japanese astronomer Shibukawa, into the Japanese Traditional Calendar/Almanac, Schichijūni-kō. 

Shibukawa reconfigured the Chinese calendar by further dividing the 24 sekki (approximately 15 days each) into 3 kō micro-seasons (approximately 5-day segments, or pentads), thus creating the 72 micro-seasons, highlighting the Japanese experience in nature and culture. This ceased to be the official national calendar in 1873,  but continued to be of great interest to farmers, poets, writers, artists, and others who lived and flowed by the rhythms of the micro-seasons.

The kō calendar has more recently been experiencing a renaissance due to growing interest in mindfulness and eco-awareness, inspiring people from all walks of life, and from all over the world.

“The Japanese calendar (kō) doesn’t just tell you what day it is – it tells you where you are in the grand, slow, choreography of nature . . . The beauty of micro-seasons is that they refuse to flatten nature into mere utility . . . they carve the calendar into something far more intimate and strangely elegant – something alive.” 

– Emi H. Takahashi

I personally find myself on my own ginkō walk, as I have been engaging with kō as a mindfulness-based haiku practice. My experience is that kō provide a way in which to cultivate a keener, heightened sense of awareness, and a way in which to express these qualities. Kō, like haiku, contain and represent what is referred to in Zen as kenshō moments, or brief flashes of insight. While the seasonal pace of kō is seemingly quicker, they actually slow everything, in and around us, down.

I feel the phrase slow kō, is quite apt. The kō that made up the ancient calendar were directly observed and experienced by the authors and editors – yet they provide me, in a contemporary context, with the inspiration to carry them forward in and through my own poems. I often feel as though I am standing on the shoulders of these ancient poets as I ruminate on the kō, as they spark a jumping-off point into a new expression of universal truths and experiences that they represent.

Kō provides an inexhaustible source of inspiration, like a current that is moving through time. There is a natural rhythm to kō; we read them, we reflect upon them, we ruminate, and then we respond with our own expression: in this present-moment. Time, in a linear sense, dissolves into nature through the micro-seasons, as we open ourselves to a natural way of life.

Kō, for me, is a pathway to presence. 

“Time here isn’t measured in months but in moments . . . paying attention, that you’ve noticed the shift not in the clock, but in your chest, in your bones . . . the year is divided into 24 seasonal segments – each sekki a kind of nature’s headline – and further into 72 kō, the footnotes written in blossom, breeze, and insects . . . They’re like fragments of haiku . . .” 

– Emi H. Takahashi

This insight and eloquence of Seasonal Japan could only be written by someone who has experienced and embodied the micro-seasons, this series of ‘present moments’. The practice of cultivating heightened awareness is a lived experience, each moment, every day, a process. Embedded in the poetic prose, we are skillfully touched by the wisdom woven inherently in nature, and expressed in everyday language by Takahashi. 

Here is one example of Takahashi’s insightful and poetic unfolding of the first kō:

“East wind melts the ice isn’t just a meteorological update – it’s a gentle nudge that the planet has turned a corner. It’s Risshun, the start of spring according to the old calendar . . . the puddles that once sat motionless, sealed under glass, now tremble when the wind passes. Even the frost seems thinner, less committed to the role. Nature’s great thaw has begun its rehearsal.”

– Emi H. Takahashi

Emi Takahashi’s Seasonal Japan (Kō) is about heightened embodied awareness. Sincere gratitude for life, all life, is about paying attention. When we do so, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Seasonal Japan is an art-inspired expression of Zen, of paying attention in the present-moment. In this context, nature itself is our koan. Indeed, kō are, in their essence, present moments expressed poetically. 

“(Kō) are not some whimsical add-on. It’s the backbone . . . it’s about being present. It  insists that noticing matters. This hyper-awareness shapes not just how time is recorded, but how it is lived” 

– Emi H. Takahashi

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