13 Comments

“かなりうるさい“ is not the title I would have chosen! 😂 It’s beautiful, thank you so much for this! As it happens I am reading HOTOTOGISU by Tokutomi Kenjirō, so it was lovely to read your essay this week and also to be able to see and hear the bird! ❤️

Expand full comment

I have not heard of that novel. I’m going to look it up right now! Thank you so much it’s great to be in touch. I always miss not hearing from you!

Expand full comment

awww you are sweet, I always look for your bird photos!

HOTOTOGISU is on aozora although I also have a bunko version, and there's a mildly terrible manga version also! I'm currently re-studying my classical Japanese because I realized I was missing things in HOTOTOGISU because my classical Japanese dates back to the 90s and I don't remember most of it. LOL!

Expand full comment

I don’t remember any classical Japanese. It’s amazing how fast I lost that. Probably because I didn’t really spend a huge amount of time on it in grad school. As I’m reading a Genji, I suppose try to look a little bit at the original and I’m lost without modern annotations.

Expand full comment

https://grapee.jp/en/214817

At rest. The snow fairy.

Expand full comment

Awwwwwww

Expand full comment

Oh, the snow fairy!

Expand full comment

Leave it to Japanese to have onomatopoeic bird names. It sounds lovely! Also clears up some confusion as just earlier today I was wondering if the cuckoo cry I am familiar with here in Europe was actually ほととぎす or 閑古鳥. Now I know it's the latter!

Expand full comment

Are you back in Germany now? I really regret being so oblivious to birds when I was in Japan... I think I was definitely focused on flowers.... one interesting thing about the 旧暦 is that none of the 24節季 was ever altered in two-thousand years from the time they were imported from China... the 72 micro-seasons were mainly stable until the Edo period, when slowly some of the Chinese seasons were changed and the biggest change to the calendar was removing birds to add flowers and plants. I do think the ancient Chinese were more attuned to birds.

Expand full comment

Back in Austria, yes.

And that's impressive! To be honest, I was completely oblivious to birds & flowers prior to tea ceremony. I still don't know much & almost nothing about what's native in Japan so these posts are appreciated.

Expand full comment

I love Austria!!

Expand full comment

omg the snow fairy is so adorable! 😍

Expand full comment

I know!!! I bet if I saw one in real life my heart would explode!

Expand full comment