The summer solstice is the longest day of the year between sunrise and sunset.
It falls on the 21st or 22nd of June in the solar calendar, right in the middle of the summer season. It was a busy time for farmers in old Japan as it marked the end of the rice planting season and the beginning of summer.
The Summer Solstice in Japan
Around the summer solstice, there is a lot of rainy weather in Japan. The rainy season is a time of cloudy skies and depression, but it is also a time of blessings for rice planting. For the Japanese, whose agricultural culture was based on rice cultivation, the rice harvest was a matter of direct economic and political concern. The rains of this time of year were very important for rice farming.
In terms of tea production, the second tea harvest is over and the sencha is no longer being sold as shincha. Some of the second harvest teas are used to produce black tea and unique lightly fermented teas.
Geshi: 24 divisions of the old calendar ‘Nijushi sekki’
First: Natsukusakaruru
Natsukaruru means the time when the “summer withered grass” that sproted at the time of the winter solstice withers away.
What is referred to here as ‘summer withered grass’ is the ‘pitcher plant’, which sprots around the time of the winter solstice, when the other plants and trees are dying, and grows wild in the mountains, fields and sunny roadsides. It grows towards spring. The plants generally flourish in summer, but by the time of the summer solstice, the flower turn to brown and withered. This is the reason for the name “summer withered grass”. The time is metaphorically marked by this interesting plant at the beginning of the seventy-two signs of the summer solstice.
Second: Ayamehanasaku
This is the time of year when Japanese irises are in bloom. The iris is a plant with a dignified appearance. Other similarly shaped plants in the Iris family include the Ayame iris, the kakitsubata and the hana-shobu, but it is the hana-shobu that is in bloom at the end of June.
Compared to the Ayame iris and kakitsubata, the flower of the hana-shobu is much larger and blooms later in the season.
The name ‘hana-shoubu’ may remind you of the Shobu (Japanese iris) used at the boy’s festival on May 5th, but hana-shobu and shobu are not the same plant. Hana-Shobu was named after its leaves, which resemble those of the shobu.
Third: Hange-shozu/Hangesho
Hangesho is the 11th day after the summer solstice, when the poisonous plant ‘hange’ grows. In the past, hange was a plant that signalled the end of the rice planting season. It is just at this time that the few leaves at the top of the stem turn from green to white. The name ‘hangesho’ is also said to be named after make-up’. Kesho means make-up in Japan.
