Kanro寒露 · “cold dew”

Chestnuts. Mushrooms (matsutake, shiitake). Bok choy.

Taro, sweet potatoes, lotus root.

Sanma (秋刀魚, Pacific saury), salmon, aki-saba (秋鯖, fall mackerel). This has long been said to be when they are at their fattiest. The character for “fall” (秋) is in the names, too.

Persimmons, apples.^※1

For finding Japan’s seasonal foods and familiar things in California → Stores where they are easy to find, with addresses

There is not.

Beans at Setsubun.
Kabocha squash at the winter solstice.
Rice porridge for Nanakusa, the day of seven herbs.
I looked through six sources for that kind of “food for this day” for Kanro.
It was not written in any of them.

There is plenty in season. There is no rule. So it can be your own decision.^※2

Around now, the buckwheat is ripening.
Hitachi Aki Soba, from Ibaraki, is sown in mid-August, blooms white in September, and is cut in late October.

I looked for a custom of “drinking soba tea at Kanro” and did not find one. This is TANE’s suggestion.^※3

In a kyusu or a teapot, about 1 tablespoon. Boiling water goes in, and it sits for 2 to 5 minutes.

For a larger batch, a kettle.
Once it boils, it simmers for about 3 minutes.

TANE uses a ceramic kettle, for about 3 minutes.
For iced tea, I let it cool down first,
then move it to a glass bottle and into the fridge.
The groats left after brewing go back to the soil. (Compost)

Starting from raw buckwheat groats: a frying pan over medium-low heat, about 10 minutes of roasting while stirring.

Tartary buckwheat (dattan soba, 韃靼そば) is a different species from common buckwheat, and it has a bitter taste.

In Japan, buckwheat is one of the items for which allergen labeling is mandatory. For anyone with a buckwheat allergy, hojicha or barley tea instead.^※4

TANE looks at eight things.

1. Whether it is made of buckwheat alone ── the ingredients list
2. Where it was grown ── inside the parentheses in the ingredients list
3. How it was grown ── the Organic JAS mark / 「栽培期間中農薬不使用」 (“no pesticides used during cultivation”) / in the U.S., USDA Organic
4. Whether anything else, such as flavoring, has been added ── the ingredients list
5. Whether the groats still have their shape ── whole groats / tea bags
6. How it was roasted ── light roast, medium roast, and so on. Often it is not stated
7. How it is packaged ── including what the tea bag itself is made of
8. Who makes it ── whether the name of a farm or a company can be seen

See it on real bags (What we choose: fall soba tea) →

In Japan, farm products may not be labeled 「無農薬」 (“pesticide-free”) or 「減農薬」 (“reduced pesticide”).

It is said that “pesticide-free” was taken to mean that no pesticide residue remains at all, and that this led to misunderstanding. The label reads 「栽培期間中不使用」 (“not used during cultivation”) instead.

「有機」 and 「オーガニック」 (both “organic”) can be used only on things that carry the Organic JAS mark.

So in front of the shelf, these two phrases are the ones to look for.^※5

It does. Shūtō bancha (秋冬番茶, “fall-and-winter bancha”) is picked from late September to around late October.
Kanro is right in the middle of that season.^※6

Bancha, or tea leaves that have gotten old, can be made into hojicha at home.
A frying pan, over medium-low heat. About 5 minutes, until the color changes.
Once it has changed, it goes straight into another dish.^※36

It does not go anywhere. It is still there.

People say that drying “takes out” the astringency.
But in fact it has only changed into a form that does not dissolve in water, so the tongue no longer senses it.

When the skin is peeled, a film forms on the surface of the fruit and air stops passing through.
Inside, the astringency keeps changing into the form that does not dissolve in water.
Peeling is not only for drying. It is to stop the breathing inside.

^※7

They can. Astringent persimmons (Hachiya) are grown here.

The stem cap stays on and the skin comes off. They are threaded on a string. About a month, somewhere the air moves well.

They also appear in the Engishiki (延喜式), a book of regulations from the Heian period, as a sweet for ceremonies.^※37

A University of California research and extension center holds a “Hoshigaki Workshop” in September. Hoshigaki (干し柿, dried persimmon) has become the name, in Japanese, as it is.

The persimmon-picking events, though, are in September and November. Not in October, when Kanro falls.
The day is the same length, but the persimmons come in a different month.

^※8

Mushiboshi (虫干し, “airing against insects”) is hanging clothes, books and tools in the shade and letting air through them, to keep off insects and mold.
The time for it is the doyo period of summer, or a clear day in fall.

It is not an observance of Kanro alone. It is care for daily life in the time from Kanro to Soko, when the air is turning dry.^※9

In the daytime, on a day when the air is dry after several clear days in a row.

Kimono shops say “after 2 to 3 days of clear weather” and “from about 10 a.m. to about 3 p.m.”
I did not find an official source. The wording also differs a little from shop to shop.^※10

Futons and cotton things feel good after time in the sun.

Silk and wool are dried in the shade. Sunlight can turn them yellow.
I have dried silk in the sun and had it turn yellow, and I have shrunk a wool sweater down to about a child’s size.
※ A word of care: when wool goes into the dryer, even an adult man’s sweater comes out about the size for a seven-year-old.

Books stay out of the sun. The dust is brushed off. Dust draws insects and takes up moisture.^※11

The surface of a wool fiber is like scales.
With heat, water and being rubbed about, the scales open and catch on the fibers next to them. They set that way. This is called felting.

Sheep do not shrink when they get wet in the rain. That is because their scales all face the same way, and the grease in the fleece sheds water.^※46

The method most often introduced is dissolving hair conditioner in the water. The idea is to make the fibers slippery and undo the catching. TANE uses citric acid in its place.^※47

I looked for a source that tested how far citric acid brings wool back, and did not find one.
It does work, though; that much I have tried myself. Still, for something that has become extremely small, there is a limit.

So, what can be done beforehand.
Before washing, a look at the tag inside the garment. Whether it can go in the dryer is written there, in symbols.^※48
Wool is laid flat and dried in the shade.

Wool, silk, down. The larvae of an insect called the clothes moth (iga) like them.^※12

There are things that can be done before chemicals.
Washing what has been worn before putting it away.
Taking things out now and then, giving them sun, and beating them, pat-pat.
Keeping them in a box whose lid closes tightly.

Small things like scarves, hats and stuffed toys go into a bag and into the freezer for several days.
This is the method the University of California recommends when something may have picked up insects.^※13

What has been around for a long time.
Camphor (shōnō, 樟脳) is obtained by steaming chips of camphor tree wood.^※38
A cedar chest works on small larvae, but not on large ones. The scent fades in a few years.
The University of California says that the chest closing tightly matters more.
As for herbal oils, almost nothing is known about how well they work.^※13

Do chili peppers work?
Chili peppers in the rice bin have been studied by a national research institute in Japan.
The insects that get into rice did avoid the chili. But not strongly; it was less than half after 1 month, and zero after 3 months.
What works is not the heat. It is the scent. And the scent drifts off and is gone.
I did not find a record of it being tried on clothes insects.^※39

All of them are sold with a set amount and a set way of use.
With that understood, I try the other roads first.

Even the natural ones are kept where children cannot reach.

It is. Japan says kage-boshi (陰干し), “dry in the shade.”
The University of California says to hang things in the sun now and then, and brush them down into the seams and folds.
TANE dries wool and silk in the shade, and puts cotton and linen in the sun.

What is being protected? The color, or against insects? The way of airing changes with that.^※13

It does. Since 2016.

A rule by which a homeowners association bans a clothesline in a backyard that only you use became void.
Balconies and railings, however, are not covered.^※14

There is a 2020 study from the University of Copenhagen.
Freshly washed towels were dried outside in the sun, in the shade, and indoors, and compared.
The pleasant-smelling compounds formed only when the towels were dried in the sun.

They seem to form when sunlight and air react on the surface of the wet cloth.
This was an experiment with laundry. It was not confirmed with futons.

I also often hear that “that is the smell of dead dust mites.” I looked for the original report and did not find it.^※15

One drawer of the dresser. One shelf of the bookcase. Starting there is fine.

A Chinese book from about 2,000 years ago has a way of spending fall.

To go to bed early and rise early.
To keep the heart at peace.
To gather ki (氣) inward.
Not to turn the heart too far outward.
It called this the way of nourishing “gathering in.”

This is a reading found in an old book of medicine.
It is not a promise that doing so will do this or that to the body.^※16

It does not. The word naikan (内観, “looking inward”) is not there.

What is there goes only as far as “not to turn the heart too far outward.”
“As the nights grow longer, turning a little attention to your own inside, too” is TANE’s reading.

In the old way of thinking called yin-yang and the five phases (陰陽五行), fall is “metal.” Its direction is west, its color is white, and in the body the lungs are assigned to it.

It joins season, direction, color and body in a single table.
It has been handed down as a way of thinking that turns attention to the breath and the skin in dry times and at the turn of the seasons.

It does not show a connection with the workings of the lungs as today’s medicine describes them.

Wood = spring, east　/　Fire = summer, south　/　Earth = late summer, center　/　Metal = fall, west　/　Water = winter, north^※17

In China, it has been said: eat sesame, drink chrysanthemum wine.
“To guard against the dryness of fall.”^※18

In guidance on kampo in Japan, lotus root, lily bulb, white sesame, Asian pear, persimmon and grapes are said to suit the dryness of fall. The thinking is that “white foods give moisture.”
The lotus root and persimmon listed under what is in season appear here, too.
How far any of it has been confirmed is another matter.^※45

To the Skin page →

Words from the Shiji (『史記』), a Chinese book of history.
Born in spring, growing in summer, gathered in in fall, stored away in winter.
This, it says, is the great outline of the way of heaven.

There is also the phrase 「灯火親しむべし」 (tōka shitashimu beshi).
It means that fall, cool and with long nights, suits reading under a lamp.^※19

To the Food & Fermentation page →

There is no need to write the answers down.

1. What has borne fruit over this past year?
2. What would you like to store up toward winter?
3. What is in flower now, on the land where you are?
4. What would you like to tend to before winter?
5. What do you feel the seasons through?
6. Have you been turning outward too much lately? What would you like a little less of?

Settling the mind, meditating, reading a book. Stretching the body, listening to what the body is saying.

And then, thinking. The season of gathering in is the season of packing away. Now, in this season…… what shall I pack away tomorrow?

Fall has been regarded as the season for gathering ki (氣) inward.

Even for someone who usually has no time to look inside,
this is a time to try looking in, on purpose.

During Kanro, every year, a day comes with two 10s side by side.
October 10.

In ancient Greece there were people who tried to read the world through numbers. They were the followers of Pythagoras.
They thought of 10 as “the complete number.”^※50

Set dots in a triangle ── 1, 2, 3, 4 ── and they come to 10 in all.
The same arrangement as bowling pins.
They made that shape an important sign.^※51

Japan, too, has an observance on a day when 10s double.
The night of the 10th day of the 10th month in the old calendar: Tōkan’ya (十日夜, “the night of the tenth”).
In eastern Japan, it is the day when, with the rice harvest finished, people see off the god of the rice field as it returns to the mountain.^※52

On a day like that:

1. Putting in order just one spot that the eye falls on
2. Writing down three things you want to hold dear
3. At night, putting three thanks from the day into words

Even if the 10th has passed, the day you notice is the day.
A day, in daily life, for looking at your own “inside.”

It moves. On the fall equinox, it is due west. From there until the winter solstice, it shifts a little farther south each day.
Around Kanro, it is about 7 degrees south of due west.

With a tree or a roof seen from the window as a marker, it is worth remembering the place where it set today. At the next term, Soko, one more look.^※43

Where the sun is in the sky.

The full 360 degrees of the sun’s path were divided into 24 parts of 15 degrees each. Kanro is 195 degrees.^※20

The 12 signs of the West use the same 360 degrees. There, it was divided into 12 parts of 30 degrees each.

So the boundaries of the 12 signs sit in exactly the same places as half of the twenty-four solar terms (the chūki, 中気). Spring equinox = the start of Aries. Summer solstice = Cancer. Fall equinox = Libra. Winter solstice = Capricorn.

Libra begins at the fall equinox and ends at Soko. Kanro is its midpoint.^※21

It is not. It is the name of an angle, counted from the spring equinox point.

Because the Earth’s axis slowly wobbles, the spring equinox point moves 1 degree every 72 years.
As a result, the signs and the constellations are now off from each other by roughly one.^※22

An air sign. Its ruling planet is Venus. Its meaning is “quick wit” (機転). That is how it has been read.

TANE takes this view, too, as a reference: knowledge that those before us cultivated.
Here, though, we are setting side by side how people have read the same sky.^※22

The twenty-four solar terms come in two kinds, lined up in alternation.
Kanro is 「九月節」, the setsu of the ninth month. Soko, which follows, is 「九月中」, the chū of the ninth month.

The boundaries of the Western signs are the 12 chūki (中気). The boundaries of the months in the Eastern calendar are the 12 setsu (節).
The same 24 marks are being used in alternation.

Kanro is, in the East, the start of a month. In the West, it is the middle of a sign.
The season words (kigo) of haiku also divide the seasons by the setsu.^※23

An Edo-period commentary on the calendar puts it this way.

「凝る」 (koru) means to be on the way to setting solid. It is looking at the step just before frost.
The next term is Soko (霜降). There, the dew turns to frost and comes down.^※24

It was a guide for farm work.

A Korean encyclopedia says this.
Because this is the time when cold dew forms, the harvest has to be finished before the temperature drops further, and the villages are in the thick of threshing.

“The dew is cold” was not about how it feels. It was about a deadline.^※25

Today it is used to mean “a fine season.”

Originally, it is said, it was used to mean “they are coming to attack, on horses grown strong on the summer grass.” The season of harvest was also the season of being raided.

The archaeologist Sahara Makoto (佐原真) thought of it this way. Weapons made to harm people, and moats for defense, appear after farming began. People fought over the surplus that farming produced, and that is how warfare started.

There are counterarguments, too. A cemetery in Sudan from more than 12,000 years ago, and bones from the Jomon period, are also said to bear marks of injury.^※44

^※26

They did. It is called the seventy-two kō (七十二候, shichijūni-kō). The three for Kanro are these.

Every name is made of something that can be seen. Not temperatures or dates, but geese, chrysanthemums, insects.^※27

In the old Chinese calendar, the middle of Kanro carried that name.

The Japanese calendar does not have this name.
In the Edo period, calendar scholars rewrote it to suit Japan’s climate and land.
What went in instead was “chrysanthemums open.”

Reading the calendar over again to fit one’s own land. That was already done once, in the Edo period.^※27

The calendar reached Japan from China by way of the Korean Peninsula.
It is told that Japan’s first calendar was made in 604, in the Asuka period.

After that, Japan used a Chinese calendar from 862 to 1685.
That is about 823 years. In 1685, Shibukawa Shunkai (渋川春海) compiled a calendar by Japanese hands for the first time.^※28

The custom of gazing at the moon of Jūgoya (十五夜, “the fifteenth night”) came from China. The custom of admiring the moon of Jūsan’ya (十三夜, “the thirteenth night”) was born in Japan.

Other names for Jūsan’ya are Kuri-meigetsu (栗名月, “chestnut moon”) and Mame-meigetsu (豆名月, “bean moon”). Chestnuts and edamame gathered around this time are set out as offerings. One of its origins is held to be the moon-viewing banquet of 919, at which the Cloistered Emperor Kanpyō (寛平法皇) praised the moon of the thirteenth night.

A calendar was borrowed, and one thing was added on their own land.

^※29

They were devised around China’s Warring States period (the 300s BCE).

In 2016, they were inscribed as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.^※30

The Nine Stars (九星, kyūsei) are old. They came down from ancient China.

But it was in Japan, in Meiji 42 (1909), that they were combined with the sexagenary cycle (eto) and the five phases and put together as “Kigaku.”

The seventy-two kō, Jūsan’ya, Kigaku. For a thousand years, Japan has been taking what it borrowed and putting it together again on its own land.^※31

The 9th day of the 9th month in the old calendar. In Japan it is also called Kiku no Sekku (菊の節句), the Chrysanthemum Festival.

In yin-yang thinking, odd numbers are yang numbers. It is the day when 9, the largest of them, doubles; hence Chōyō (重陽, “doubled yang”).
It often falls around Kanro.^※32

In the term of dew, the dew of chrysanthemums. For Japan alone, I did not find any account of climbing a mountain.^※33

There are chrysanthemums for eating, too. Yamagata’s “Mottenohoka” (もってのほか) comes from the end of October to the start of November.
The petals are boiled for about 1 minute in water with vinegar added.^※41

Climbing mountains. Looking at the fall leaves. It has been said that “the mountains in fall color are like clouds of brocade.”

Eating sesame. Eating crab. Drinking chrysanthemum wine.

Fishing near the bank. That is because the water cools and the fish come into the shallows.^※18

Around Kanro, chrysanthemum-flower pancakes (菊花煎) are fried and chrysanthemum wine is made.
Gatherings and outings grow lively. Young people today hardly know of this.

Around this time, putting 茱萸 (shuyu) in the hair, and climbing to a high place to look toward one’s hometown, come up often in classical Chinese-style poetry. It was believed that climbing a high mountain and putting shuyu berries in the hair could drive away bad things.^※34

Fall has been tied to pensiveness, in poetry especially.
Keats’s “To Autumn” (September 1819) writes of both pensiveness and the richness of the harvest.

Harvest festivals, the Celtic fall festival (Samhain), the Day of the Dead. All of them come in fall.^※35