The higurashi cicada sings — kana-kana-kana, high and thin and falling away at the end. It is not the flat wall of sound the summer cicadas make. It arrives at the edges of the day, before sunrise and after sunset, and on cooler days it carries on into the afternoon.
In haiku the higurashi is an autumn word, not a summer one, though it is singing in the middle of the hottest weeks of the year. The classification is about what the sound means rather than when it happens. This is also the week of Obon, when the dead are received back into the house — and the two things sit together so naturally that it is hard to hear the one without thinking of the other.
At its peak now. Eaten as sashimi, boiled, in takoyaki, or simmered — one of the most familiar ingredients in the Japanese kitchen.
Still running well from earlier in the month.
Coming fully into season and running on through September.
The late varieties are arriving as the early ones finish.
Still at its best; the season is short.
Traditionally offered at the Obon altar alongside cucumber.
Hōzuki is the Obon flower. Its papery orange husk is said to serve as a lantern — a red light to guide the returning spirits to the house. Decoration and signal at once.
In most of Japan Obon falls on August 13–16, squarely inside this kō. A welcoming fire (迎え火) is lit on the first evening to guide the ancestors home, and a sending fire (送り火) on the last to see them out again. Families gather, graves are cleaned, and offerings are set at the household altar. It is the largest movement of people in the Japanese year, and it is why the higurashi's song has an air of departure about it.
寒蝉 reads literally as 'cold cicada' — the cicada of the cooling season — and the compound can be pronounced かんせんなく (kansen naku). In Japan it is read ひぐらしなく, taking 寒蝉 as the higurashi (Tanna japonensis). Colloquially the insect is カナカナ蝉, named straight from its call. Its place in the seasonal vocabulary is firmly autumn, which is why a cicada singing in the August heat can still be, by the calendar's logic, an autumn sound.
Obon is kept August 13–16 — 月遅れの盆 (tsukiokure no Bon), a month after the old lunar date, shifted when Japan adopted the solar calendar.
Some areas kept the original date and observe 新盆 (shin-Bon) in mid-July instead, so the festival has already passed by the time this kō arrives.
Dawn and dusk are when the higurashi sings. In the middle of a hot afternoon you will hear the other cicadas instead.
送り火 on the evening of the 16th. A small fire at the doorway is the traditional form; many households now use a candle or a lantern.
Grave-cleaning is the practical heart of Obon. If that isn't available to you, the season still asks for the same attention.
Obon is the busiest travel week in Japan. Trains and roads fill from the 11th, and returning traffic peaks around the 16th and 17th.
Offerings sit out at the altar in peak heat and humidity. This is the stretch of the year when food poisoning cases climb.
Calendar autumn began at Risshū, but the heat has not. Greetings written now are 残暑見舞い, and the sun is still at full strength.
It is worth noticing that the higurashi was reclassified rather than rescheduled. The insect sings when it sings; what changed was the decision about what its song belongs to. Somebody, at some point, listened to that thin falling call in the middle of August and decided it was not a summer sound — that it was about the end of something rather than the height of it. The calendar is full of judgements like this, made by ear. Is there something in your own life you've been hearing all along, that you've only recently started listening to differently — not because it changed, but because you did?