This is the last of the three kō belonging to Sōkō, and the calendar's formal acknowledgment that the year's color change has begun — though only just. もみじ (momiji), the word used for autumn foliage generally, is traditionally traced to 揉み出づ (momiide, "to squeeze/rub out") or 紅葉づ (momizu), describing dyeing cloth by working color into it, as if the season were pressing pigment into the leaves rather than the leaves simply losing chlorophyll. That etymology is also why momijiba covers yellow as much as red — 蔦 (tsuta, ivy) in this kō's own name turns a clean gold, not scarlet, even though 楓 (kaede, maple) is the character everyone associates with fire-red leaves.
What's actually happening now is early and partial. The real spread of color — the famous mountainsides everyone plans a trip around — mostly arrives after 立冬, the next sekki, and moves from the northern mountains down toward the coastal cities over the following month. This kō is the season's opening note, not its chorus: a few maples starting to blush at the edges, ivy climbing a wall gone properly gold, while most trees are still fully green.
Now properly in season across most regions — good simply steamed, or as the centerpiece of a kani nabe.
Richer with each passing week; look for the kanji 寒鰤 (kanburi) later in winter for the true peak, but it's already excellent now.
Just beginning its long winter season — the first fruit is smaller and tarter than the sweeter mikan of December and January.
Still in good season; ripe when the flesh near the stem yields to gentle pressure.
At full sweetness now — the anchor vegetable of the winter nabe table from here through the cold months.
Slightly bitter, deeply aromatic — a classic nabe addition despite the name meaning 'spring chrysanthemum.'
In full season; its earthy flavor pairs well with the sweetness of carrot in kinpira.
Imperial dahlia is an odd, late arrival — a dahlia that ignores the rest of its family's summer schedule and instead grows through autumn on stalks that can reach three or four meters, opening pale purple-pink flowers right as everything else is finishing. It needs the year's shortening daylight to trigger blooming at all, which is exactly why it shows up now and nowhere earlier.
Autumn's counterpart to hanami, with a curious name: 狩り means "hunting," even though nothing is caught or picked. Heian aristocrats considered walking rough hillsides beneath their dignity, so viewing trips into the mountains to look at color got dressed up in hunting language to make the activity respectable — a fiction some accounts say extended to nobles actually breaking off branches to examine up close, as if the leaves themselves were the catch. It stayed an aristocratic pastime for centuries before becoming a mass pursuit in the Edo period, which is roughly when it turned into the excursion culture — travel, food, scenic routes — still recognizable today.
"An autumn day falls like a well-bucket" — A tsurube is the bucket on a well's rope-and-pulley, which drops fast once released. First recorded in an 1862 kabuki script, the saying captures how quickly darkness now falls after sunset — not just an earlier sunset, but a shorter twilight, since less daylight remains scattered in the sky once the sun is down.
楓 (kaede, maple) takes its everyday name from 蛙手 (kaerude, "frog's hand"), for the splayed shape of its leaf — the character itself is a separate, later, more literary word. 蔦 (tsuta, ivy) is a native character with no strong Chinese-import history, unusual among plant names in this calendar. The verb 黄む (kibamu, to turn yellow) pairs the color 黄 with the same verb-forming suffix as 赤らむ (akaramu, to turn red) and 青ざめる (aozameru, to turn pale) — Japanese routinely turns colors directly into verbs of becoming, rather than treating color as something a thing simply has.
Momiji no tenpura — maple leaves battered in sweetened sesame flour and deep-fried into a crisp, faintly sweet snack — is said to date back roughly 1,300 years to En no Gyōja, the ascetic credited with founding Shugendō, who is said to have first prepared it for travelers passing the falls at Mt. Minoh. The leaves are salt-pickled for a full year before use, which is most of why the recipe survives as a slow, deliberate local specialty rather than something anyone could improvise on the spot.
Peak color moves down the country over the following month — already past its best in Hokkaidō and the Tōhoku mountains by the time this kō opens, while Kyoto, Nara, and points further south won't peak until late November or even early December.
Japan's weather services publish momiji forecasts (紅葉前線, kōyō zensen — literally an "autumn color front," modeled the same way as the spring cherry blossom forecast) that track projected peak dates by location far more precisely than the solar calendar can.
This kō's own name gives ivy equal billing — a gold-turning vine on an old wall or fence is often the first visible color of the season, days or weeks before any maple nearby has changed at all.
"Deep in the mountains, treading through fallen autumn leaves — hearing the deer's cry, that's when autumn feels saddest."
Peak-color weekends at famous spots (Kyoto's Arashiyama and Tōfuku-ji among the most visited) sell out lodging well in advance — the forecast front gives weeks of notice, which is also everyone else's notice.
Even where daytime highs still feel mild, sunset temperatures are dropping fast enough that a jacket left at home for a daytime outing becomes a real problem by the time you're walking back after dark.
Nobody actually knows who wrote the deer poem, or whether "Sarumaru Tayū" was a real person at all — the Kokinshū itself just says the author was unknown. The sadness in the poem has outlasted any certainty about who felt it. What would change about how you hold a piece of writing, or a piece of advice, if you learned you'd always been wrong about who it came from?