春分 (Shunbun) is the fourth sekki and one of only two points in the year, alongside its autumn counterpart, when day and night split almost exactly evenly — the sun rising due east and setting due west. This kō's own subject is domestic and unremarkable in the best way: sparrows, among the most common birds in Japan, gathering dried grass and stray hair from dawn to dusk to build nests in roof gaps, gutters, and gaps under eaves, right at the start of their spring breeding season.
The equinox itself falls within this kō's five-day window, and with it the midpoint of 春のお彼岸 (haru no Higan) — a seven-day Buddhist observance centered on the equinox day, three days either side, when families visit and clean ancestral graves. Its autumn counterpart falls exactly six months later, around the September equinox, the two Higan weeks bracketing the year the same symmetrical way the equinoxes themselves do.
Still excellent, its season overlapping the tail end of Hinamatsuri demand.
Toward the end of its best season.
Toward the end of its season, still tart and refreshing.
Still good, crisp and mildly aromatic.
A classic foraged spring green, requiring a lye or wood-ash soak before cooking to remove natural bitterness and toxins.
Both continue from the previous kō, still near their best — the calendar's own image of spring color deepening gradually rather than switching over all at once.
The customary Higan offering, named for the peony (牡丹, botan) blooming around the same time — its autumn equivalent, おはぎ (ohagi), is the same dish under a different seasonal name, taking its name instead from autumn's bush clover (萩, hagi). Azuki beans' red color was believed since antiquity to ward off misfortune, and the dish's use of sugar, historically an expensive ingredient, doubled as a genuine offering of something valuable to ancestors being honored during the week.
"The tongue-cut sparrow" — A well-known folktale, traced to a story called 腰折雀 ("the sparrow with the broken back") recorded in the early Kamakura-period anthology Uji Shūi Monogatari — a kind old man who nurses an injured sparrow back to health is rewarded with treasure, while his greedy wife, who mutilates the same bird out of spite, is punished for her cruelty.
巣 (su) simply means nest, and 始 (hajimete) marks the onset of the behavior specifically — this kō names the beginning of a months-long breeding effort by its very first, least visible stage.
The equinox day itself, plus three days either side, makes up the full week — no need to visit on the equinox exactly.
Traditionally offered first, then eaten by the household afterward, rather than treated purely as a snack.
Raw bracken fern contains genuine toxins that the traditional lye treatment neutralizes — this isn't an optional flavor step.
From the equinox onward, days keep lengthening relative to nights all the way through to the summer solstice in June.
Sparrows build in the least dramatic locations imaginable — roof gaps, gutters, the underside of eaves nobody looks at — using nothing more than what they can gather in a day. There's no ambition in it beyond function, and the whole thing still works. What in your own life could use less architecture and more of that same plain, unglamorous, entirely sufficient building?