The calendar's third and final kō of Risshun, and the moment the whole opening sekki has been building toward: ice on ponds and slow rivers begins breaking apart, and fish that spent the coldest weeks motionless near the bottom become visible again, sometimes glimpsed leaping through the gaps in the breaking surface. It's the most literal image the calendar offers for the season actually turning — not implied by wind or light, but directly witnessed, fish where there was only ice a few weeks earlier.
Several fish carry the nickname 春告魚 (harutsugeuo, "the fish that announces spring") for exactly this reason — a direct echo of the uguisu's own 春告鳥 nickname from the previous kō, one bird and one fish both drafted into the same seasonal-messenger role.
This kō's own namesake fish in miniature — small enough to eat whole, classically caught through a hole cut in lake ice and fried whole as tempura.
The original 春告魚 in Hokkaidō and the Hokuriku coast, moving inshore in large schools to spawn around now.
Still in good season, firmer and less sweet than winter mikan.
At its peak through this stretch of Risshun.
Sweet and loose-leaved, good simply steamed or in a light salad.
Fukujusō continues from deep winter, its bright yellow flowers still among the very few blooming low to the ground at this point — a last overlap with Daikan before the calendar moves fully into spring's own flowers.
Practiced on frozen lakes across Nagano, Hokkaidō, and other cold-winter regions — a hole is cut through the ice and a short rod dropped straight down to fish for wakasagi feeding just beneath the frozen surface. Lake Suwa in Nagano is historically associated with the practice, though on Suwa itself modern fishing has largely shifted to heated dome boats anchored on the open water rather than ice fishing directly, since a reliably thick, safe freeze has become less consistent there in recent decades.
"The fish that announces spring" — Not one fixed species — historically herring in Hokkaidō and the Hokuriku region, but as herring catches there declined through the twentieth century, other regions adopted the same nickname for mebaru (rockfish) instead, so the title has genuinely shifted species along with the fishery.
上 (jō) here is read izuru, an older verb meaning "to emerge" or "to come forth" rather than its more common reading of "above" or "to rise" — describing the fish surfacing through the breaking ice rather than simply swimming upward.
Where herring is still the fish that carries the harutsugeuo name, tied to the historic 鰊漁 (nishin-ryō) herring fishery that shaped entire coastal economies through the early twentieth century before stocks collapsed.
Small enough to fry and eat whole, bones and all — a straightforward way to taste this kō's own namesake fish.
Popular spots in Nagano and elsewhere are set up for beginners, with rental gear and no experience required.
"Dull and overcast, Rishiri's own Fuji stands — the herring have come in, shoal after shoal."
A frozen surface that looks solid isn't necessarily safe to walk on — established ice-fishing sites monitor thickness for exactly this reason.
Fish becoming visible again happens fastest where ice is already breaking up, not on a lake that's still solidly frozen across.
Seishi's poem holds two unrelated facts in the same breath without forcing a connection between them — the mountain is grey and indifferent, the herring have arrived regardless, and the second thing doesn't need the first thing's cooperation to be true. Good news and bad weather turn out to coexist constantly, without canceling each other out. What good thing is arriving in your own life right now, on schedule, regardless of how flatly grey everything around it happens to look at the moment?