They Kept the Names and Changed the Animals

{{first_name | みんな}}さん、こんにちは ☕

蟋蟀在戸（きりぎりすとにあり）

The crickets are at the door.

Around 18 to 22 October 2026. This week. 👀

Before it: 鴻雁来（こうがんきたる）, the wild geese arrive, 8 to 12 October. 菊花開（きくのはなひらく）, the chrysanthemums open, 13 to 17.

Five days each. Then the next one starts. 📌

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Who cut October into five-day pieces, and why does it look like Chinese. 🚪

Underneath the calendar on your phone, Japan runs 二十四節気（にじゅうしせっき）, twenty-four solar terms of about fifteen days each. We are inside 寒露（かんろ）, cold dew. It began 8 October at 15:29 JST and ends when 霜降（そうこう）, frost falls, begins 23 October at 18:38 JST. Those times are astronomy from the national observatory, fixed as a sunrise. ⚡

Each term is cut into three, giving 七十二候（しちじゅうにこう）, seventy-two micro-seasons of about five days. 蟋蟀在戸 is the 末候（まっこう）, the last slice of 寒露.

And the name is a sentence, not a label. 在（ざい）is to be somewhere, 戸（と）is a door, 蟋蟀 is the insect. It reads きりぎりす here, though those characters mean コオロギ in modern Japanese. The word moved house and the calendar kept the old address. 💡

The system is Chinese. The twenty-four names sit in 『淮南子』 and went into the 太初暦 in 104 BCE. Calendar science reached Japan from Baekje in the 550s. The names came over wholesale: 寒露 is 寒露 in both.

The seventy-two were not. 👀

An astronomer named 渋川春海（しぶかわはるみ）rewrote them for Japanese weather and wildlife, in a calendar authorised in 1684. The set he inherited had entries like 雀入大水為蛤, sparrows go into the water and become clams. He was not translating poetry. He was repairing a farming instrument calibrated for another country.

What went in instead: 桜始開（さくらはじめてひらく）the cherries open · 霜始降（しもはじめてふる）the frost starts to fall · 蚕起食桑（かいこおきてくわをはむ）the silkworms wake and eat mulberry. Nobody publishes a tidy tally of what he kept, but most of the seventy-two were rewritten. 🎴

Most people in Japan do not carry this either. Our best figure is a 2014 commercial questionnaire, not a national poll, so hold it loosely: of those who knew 二十四節気 at all, 56% could name only one to five. For the seventy-two there is no survey data, just a market of books and calendars. They look these up too. 🙌

Not as 蟋蟀在戸. You will rarely see that outside a calendar shop.

You will meet 候（こう）at the top of a letter. 錦秋（きんしゅう）の候, 寒露の候, "in this season of brocade autumn." That opens a 時候（じこう）の挨拶（あいさつ）, the weather greeting on formal letters. Same 候 as in 七十二候. 📌

You will meet 旬（しゅん）on a supermarket sign above the 秋刀魚（さんま）. 今（いま）が旬. Peak season, buy it now.

You will meet 季節限定（きせつげんてい）on a konbini shelf every time the drinks change over. Retail never bothers with 寒露, but the idea it sells is this one. ⚡

And you will meet 立秋（りっしゅう）on the evening news in early August, when the forecaster says 暦（こよみ）の上（うえ）では秋（あき）, on the calendar it is autumn, over a screen reading 36 degrees. A standing apology for a system two weeks ahead of the weather. 🎯

「窓（まど）の候（こう）」. Write the five-day season outside your own window. About fifteen minutes.

Ungrammatical is fine. You are copying a shape, not sitting a test. 🎴

You will know you did it when: you have one line of Japanese and one sentence on whether the calendar was right about your street today. 💪

The calendar is probably wrong about your street, and that is the interesting half. It was cut four hundred years ago by somebody who decided the old one was wrong about the animals.

He was allowed to rewrite it. So are you.

Hit reply with your 候 and what you saw out of the window. We are collecting them, and the best go into a future issue. 👀