The Months of the Old Japanese Calendar

Recently, I talked about the Japanese calendar, and in particular the so called “six days” that repeat over and over. Today I wanted to step back and talk about the months of the Japanese calendar, which similarly have cultural significance.

In modern Japanese, the months of the calendar are simply numerical: ichigatsu (一月, lit. “First month, January”), sangatsu (三月, lit. “Third month, March”), jūnigatsu (十二月, “twelfth month, December”) and so on. But in the old Japanese calendar, patterned off the Chinese lunar calendar, the months had special names:

Month	Romanized Name	Kanji	English Meaning (source: Wikipedia)
January	Mutsuki	睦月	“Month of Affection”
February	Kisaragi	如月	“Changing Clothes”
March	Yayoi	弥生	“New Life”
April	Uzuki	卯月	“Month of Deutzia flowers”
May	Satsuki	皐月	“Rice Planting Month”
June	Minazuki	水無月	“Month of Water”1
July	Fumizuki	文月	“Month of Erudition/Letters”
August	Hazuki	葉月	“Month of Leaves”
September	Nagatsuki	長月	“The Long Month”
October	Kannazuki	神無月	“Month of the Gods”1
November	Shimotsuki	霜月	“Month of Frost”
December	Shiwasu	師走	“Priests Running Around”

Some of these month names are still culturally familiar and appear in literature, advertisements, and so on. For example shiwasu is a month closely associated with the Japanese New year since priests (both Buddhist and Shinto) are quite busy preparing for year end/new year services. I’ve also seen yayoi also from time to time and probably others. Others are pretty obscure now and relate to the yearly farming cycle in Japan, which urban and suburban Japanese wouldn’t necessarily pay attention to.

Speaking of the yearly farming cycle, one of my favorite poems in the ancient anthology, the Hyakunin Isshu, is the very first poem, composed by Emperor Tenji:

This is another iconic poem about Autumn and also happens to be the first poem in the Hyakunin Isshu:

Japanese	Romanization	Translation by Professor Mostow
秋の田の	Aki no ta no	In the autumn fields
かりほの庵の	Kariho no io no	the hut, the temporary hut,
苫のあらみ	Toma no arami	its thatch is rough
わが衣出は	Waga koromo de wa	and so the sleeves of my robe
露にふりつつ	Tsuyu ni furitsutsu	are dampened night by night with dew.

For more on the old Japanese calendar, I also recommend a certain mobile phone app called 72 Seasons (Apple, Google) for a look at how the ancient Japanese calendar tracked the seasons and seasons within seasons.

Old calendars are a great way to peer into the lives of people who lived them, and at the same time, how much has changed since then.