When Nature Stops Whispering, Our Genes Remember How to Speak

Listening to What Survives Between Seasons, Spirits, and the Human Body

This year was a period when the subtle movements of global climate change became visible even in daily life. Especially the abnormal heat that began in the tropicalized rainy season around May made me realize that Japan has already lost its traditionally beautiful four seasons and is shifting largely into two — summer and winter. Normally, in mid-October, this would be a calm and pleasant autumn season when people quietly devote themselves to reading and regulate their bodies with seasonal meals while gently transitioning toward winter. Yet even now, daytime temperatures in Pacific coastal cities still approach thirty degrees Celsius, and one sweats when walking outside. Consequently, this lack of gradual seasonal transition brings extreme instability to the mind and body, causing various disorders. The imbalance of an individual cut off from the rhythm of the seasons simultaneously spreads among urban dwellers, inevitably destabilizing society itself, and I sense that Japan is steadily moving toward severe division.

These effects appear not only in the human body but even in a single flower. Plants, sensitive and honest to the changing seasons, have long bloomed only at fixed times, serving as indicators of seasonal shifts for Japanese people. These indicators reflected not merely seasonal change but also emotional transitions, and before modernity separated city and nature, much of Japan’s culture and art arose from this sensibility. Typical examples are cherry blossoms and plums heralding spring, but for autumn the flower that signals its arrival is the red spider lily (Higan-bana).