Light Rains Sometimes Fall: A British Year in Japan’s 72 Seasons

In the West we consider the passing of the year through the prism of four seasons. Other cultures see nature’s turn quite differently, however. The traditional Japanese calendar recognises that the subtle changes of the natural world with a total of seventy-two microseasons (ko) - inspiration for a new way of connecting with nature closer to home.

In seventy-two short chapters, Lev Parikian charts the changes that each of these microseason brings to his local patch - garden, streets, park and wild cemetery.

From risshun (the birth of Spring) in early February to daikan (the greater cold) in late January, Lev draws our eye to the exquisite beauty (and mundanity) of the day to day, while also comparing two different perspectives. For Japan’s lotus blossom, praying mantis and bear, we have bramble, wood louse and urban fox. But the rhythms - and the power of nature to reflect and enhance our mood - are the same.

By turns reflective, joyous, sad, melancholy, light-hearted, serious, funny and occasionally absurd, this is both a nature diary and an engaging insight into how nature refuses to fit into our boxes, however large or small.