Returning home to Japan after a long summer holiday in California, I consult one of my almanacs and see to my delight that today we enter The Time of White Dew 白露 My almanac explains,
Falling just prior to The Time of the Autumnal Equinox, the sun is said to have passed the 165th celestial degree on its journey south. Although the afternoons are still dominated by the lingering heat of August and September, Autumn-like weather can increasingly be felt, deepening with each passing rain shower, especially noticeable in the mornings and evenings as the equinox approaches.
Although, according to the old calendar, it has officially been autumn since August 8th onward, it is only now, in The Time of White Dew, that nature can truly be seen to be leaving summer behind. And, I would hasten to add, it is within these dewdrops that the emotion and beauty of the most beloved of seasons can first be felt.
Again from my almanac: White Dew in the Grass (September 8th-12th)-- In the first five days, from which the season derives its name, the dew- heavy in the grass- is thought to look white, resembling glistening gems or beautiful pearls
These pearly gems are not only treasured for their beauty, glistening in the grass on early autumn mornings, but are loved foremost because of the very fleetingness of their nature-- which like scattering cherry blossoms is likened to the transience of human existence. For human life, like the disppearing dewdrops in the autumn morning sunlight, is all too often cut short, and in this way dewdrops have been considered since ancient times, along with “scattering flowers and fallen leaves” (飛花落葉) as a poetic metaphor for impermanence, or mujo (無常).
Indeed, over time, human transience became so associated with the dew- especially the autumn dew- that human evanescence has long been referred to in Japan as our “dewdrop world” (tsuyu no yo 露の世); or as our “dewdrop lives” (tsuyu no inochi 露の命), our “dewdrop bodies” or “dewdrop selves” (tsuyu no mi 露の身). One of the most famous haiku written on this theme is one by Issa who, devastated after the loss of his beloved one-year old daughter, lamented:
露の世は露の世ながらさりながら
一茶
This Dewdrop World-
Nothing more, nothing more
And yet...
-Issa
Like dewdrops fated to fade away in the morning sunshine, our lives too are all too fragile. Even knowing this, still it is impossible not to be taken aback in the face of death- especially over that of a loved one, and it was this awareness of the inevitable transience of the phenomenal world which was considered to be so particularly affecting around this time of year:
秋風に
なびく浅茅の
末ごとに
おく白露の
あはれ世の中
White dewdrops
poised at the tips of
grass waving
in the autumn wind-
What a fragile, fleeting world
- Semimaro, Shinkokinshu
For precisely what is fragile and fleeting is what is considered beautiful, as Kenko remarked in his Essays in Idleness (1330-32?): “If man were to never fade away like the dews of Adashino.... but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us!”
Buddhism, of course, also teaches that nothing in life can escape the law of anitya or “necessary change” and that all life inevitably must perish. The Heart Sutra quotes Shakamuni as teaching that “All that appears before us is as a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow. All is like the dew or lightening. It should thus be contemplated that nothing has reality.” That everything is in flux and that all must eventually perish is a sad but inevitable fact that somehow seems all the more apparent in this season of sparse autumn grass, disappearing dewdrops and sudden, passing thunderstorms.
In the sexy language of classical court poetry, the imagery of cold, white dewdrops, in addition to being a long-held symbol of the fragility of human life, was also used interchangeably to mean tears or “wet sleeves” and was seen to be symbolic both of the tears of the crying insects, as well as of the tears of a woman waiting impatiently for her lover who failed to visit on an autumn night:
秋萩も
色づきぬれば
きりぎりす我が寝ぬことや
夜はかなしき
As autumn deepens
and the bush clover also change color
there cries the crickets
like me despairing the sadness
of these sleepless autumn nights
-Anonymous, Kokinshu
Autumn nights, lengthening toward Winter could seem like an eternity while waiting for a lover to come and visit, and as nature itself seemed to be dying, so too could that be seen as a metaphor for the inevitable fading of romantic or passionate love. Poem after poem was composed by women seemingly lost in their lonely thoughts of mid-Autumn, and it was the pine cricket, or “matsu mushi” which came to be viewed as particularly symbolic of these waiting ladies. For, in Japanese “matsu” means both “pine” as well as “to wait” (that is, “the insect that waits”):
君しのぶ
草にやつるる
古里は
松虫の音ぞ
悲しかりけり
Back home in the house
pitifully covered in lonely grass
I wait, listening
to the crying pine crickets
and sadly long for you to come
-Anonymous, Kokinshu
The words in the poem are almost inextricably interconnected: with the image of the pine crickets waiting and the waiting woman pining, and even the old house covered in lonely grass is bound up syntactically with the woman grown pitifully worn down by her longing. No matter how the reader chooses to “read” the words, the poet’s mood is clear: she is grown weary from longing for her lover’s visit.
We know from classical Chinese poetry that the appreciation of mid-autumn dewdrops and late-autumn to early-winter frost dates back at least to the Warring States Period (BC 453-221) This ancient Chinese love of dewdrops also becomes apparent when we take a look at the calendar itself. Of the six seasonal names of autumn, three are named after the dew or frost:
August 8th 立秋 The Time of First Day of Autumn
August 23rd 処暑 The Time of Manageable Heat
September 8th 白露 The Time of White Dew
September 23rd 秋分 The Time of the Autumnal Equinox
October 9th 寒露 The Time of Cold Dew
October 24th 霜降 The Time of Frost Falling
Along with the adoption of the calendar, as well as considering the avid appreciation of Chinese poetry held among the Japanese aristocrats of the time, it comes as no surprise to find that poems written on the theme of dewdrops abound from very early times in Japan. In the Manyoshu, for example, there are 112 poems written around this theme, and these poems can be broken up into various sub-themes, such as “white dew,” “morning dew,” “dawn dew,” “dew/frost,” “dewy fields,” etc. The first poem on this theme appearing in the Anthology was written by Ooku-no Himemiko, the daughter of an Emperor and herself a priestess at Ise:
わが背子を
大和へ遣るとさ
夜ふけて暁露に
わが立ち濡れし
As night deepens into dawn
There he departs on his way to Yamato
And I am left
Dampened by the early morning dew
-Ooku no Himemiko
Because dewdrops become especally noticable around the time when the autumn leaves change colors, the ancients believed that perhaps it was the dew which, seeping into the leaves of the trees at night somehow stained them the many different autumn colors. Not only was it the dew that was thought of to be the reason behind the spectacular brocade of autumn foliage, but frost and the autumn rain showers were also posited as possible causes for why the leaves changed colors so dramatically around this time of year.
In addition to impermanence and fading romance, dewdrops have also been a symbol of purity.
From the white dewdrops,
Learn the way
To the Pure Land
-Issa (Trans by RH Blyth)
In his famous volume of Haiku translations, RH Blyth explains the above poem:
Just as the wind is used as a symbol of the unknown comings
and goings of the spirit of life, so water is the type of our own life, its swift, willing obedience, its bright, active desirelessness. Above all, the dew drop that disappears so soon, leaving not a trace of itself behind, is our own soul, that is devoid of all qualities, free of any kind of permanence, is the white radiance of eternity.
In the world of tea ceremony, or chanoyu, where purity is one of the four main principles, the garden path leading to any tearoom is called the “dewy ground” (or roji, 露地) and the origin of this name can be traced back to one of the most well-known stories in the Lotus Sutra about how the children of a wealthy man were made to flee a burning house. This parable extols us to escape the burning house of the “three worlds” (of worldly title, position and attachments) and to dwell in the purity of “white dewy ground.” Sen Soshitsu, the Grand Tea Master of the Urasenke tradition, explains the function of the roji as creating a special space where one can leave the cares of the world behind, and he further explains that “the first thing the host and guests should do in the roji is too purify themselves, using the water in the basin, they should rinse off the dust of the world”
The dewy garden, then, is really a path leading one out of the everyday world of dust into a world where purity is valued aboveall:
露地はただ
浮き世のそとの
道なるに
心のちりを
にちらすらん
The roji is simply
a path leading from
this floating world.
Why bestrew it
with dust from the mind?
Sen Rikyu, Namporoku
My tea teacher once explained the words the famous Edo Period tea devotee, Matsudaira Fumai, who said that “Chanoyu is like a morning dewdrop poised on a seedling of rice” This is another way of expressing one of the most famous maxims of chanoyu: “this meeting- once in a lifetime” (ichigo ichie) which extols tea practioners to understand that every tea gathering is a once in a lifetime event, and therefore precious beyond value- very much like the beauty of the morning dew.
All this talk of dewdrops reminds me of a Vietnamese emperor. Bicycling around Hue on our broken-down peugeots, we trapsed into the Forbidden Purple City. It was so hot and I was hungry and tired, but sitting out by the small lotus pond behind the throne room, I overheard a guide telling a group of tourists that, "it was here that every morning servants gathered the dew that had collected overnight on the lotus leaves." Why, we wondered would they collect the dewdrops? Before we could ask, the guide explained, the dewdrops were gathered to make the emperor's morning cup of tea.
My heart skipped a beat-- tea made from the water of dewdrops collected on the leaves of the lotus flowers: now that is something I would very much like to try someday....
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