Japanese season “Usui”: icy frost all around, the breath of spring in the heart

Usui (雨水) — “Rainwater” — is a Japanese season of transition, when winter still holds fast, yet beneath the snow spring has already begun its work. An essay on sekki, micro-seasons, and sensitivity to change, read through waka and hokku, and through a winter day in Przasnysz.

Spring is not in the flowers, but in the soil

I look out the window and, for a moment, I simply remain in this view: the raw, morning winter in Poland has something pure and uncompromising about it. I missed it a little over the past years, which brought us only a faint substitute for this season. I’m glad it came this year — despite the many inconveniences: the morning scraping of ice from the car windows, the logistical nightmare tied to the ritual of dressing the children before going out for a walk, and that repellent cold that seeps in through every crack. Really. I’m glad.

We are in the second half of February — what stage of winter are we at? It is certainly not spring yet: the air is still sharp, the world muted and white. And yet I have the feeling that you can already sense the end, that something in the air smells like a promise. As if, in the landscape, there were a barely perceptible motion: not color and not a flower, but a foretaste of the moisture that will one day wash the snow away and give the earth its breath back. In Japan there is the calendar of the 24 seasons, sekki — and this moment has a name as well: Usui (雨水) — “Rainwater.” Two simple characters: 雨 (ame/u) — rain, and 水 (mizu/sui) — water. Together they speak of a transition that does not have to look like spring at all: of the moment when winter ceases to be absolute, though it can still bite.

So in today’s text we will try to capture what usui is — not as a dry date in the calendar, but as a season of the heart. A season in which a person still stands knee-deep in winter and yet begins to feel that something underneath is softening: the world, memory, one’s own will, one’s own “not yet.” We will determine what the season “Usui” is, but not through definitions; we will do it the way the Japanese have done it for centuries: through poetry — through selected waka and hokku, in which snow can already be spring, and spring can still be snow. And perhaps it will turn out that what matters most does not arrive in the form of flowers — but in the form of a tuft of grass between patches of snow.

Sekki: 雨水 (usui) — “Rainwater”

The meaning of this name can be summarized like this: snow → moisture → rain — that is, a gentle beginning of movement in nature.

雨水 (usui) literally speaks of water returning to the world in a different form: not as crystalline frost and not as motionless snow, but as something fluid — moisture, dripping, soaking, rain. Yet it does so under conditions where everything is frozen and remains in the grip of frost. This is a sekki that does not yet promise “spring” in the sense of nature blooming. It rather suggests that the wheel has begun to turn: winter ceases to be absolute. The impression is subtle, sometimes even unpleasant (mud, slush, heavier air), but precisely in this lack of spectacle lies the truth about transitional seasons: life does not enter with fanfare; it returns step by step, like water that finds every crack.

In Japan, the feeling of 雨水 (usui) will be different depending on the region: Kantō can already have more “breathing” air, Kansai catches softness sooner, and in the north — toward Tōhoku — winter still holds tighter and insists on its own rhythm — just like today in Przasnysz. But what fascinates me in Japanese is that spring rain is sometimes named as if it had its own personality.

春雨 (harusame) sounds gentle, soft, like a rain that does not want to frighten anyone, only to “remind” us of change. 春時雨 (harushigure) carries within it transience and instability — rain that comes for a moment, vanishes, leaving behind only a wet sheen on the street. These words are like small tools of mindfulness: they teach us to notice not the mere “fact of rain,” but its quality, temperament, rhythm.

Here, where I am writing this text from, this transition has its own charm too. Thaws can look a bit untidy: by the roadside the snow turns brown and gray, water gathers in depressions, sidewalks lose their winter “cleanliness,” and the landscape reveals dark earth beneath the white crust. And yet — it is precisely then that this moment comes, difficult to describe as anything other than “moisture that has a scent.” It is the smell of a waterlogged shoulder, of soil softened under a boot. This is not spring in flowers; it is spring in the soil. A kind of local equivalent of a micro-season: unnamed in the calendar, but felt in the body. The air still frosty, biting, and everything around covered with a layer of white — but already, already you can sense that shy promise in the air…

A scent that brings with it such a crush of memories from all previous early springs, all the way back to the time when one was a child… The excess makes words unwilling to arrange themselves into a neatly formed statement; instead they try to scatter like steam over wet snow: into short, broken images — heavy boots on soft ground, a drop falling from a gutter, a thin trickle of water running off into a drain, a dark strip of field that suddenly “breathes,” the faces of parents… As if memory did not want to speak in sentences, only in the whisper of the senses, because this season is not yet a story, but a passage. And then the thought of 雨水 (usui) comes on its own: not as an exotic name from a Japanese calendar, but as a very concrete experience — that the world does not change all at once, but softens, yields to moisture, lets go. As if someone loosened winter’s clenched fist — not entirely, not without resistance, but enough for us to feel under our fingers: water has returned to the earth, and the earth has begun to answer.

Usui in Bashō

I don’t know whether it’s more the fault of winter, or the fact that a person is built out of habits, but at this time of year it is easiest to remain motionless. I look out the window and everything still seems to persist in its whiteness — as if the world had no intention of moving. And yet, somewhere under that calm, something invisible is already beginning to work. This is not spring in the sense of a “Lady of Greenery,” but its quiet mechanism: moisture that foreshadows thaws, air heavier by one breath, snow by the road losing its apparent purity. This is Usui. And at this point Bashō enters — with one short hokku (today commonly called haiku, though that is slightly anachronistic), so human that it is almost a bit shameless.

不精さや / 掻き起されし / 春の雨
(bushō sa ya / kakiokosareshi / haru no ame)

"Reluctance… and yet —
the spring rain lifts me,
shakes me out of inertia."

— Matsuo Bashō, “猿蓑” („Sarumino”), Iga-Ueno, 1691

First there is that sigh: 不精さや — “ah, this sluggishness of mine, this reluctance.” That “や” works like a small cut, like a pause in breath: Bashō stops us for a moment in a state we know all too well. There is no moralizing here, no correctness, no heroic “I will overcome myself.” There is a simple admission that body and mind can immobilize a person in bed, in a chair, in the same repetition. Especially when the weather does not help — when it becomes wet, heavy, bland.

And then something interesting happens, because in the middle of the poem there appears the passive form: 掻き起されし — “I was stirred up, pulled out.” It is a small grammatical detail, but it changes the entire flavor of the hokku. Bashō does not say: “I got up.” He says: “I was lifted.” As if agency lay elsewhere — in the world, in the season, in someone who pulls back the futon cover, in something that does not ask for permission. And in this way “spring rain” becomes more than background. It becomes a force that acts gently but stubbornly — it does not pound its fist like a storm, does not command, does not terrify; it simply consistently rearranges the conditions of existence. It is like the first, still shy shift of tone in the conversation between winter and the earth.

In this poem the seasonal word is “haru no ame” (春の雨) — “spring rain.” It does not mean blooming. It means transition. Spring rain, in Japanese feeling, can be soft, fine, as if it soaks rather than falls. Sometimes it is even drowsy, sticky, monotonous — and precisely for that reason it works paradoxically: it breeds reluctance in a person, but at the same time tells him that it is no longer possible to remain in winter’s stillness. That something has moved, even if you cannot see it yet. That “the wheel has begun to turn.” Usui.

Here, where I am now, in Przasnysz, this truth has its own Polish costume. And yet it is precisely then that this moment comes, difficult to call anything other than “moisture that smells like a promise.” It is a real, physical signal that life returns first from below. In the soil, in softening, in that dark layer that is not photographed for postcards. Bashō’s usui has arrived today not in Iga-Ueno, but in Przasnysz. Or perhaps also in the city where you are, dear Reader, dear Readeress?

Bashō teaches us here that change does not have to be pleasant. It has the right to be gray, wet, unpleasant to the touch. It has the right to provoke resistance. And yet it works. And perhaps that is precisely why this poem fits so well with sekki usui — “Rainwater.” Because usui is not about spring as decoration. It is about the promise of spring as the process of softening a frozen world. About the first loosening of winter. About the fact that water returns to the earth, and the earth begins to answer.

And somewhere here a question is born, which this poem leaves in my hand when I look out the window again: will I, too, allow myself to be lifted by what is small? Not by a grand idea, not by a new plan, not by “from tomorrow I’m changing my life,” but by a slight shift in the weather, in the light, in the scent. Will I allow what is inconspicuous — a drip from a gutter, moist air, mud under a boot — to create movement in me?

Bashō does not promise that it will be easy. He only shows that the movement has already begun. Even if it begins with reluctance. Even if it begins with the fact that someone (or something) must first “pull us out.” And maybe this is the most comforting thing in this entire short poem: that in transitional seasons you do not have to feel joy right away. It is enough that the world begins to speak differently — and we, sooner or later, get up.

Spring covered with snow

雪のうちに春は来にけり鶯の
こほれる涙今やとくらむ
(yuki no uchi ni / haru wa ki ni keri / uguisu no / kōreru namida / ima ya to kuramu)

“Among the snow —
and yet spring has already come;
will the warbler’s tears,
frozen by frost,
soften now at last?”

— Fujiwara no Takaiko, “古今和歌集” („Kokin wakashū”),

“Haru-uta jō,” poem 4 (a poem for the beginning of spring),

Heian-kyō court, anthology 905.

This is exactly the kind of spring I like best in this late-winter season: not spring in the sense of “already,” but spring in the sense of “in winter.” I look at the whiteness outside the window and nothing looks like blossoming. Frost still holds tight, snow lies on the ground, and a person still has that winter reflex of curling inward. And precisely then this waka works like a subtle hook: it says that spring has already come, though you still cannot see it. That the sekki calendar announces the change earlier than the landscape does.

In the first line 雪 (yuki) — snow — is still “inside the world”: 雪のうちに (yuki no uchi ni), literally “within the snow,” “amid the snow.” It is a beautiful move, because it leaves no loophole: there are no thaws here, no drops, no plus on the thermometer. There is snow and only snow. And immediately after: 春は来にけり (haru wa ki ni keri) — “spring has come.” That ending “…にけり” contains something like a strike of awareness: ah — it has already come, it has happened, though I still cannot reconcile it with what I see.

In commentaries on this poem, the thought returns that the game here is about the discrepancy between “official spring” and “felt spring”: in the old order of time, the beginning of spring (risshun) was set by the calendar, even if real weather still belonged to winter. This poem lives precisely in that crack: spring is already the law of time, but it is not yet the law of temperature.

And then 鶯 (uguisu) appears — the Japanese bush warbler, a bird that in the court culture of Heian was more than a bird: it was a signal of spring, a “voice” one waited for. In an ideal world the uguisu sings when spring begins, and its song is like a seal on the change of season. Except here the warbler is not yet there. There is only the imagining of its tears. And that imagining is so delicate it almost hurts: こほれる涙 (kōreru namida) — “freezing tears.”

Of course no one is keeping an ornithological notebook here. This is poetry, and in Heian poetry the most important things often happen precisely in such a shift: we do not describe the world directly, we let it pass through an image that is slightly “impossible.” The warbler’s frozen tears are, after all, a metaphor for the cold that still persists, and at the same time a metaphor for the author’s tenderness (who, by the way, is the consort of Emperor Seiwa): even if she does not see the bird, she is already thinking of it, as if she were co-feeling its small suffering. That courtly delicacy of the Heian imagination: there are still no signs of spring, but the heart goes toward it faster, begins to hear it in advance.

The last line — 今やとくらむ (ima ya to kuramu) — is a question underlaid with hope. “Have they melted already now?”; “are they letting go already?” There is no certainty. There is a presentiment. And this is the most beautiful bridge to Usui: to that phase of the year when winter still dominates, but underneath water begins to work. Nothing is yet flowing in any obvious way, but something is already “relenting” in the tissue of the world.

It seems to me that this is also a lesson in reading such old poems. They are rarely reportage. They are rather a record of tension: between what is objective and what is internal; between the calendar and the body; between the world and the heart. The author does not say: “I am cold.” She says: “the warbler’s tears have frozen.” And through that delicate change of perspective she does two things at once: she leaves winter in the landscape, but brings spring into consciousness.

We all know that state in which “spring has already come” in some sense — we feel it in us, inside — but the landscape stubbornly refuses to lose its whiteness. A time when something in us begins to loosen, but habit still holds. When we long for change, and yet we are still under snow.

And when I return in my thoughts to the here and now, seeing outside the window a residential parking lot covered with a tight sheet of white fluff, I also feel in myself some strange spark of spring. A heart that already wants to outrun time, that already lives in the events of March and April. This is, I think, the essence of the season called usui.

The spring of grass

花をのみ / 待つらむ人に / 山里の / 雪間の草の / 春を見せばや
(hana o nomi / matsuran hito ni / yamazato no / yukima no kusa no / haru o miseba ya)

"To those who wait
only for flowers —
I would show, in the mountains,
the spring of grass that rises
between patches of snow."

— Fujiwara no Ietaka, “Jinji-shū,”

turn of the 12th and 13th centuries

There are days at the end of winter when a person begins to understand that spring is a matter of definition. Outside the window there is still whiteness, still frost, the same morning ritual of scraping the car windows. And yet something in the air, in the soil, in the roadside scent suggests that the wheel of time has already shifted — only it does so quietly. And it is precisely here that Fujiwara no Ietaka’s poem hits the mark. It teaches that if you wait only for flowers, you can miss the whole spring.

The first words are a light reproach, but delivered with elegance: 花をのみ (hana o nomi) — “flowers only,” “only flowers.” That “のみ” is like a narrowing of the field of vision: a person who approaches the season like a spectacle in which only the climax counts. Then 待つらむ人に (matsuran hito ni): “to those who probably wait.” In that “らむ” there is gentle irony and at the same time a psychological truth: the author does not point a finger at a specific person, he speaks of an attitude — a type of person who is always waiting for the final effect.

And immediately after comes a beautiful change of scene: 山里 (yamazato) — a mountain, remote hamlet, a place off the beaten path, less “representative” than the world of salons and blossoming avenues. In the poetic imagination of old Japan such a yamazato could be a space of silence, austerity, and sometimes solitude. And it is precisely there, where cold holds longer, that the miracle of “invisible spring” happens: 雪間の草 (yukima no kusa) — grass “in the gaps of snow,” in little windows between sheets of white. Not a flower. Not dazzling sakura. Only a modest green pushing through a minimal crack in the world.

What matters most, however, is the last word: 春 (haru) — spring. Ietaka says plainly: this too is spring. Not “a promise,” not “a foretaste,” not “almost.” Spring. Only not the kind that is easy to love because it is photogenic, but the kind you must know how to notice. Yet it is still fully spring.

When reading such waka, it is worth remembering that they are often like small instructions for looking. Not directly, not didactically — rather like changing the focus in a lens. Here the focus shifts from what is high and spectacular (flowers) to what is low and stubborn (grass). From the “crown” to the “base.” And this is, in fact, exactly the logic of the sekki usui: cold still rules, the earth can still be bound, but underneath water begins to work. Before you see the blossoming, you must first allow moisture, softening, soaking — that part of spring that does not ask for attention, it simply performs its quiet labor.

In Japanese tradition, this poem gained a second life as well. It is sometimes invoked as the quintessence of a sensitivity that later became important in thinking about an aesthetic of modesty and “wabi” (known in the West as “wabi-sabi”) — precisely because it shifts desire from what is grand to what is discreet, almost hidden. Sen no Rikyū (the most famous tea ceremony master of the late Muromachi/Momoyama period) particularly valued this way of seeing spring: not in blossom, but in what is only being born.

But even if we set aside the entire “tea” tradition, psychology remains — and it is very contemporary. Because “waiting for flowers” is not only, of course, about the seasons. It is an attitude toward life. Waiting for the moment when it will finally be nice, light, bright, simple. Waiting for the “true beginning,” for “ideal conditions.” Meanwhile Ietaka says something perverse: if you wait like that, you will sleep through what is most important. Because life begins earlier — in austerity, in half-shadow, in frost that still holds, but is no longer absolute.

Spring haze

春霞 / たてるやいづこ / みよしのの / よしのの山に / 雪はふりつつ
(haru gasumi / tateru ya izuko / mi-yoshino no / yoshino no yama ni / yuki wa furitsutsu)

“Spring haze —
where is it rising?
In Yoshino, in the mountains of Yoshino,
snow is still falling,
and yet…”

— author unknown, “古今和歌集” („Kokin wakashū”),

poem 3 (before 905)

In the previous poems spring began “from below” — in the soil, in grass, in what works under snow. This piece shows Usui from another side: spring arrives here first through looking — through how we look at the world. There is not yet warmth, not yet rain, and even snow can still be falling — but the air begins to change — kasumi appears.

In waka, everything begins with the word 春霞 (haru gasumi) — “spring haze.” This is important, because in Japanese tradition 霞 (kasumi) is not simply meteorological “haze.” It is a sign of the season, a filter laid over the landscape. In winter the air is dry and sharp; as spring approaches, more fine particles and moisture appear in the atmosphere, so distant planes begin to blur. And interestingly, the language distinguishes this poetically: “霞” is seasonal for spring, while “霧” (kiri, fog) more often carries an autumnal shade — physically similar, but emotionally different.

And then there is Yoshino — mi-yoshino no / yoshino no yama. The twice-repeated name works like an echo in the mountains, but also like an emphasis on a place of a “late” spring miracle. Yoshino is, in the Japanese imagination, a land of spring — later famous above all for mass cherry blossoms, so it almost begs for contrast: if Yoshino, then there should be flowers. And meanwhile the last line says relentlessly: 雪はふりつつ (yuki wa furitsutsu) — “snow is still falling,” “falling and falling.” In commentaries on this poem, that note returns: “spring is already spring in name, and here it is still the full depth of winter” — and in that suspension longing is born.

And here, in the very heart of the poem, lies its most interesting lesson: spring does not have to be temperature. Spring can be the way the world begins to blur. It sounds like a trifle, but in practice it is a great thing. Because in winter a person looks more sharply, more “edgewise”: everything is distinct, closed, hard. And when Usui comes, the world begins to lose its edges — as if nature were saying: “now there will be a transition.”

I look at our February and see that it works similarly for us, though we name it differently. There are times when snow still lies, and going outside requires dressing a child in countless layers of clothing — and yet distant trees, buildings on the horizon, the line of a field suddenly look different. As if the air had more softness. As if someone gently changed the contrast. This is very usui: still winter, but the work of moisture is already beginning — a moisture that does not so much warm as thaw the world’s relationship with water.

The poem teaches us that in transitions the hardest thing is that the signs are contradictory. The mind wants a simple narrative: “it was — it ended — it began.” And nature replies: “no, for a while it will be both at once.” Spring haze and falling snow in the same frame. Hope and doubt in the same breath. That is why this piece is so true: it does not pretend that spring enters like an actor onto a stage. It enters like a filter, like a semi-transparent layer laid over winter before it replaces it.

A lesson from the weather of the second half of February

Perhaps this is the quiet wisdom of Usui: that you do not have to wait for a spectacle to acknowledge that something has begun. Spring can come in the form of a haze on the horizon, in darker earth by the curb, in moisture that smells more like memory than weather. And suddenly it turns out that what matters most is not happening “outside” — but in the way we begin to look. As if the world were not so much changing as asking: look more carefully, because what is only arriving is already working underneath.

And if there is something slightly amusing in this, it is probably that winter can still, with full seriousness, make us scrape the windows, and at the same time in that very moment it gives the earth, drop by drop, quietly signing its own capitulation. In usui, this teaches me one thing: do not trust only what is loud and obvious — because true changes are rarely loud. They often begin so modestly that they can be missed… unless you happen to be standing by the window and have a bit of patience in you.

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