Microseason: First Rainbow

SPRING

PURE + BRIGHT

FIRST RAINBOW

15 - 19 April

Rainbows, unseen through the dry clarity of Winter, return as Spring air is nourished with water. Known in Japanese as hatsu-niji, the first rainbow is visual seasonal marker. Though rainbows are typically considered Summer vocabulary in Japanese poetry, hatsu-niji belongs to late Spring, offering a glimpse of transition to come. Always positioned opposite the sun, morning rainbows appear in the west, and evening rainbows in the east.

Gentle Spring rain falls and lifts in pulses, and soft sunlight filters through misty droplets just long enough to give birth to a rainbow, ephemeral and pale, but all the more beautiful for its brevity. Unlike Summer’s vivid arcs, Spring rainbows emerge and pass like a dream.

Through rice planting season, rainbows pierce into the paddies to bridge the heavens and the earth. Rainbows are said to be water dragons in transformation, which is why the written character for rainbow is docks “dragon” with “traverse”. Dragons traversing into the sky, connecting the water element. Pointing at a rainbow was once taboo, believed to cause misfortune, a superstition rooted in awe of the divine. Even today, encountering a rainbow evokes wonder: a fleeting bridge between rain and light.

Not all rainbows are alike. Below are some of the ways in which we experience rainbows in Japan.

fuku-niji (lucky rainbow): a secondary arc appears outside the main one but in reverse

haku-niji (white rainbow): visible in fog when light refracts through fine mist

aka-niji (red rainbow): appearing at dawn or dusk

gekkou (moon rainbow): rainbows that appear under moonlight

Photo credit: Momoko Nakamura