There’s something missing from Japan’s summer soundscape.
While “hot” and “humid” are often the first words used to describe summer in Japan, there’s a special soundscape to the season as well. The gentle ring of a windchime, the clink of a spoon against a shaved ice dish, or the sound of fireworks, either bursting overhead at a festival or echoing from the next town over, are all ways you ears will tell you that you’re in the middle of a Japanese summer.
This year, though, there’s an audio cue that’s missing, and it might be the most iconic of them all. You can’t hear the cicadas.
In both cultural and meteorological senses, Japan divides summer into two parts. First comes the “rainy season,” which starts around mid-June and usually lasts for about two to three weeks. Then comes the rest of summer, which is when the cicadas usually start singing.
▼ Technically, cicadas make this sound by (in simplified terms) rapidly flexing and relaxing their abdomen, but in Japanese they’re still said to naku (“sing”/“cry”).
Through the video above shows a series of heavily forested areas, at this time of year you can usually hear cicadas anywhere has trees, including suburban parks and even tree-lined streets in urban areas.
So why isn’t Japan hearing many cicadas this summer? Well, cicadas spend most of their lives burrowed into the ground, and while they don’t come out and start singing until the weather gets warmer and drier after the rainy season ends, this year the second part of summer has been too hot, and the preceding rainy season wasn’t rainy enough.
Starting with the temperature problem, cicadas’ ideal temperatures are somewhere in the Celsius low 30s. This summer, though, many parts of Japan have seen the mercury rise to or past 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), at which point the cicadas say “Yeah, that’s too hot. We’re gonna stay underground,” just like we humans are more likely to stay indoors when it’s that scorching outside.
And while the cicadas don’t come out until after the rainy season ends, that doesn’t mean they’re OK with no rainy season at all. While in the ground, they rely on tree sap for sustenance, but with Japan having had a short, and not all that wet, rainy season this year, trees haven’t been producing as much sap as they ordinarily would. The weeks right before emergence are a critical development time for cicadas, and malnourishment may also be a factor in why they’re not singing. Less rain also means more hard-packed earth, which can be more difficult for cicadas to crawl out of than soil that’s been softened by extended rainfall.
However, just because this year’s cicadas haven’t shown up yet doesn’t mean they’re going to skip this summer entirely. While they only live for a few days after emerging, cicadas spend five or so years in the ground, so a few weeks’ delay is something they can deal with, provided they do eventually get the conditions they need.
For those unaccustomed to it, the sound of cicadas can be extremely irritating, and even for those used to life in Japan, being woken up at 5 in the morning by an energetic cicadas singing right outside your bedroom window isn’t a very pleasant way to start the day. Still, overall, most people in Japan have pretty positive sentiments towards their song, and would argue it doesn’t really feel like summer until it sounds like summer too.
Source: TBS News Dig, FNN Prime Online
Top image: Pakutaso (edited by SoraNews24)
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