Text/Fast Wind
It is the Mid-Autumn Festival, and Chinese step into the golden season of fighting clams.
Pictured: The aggressive cockroach is the first love worm of the Chinese
The fighting cockroach is China's undisputed national worm, and the emperor, scholars, and commoners have been playing with it for more than two thousand years. Today, let's talk about the national insects of the island nation of Japan. With more than 1,400 species of insects, Japan is a country that admires animism and has been with insects since ancient times.
Pictured: Insect Atlas of Japan
For example, the "insect sumo wrestling" game that has been popular in some parts of Japan so far, using shovel beetles, unicorns, and spiders to play a fighting game similar to sumo wrestling. Fireflies and horseflies are also popular in Japan.
Pictured: Insect specimens from Japan
However, these insects are not the insects that the Japanese people have the deepest affection for. Insects that can fight are only entertainment for the Japanese, and there is no emotional sustenance.
There is only one insect, which appears at the water's edge of every field in the Japanese archipelago, runs through countless anime works, haunts every Japanese child's childhood dream, and can be called Japan's national insect - it is a flying insect that Chinese is very familiar with when I was a child.
dragonfly.
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There is an enduring folk song in Japan, "Red Dragonfly", and the first few sentences of the lyrics are: "Red Dragonfly in the Sunset, where are you, when did you meet you in childhood, what day was it?" "If you had to choose a song that Japanese people can sing, this song deserves it." One year, NHK in Japan investigated the favorite folk songs of Japanese people, and the song came out to be number one. When Japanese people hear this song, they will miss their childhood, miss their hometown, and miss their mother, which can be called the chicken soup for the soul of the Japanese people.
As early as ancient times, the Japanese people almost worshipped dragonflies. In ancient Japan, it was called "Akitsu-chau", also known as "Dragonfly Continent", which is the ancient Japanese name あきつ derived from dragonflies. In Japanese agricultural proverbs, stories, legends, poems, and medicinal herbs, there are dragonflies, and as early as the end of the Edo period, there are historical records of 65 species of Dragonflies in Japan, and there are also records of dragonflies preying on fly pests. Not only in terms of agriculture, but in Japanese archaeological discoveries, many bronzes are carved with rough dragonflies, and even the armor, knives and guns of ancient soldiers are also carved with images of dragonflies.
Pictured: Dragonfly seal cage from the Edo period in Japan
According to the Nihon Shoki, Japan's earliest shogunate, Emperor Shinmu climbed a hill in Yamato Kingdom (present-day Nara Prefecture) and looked out over the land (Honshu Island) and praised it, "Yeonya is the result of the country!...... It's like the buttocks of a dragonfly!"
To the effect: the shape of our beautiful country is like a dragonfly with a crossed tail.
What kind of intimacy is it to compare the "dragonfly with the tail" to the land!
Pictured: Is the Japanese island of Honshu shaped like a dragonfly with a crossed tail?
Why do Japanese people love dragonflies so much?
Japan is a country that eats rice for a living. In a warm and humid climate, what insects come and go most frequently in the dense water-net rice fields? That's right, dragonflies.
Dragonflies are beneficial insects to crops, eating all kinds of pests, the Japanese have been living in this kind of water-dwelling rice field for thousands of years, and naturally have a family relationship.
Pictured: Dragonfly pattern manhole covers on streets in Japan
In the Edo period, there was a famous haiku female poet in Japan named Kaga Chiyo, her only son accidentally fell into the water and died early when he was five years old when he caught a dragonfly, and the grief has always been with her mother. One evening, she accidentally saw a few flying dragonflies, touched the scene, and wrote a haiku that is known as the best song in Japan: "Dragonfly fishing today はどこまで行ったたやら." ”
Pictured: Japanese painting of catching a dragonfly
Chinese means: (O my beloved son) where did you go to catch dragonflies today?