It’s been almost a year since I moved to Japan. At the time I arrived, in early October, the red spider lilies were just past full bloom. I had visited Japan often before, but never during this season, so it was my first opportunity to see these beautiful flowers on display. I was thrilled.
Now they’re back, and in full bloom, marking an anniversary for me. In the interim I’ve learned (among many other things) that spider lilies are associated with the Japanese Buddhist holiday called higan, which is held yearly around the autumnal equinox. Businesses and schools are closed, and people gather to tidy up gravesites, honor ancestors who have “crossed to the other shore” (i.e., Buddhist heaven, or Nirvana, or wherever one imagines the hereafter), and to celebrate the passing of summer and the arrival of fall, usually with a drink or two. It’s a wonderful time of year. The oppressive heat has waned, and nearly all the rice fields have been reduced to stubble and are rimmed with red spider lilies, which in Japanese are called higanbana, after the holiday.
Earlier this week, taking advantage of the cooler weather, I went on a long bike ride through the neighboring rice fields to the largest nearby town. There I discovered what felt like a secret path along a canal that cut all the way across the town’s center, miraculously avoiding traffic. The road was lined with higanbana, so I stopped and got off my bike to take a photo. It was strangely quiet. I felt the enormous presence of the year that had passed, as if I were standing in a long shadow cast by a mountain at my back. I stood there for a while, looking at the road before me, breathing it all in, feeling like a soul who had crossed to another shore.
