This year, I was able to spot a few fireflies along the road by the Minase River. These sightings brought back fond memories of summer nights from my childhood in the mountains upstream of the Inagawa River. What is now a bedroom town of Osaka used to be a very calm, local town surrounded by nature. I still remember the beautiful fireflies dancing above the rice paddies after the rice planting was finished.
By holding up a broom made of rice straws and bamboo, I could easily catch fireflies. I would take those cute fireflies in my hand and put them into a bug cage along with green onion leaves. At our house, I hung the bug cage, full of fireflies, under the eaves and lay down on a bench in the yard, gazing at them along with the star-filled sky.
As an adult, I spent several years in a house with a garden near New York in the 1980s. On summer nights, I saw a few fireflies flying over the lawn. It was not quite like what I saw back home, but I caught one anyway. What surprised me was that it was completely different from Japanese fireflies! It was much bigger and couldn’t be described as "cute." To me, it was just an insect with flames.
This is where the name "firefly," literally meaning "fire fly," made sense to me. There was none of the poetic charm found in the "Evening of Fireflies" from the classic Japanese literary work "The Pillow Book" (枕草子) or "Light of the Fireflies" (蛍の光) sung at graduation ceremonies.
Apparently, Japanese fireflies are aquatic and live near water, while the ones in America are terrestrial and a different species.
Nowadays, you have to go to quite remote mountain areas to see fireflies dancing wildly, but this is exactly the kind of summer scene in Japan that I would like to introduce to foreign people.
今年も水無瀬川添いの道路から何匹かの蛍を見つけることができました。
今では大阪のベッドタウンと化した猪名川上流の山あいでの子供の頃の夏の夜の
楽しい思い出は田植えが終わった田んぼの上を乱舞する蛍だ。
菜種殻で作った箒を竹の先につけて道端で高くかざすだけで、蛍をからめとるこ
とができた。そのかわいい蛍を手にとって、ねぎの葉っぱと一緒に虫かごに入れた。
蛍でいっぱいになった虫かごを軒先に吊るし、庭先の床机の上に寝転んで満天の
星空とともに眺めていた。
大人になって 1980 年代に数年間ニューヨーク近郊の庭付きの住宅で過ごしたことがある。夏の夜に
は乱舞とは程遠いが芝生の上を何匹かの蛍が飛び交った。 しかし、その蛍を手にとって驚いた。 かわいいはずの蛍が日本の蛍よりでっかくて全くかわいくない!・・火を灯す虫という感じだ。これは「Firefly」文字通り火のハエだという語源に納得したものです。そこには枕草子にも出てくる“蛍の夕べ”や卒業式にも歌われた“蛍の光”といった風情が全くない。 どうやら日本のホタルは水辺にすむ水性、アメリカに多いのは陸生で種類が違うとか。
もはやかなり遠くの山間部まで出かけないと乱舞する蛍を見つけられないが、これこそが外国人に見
せたい日本の夏の風物詩の筆頭に掲げたいと思う。(MI 投稿)
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