Moth
The luna moth is one of the most striking moths in the world: pale green, with long trailing tails, and a life on the wing of only about a week. That brief, beautiful life has made it a symbol of transformation and renewal. Japan has a close relative of its own, the ōmizuao, and its own long relationship with moths.
蛾 (ga): moth.
It is built from 虫, the character for insects, and 我, which gives it its sound.
The luna moth, Actias luna, lives in the forests of North America and takes its name from Luna, the Roman goddess of the moon. The adults have no working mouths. They live only on what they stored as caterpillars, long enough to find a mate and lay eggs. Their long tails twist as they fly, which scientists have found throws off the echolocation of hunting bats.
A creature that spends most of its life hidden, emerges transformed, and lives only a week in its final form has come to stand for rebirth and for the beauty of things that do not last.
Japan’s own relative is the ōmizuao, 大水青, “the great water-blue.” It is pale blue-green with long tails of its own, and flies on summer nights across much of Japan.
Japanese has an old word, 蛾眉 (gabi), “moth brows,” for the fine, arched eyebrows of a beautiful woman, likened to a moth’s slender antennae. A well-known proverb speaks of the summer insect that flies into the fire, for anyone who rushes headlong into danger.
The most important moth in Japan’s history is the silk moth. Silk farming was so central to rural life that farmers spoke of their silkworms with an honorific, okaiko-sama.
The Ga Tee draws the moth in outline, wings spread and tails trailing, with 蛾 set beneath it.
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