Moon
Tsukimi, moon-viewing, is Japan’s autumn tradition of gathering to watch the full moon. On the night of the harvest moon, families set out white dumplings and stems of silver grass, and look for the rabbit said to live on the moon’s face. The custom is more than a thousand years old.
月 (tsuki): moon.
見 (mi): to look, to see.
Tsukimi falls on the fifteenth night of the eighth month of the old lunar calendar, so the date moves each year, usually landing in late September or early October.
The main moon-viewing night is Jūgoya, the fifteenth night of the eighth month in the old lunar calendar. Because it follows the moon, its date moves each year, falling somewhere between mid-September and early October. The autumn sky is often at its clearest then, and the harvest moon was held to be the most beautiful of the year. Since it coincides with the taro harvest, it is also called imo meigetsu, the taro moon.
Moon-viewing has been part of Japanese life since the Heian court took it up more than a thousand years ago. Nobles composed poetry by moonlight and watched the moon’s reflection on ponds and in cups of sake. At Daikaku-ji in Kyoto, where Emperor Saga is said to have watched the harvest moon from a boat on Ōsawa Pond, moon-viewing by boat is still held today.
The offerings are simple. White rice dumplings, tsukimi dango, are stacked in a small pyramid, often fifteen for the fifteenth night. Stems of susuki, silver grass, stand in for the rice harvest still in the fields. Seasonal produce is set beside them.
Where some cultures see a face in the moon, Japan sees a rabbit, pounding rice into mochi with a mallet.
About a month after Jūgoya comes a second moon-viewing night, Jūsanya, the thirteenth night of the ninth month, known for chestnuts and beans. An old belief holds that viewing only one of the two moons brings bad luck, katami-tsuki, the one-sided moon, so the careful watch both.
The Tsuki Tee draws the full moon in outline, its surface marked with fine flecks, with 月 in brush kanji at its centre. A curling cloud drifts across its lower edge and trails away, the way the autumn moon has long been drawn in Japanese art. An old saying runs tsuki ni murakumo, hana ni kaze: clouds over the moon, wind over the blossoms. The finest moments rarely last undisturbed.
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