Winter crow
Kangarasu, the winter crow, is a seasonal word in Japanese haiku: the crow of the coldest weeks of the year, dark against snow and bare branches. The image is older than haiku itself, and Japanese ink painters returned to it again and again.
寒 (kan): cold. It is also the name of the coldest weeks of the year.
烏 (garasu): crow. Read karasu on its own, it softens to garasu inside a word.
It is also written 寒鴉, with the same meaning.
In the traditional calendar, kan is a season of its own: about thirty days of deepest cold, from early January to the start of spring in early February. It is the time for kangeiko, winter training in the martial arts before dawn, and for brewing sake, when cold water was prized for its purity.
Haiku are anchored by seasonal words, kigo, and the winter crow is one of them. In the bare trees of midwinter, crows are the one living thing that stands out: black on white, gathered against the cold, calling across empty fields. Poets used the image for loneliness and endurance, and the dark crow against snow and bare branches became one of the defining pictures of winter.
The painter Kawanabe Kyōsai made the winter crow famous in the Meiji era. In 1881 he showed a painting of a crow on a withered tree at a national exhibition in Tokyo, priced at 100 yen, an extraordinary sum for a single painting at the time. It sold, and Kyōsai’s crows became among the most sought-after ink paintings of his day.
The Kangarasu Sweatshirt draws a single crow perched on a bare winter branch, with 寒烏 printed with it.
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