August: Moon Viewing
八月 月見
“Taro and beans together, come play beneath the autumn moon.”
芋も豆も一緒に遊べ月の秋
In the days of the old shogunate, before the solar calendar was adopted, the lives of the people of Edo were governed not by the sun but by the lunar calendar, with the moon serving as their standard. Agricultural work was organized by it, and the ebb and flow of the tides were reckoned by it. In this sense, the moon was truly a standard governing the lives not merely of Edo’s townspeople but of people throughout Japan.
For this reason, people celebrated both the fifteenth night of the eighth month, known for the famous harvest moon of mid-autumn, and the thirteenth night of the ninth month, offering thanks to the moon and holding moon-viewing banquets. Among samurai households in particular, it was customary on these occasions to invite relatives, acquaintances, and friends to a moon-viewing feast, accompanied by activities such as poetry contests.
There was even a verse:
Though there are many months in which we gaze upon the moon,
the month for moon-viewing is the moon of this very month.
At one samurai residence, a beautiful woman named Kikyō was made into an ornament for a moon-viewing banquet by her eccentric master. The setting was the family’s secondary residence, and the time was near the end of the Tenpō era [1830–1844].
According to the surviving account, the master was a retired daimyō. It is possible, however, that this “retired lord” was Nakano Sekio [中野碩翁], the powerful patron of Kōchiyama Sōshun [河内山宗俊], who had gained influence by providing his own daughter as a concubine to the eleventh shogun.
