When The Higurashi Cry, It’s Hot

There are many powerful images of summer in Japan, including visiting the Tanabata festival while wearing a yukata, lightning fireworks with friends, enjoying かき氷 kaki-gohri (shave ice) or a bottle of ramune, or taking in the pleasant aroma of mosquito coils burning inside ceramic pig. But for me, nothing represents Japan’s hot, humid summers like the endless drone of cicadas, which make their min-min-miiiiin sound outside my window all summer long. In Japanese the insects are known as semi, though they’ve got an alternate name which will be more familiar to anime fans: 日暮し higurashi, a somewhat romanticized name written with kanji that also mean “sunset.” Unlike in the U.S., which faces a massive swarm of 17-year cicadas this summer, the Japanese versions of the bugs are there every year, happily providing background noise for summer.

Higurashi are a symbol of summer in Japan.