Summer has a soundtrack in Kyoto. It's not the Beach Boys or Arthur Lyman or Bob Marley. Just after the rice paddies are flooded for planting in late May the frogs appear and begin their dissonant nighttime serenade. They sing through the rainy season until July. As the frogs lose interest in performing, the cicada come along.
This is a large, ugly bug that looks like some kind of prehistoric moth ready for battle. It inhabits the upper branches of, it would seem, most every tree in Japan during the peak of summer. You know summer has arrived and scorching heat will follow when you hear the mating song of the male cicada. The racket produced by these fellows is deafening, beginning sometime around dawn and often continuing right through to dusk with hardly a pause. Apparently, the sound emanating from their vibrating abdomen can reach 120 decibels and can actually cause hearing damage in humans unlucky enough to have a cicada sing in their ears. It is the stuff of science fiction, this noise, and when you first hear it you're sure an alien spacecraft has collided with a power line.
By the end of August the cicada have worn themselves out with their nonstop concert. They are replaced by the soft, sweet song of the suzumushi (bell cricket) and you know autumn is just around the corner.
Before smart-phone apps, TV weathermen and even almanacs man looked to the natural world for indications of the changing seasons. The animals, plants and insects of the earth have always been a dead-on gauge for what is to come. You've only to stop and listen.
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