Insects

The air is full of metal-like sound given out by some sorts of insect. The sound is like that of rain.

The insect, after the sleep of six years in the earth, comes out on a summer morning, goes up a tree, makes its clear skin open, and gets out of it, in the new form with wings. It goes in the air, puts its mouth-pipe through the skin of a tree, takes water out of the tree as its food, giving out its sound. After a week of its work, or play, it goes to death.

Some of them give out the sound like a short talk. Some give out high bird-like sound about the time of sundown. The sounds of those insects among the trees are in everyone's memory in Japan, as the sound of late summer.

Almost every boy in Japan has a memory of getting one of those insects by quickly moving a bag of net fixed at the end of a long stick.

What is interesting is that the wordbooks for haiku-writers give a statement that the insect is a sign of the time which comes AFTER summer. They say that the insects are sign of fall. Their sounds, or noises, may be saying: "Fall is coming. Fall is coming."

But most of us, common Japanese, have a feeling that they are THE insects of summer. They may be saying: "Summer is going. Summer is going."

The name of the insect is "cicada." ¶ 23:30