japanamerica

LETTER FROM TOKYO, AUGUST 2021: CICADA CRY I caught cicadas in my grandparents’ garden when I was five years old. This was in Morioka City in August, the first full month I lived in Japan before attending kindergarten. It was hot. I used a lightweight long-necked net to capture them and kept them in a green plastic cage my grandfather had bought for me. The cicadas seemed huge and powerful and I loved looking into their eye bulbs with the little black dots in the middle. When you held them from behind by the tips of their wings, their legs clawed at the air then stopped. Their faces looked like they could have been dangerous insects, biting or stinging, but at the last minute decided not to be. So they just stared back at you. There is the famous Basho haiku about cicada cries hiding the nearness of their death but I didn't know anything about that then. I just loved their eyes and wings and the perfect ghost husks they left behind, clinging to the trees as if they were still aliv