Japan is one of the few countries in the world with four distinct seasons in a year: spring, summer, fall and winter.
We Japanese go through our lives appreciating the unique scents of the separate seasons expressed through the scents of plants and changes in temperature. I think this is very interesting because it is a unique experience distinctive to we Japanese who live in a land of four seasons.
Spring is the time of budding, when many plants, such as cherry blossoms, peaches and spicy pine trees all come into bloom at once.
In Japan, summer is expressed not so much by the scent of flowers as the scent of fresh greenery, asphalt heating under the summer sun, and the aroma of mosquito coils- these are the smells that when sniffed, immediately make me think “Summer in Japan!”
For fall, it has to be the scent of sweet osmanthus. When its sweet scent is floating through the air, you truly feel that fall is here. Fall is also the time when the leaves turn red and the temperature drops, and deciduous trees give off a smoky aroma as they prepare for winter.
In winter, the trees grow dormant, snow falls, water freezes, and the natural world grows largely odorless. The air becomes dry and thin, and I feel it is that very odorlessness that is the evocative scent of winter.
These seasonal scents can be felt even more vibrantly in rural areas where more nature remains intact than in cities. We Japanese instinctively go out of the cities into the countryside in pursuit of these scents. I hope that you, too, after reading this article, will enjoy the scents of Japan’s four seasons when you visit Japan.