Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo

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if he would supply them with their own.

Chuzo obliged and soon

a new phenomenon of

captive crickets

spread throughout Japan.

Inspired by Chuzo's success,

others followed his example

and the market for a variety

of insects expanded.

A craze took hold of the entire country.

Special:

Insect Catching and Rearing Supplies

Help! All of my insects have escaped.

Can you help me find them?

Even at the hour of the noon-day meal,

they forget to return home -

the children catching dragonflies.

The poetry that often praises insects

is a type of poetry that rejoices

in the minuscule

as a defining feature

of a particular time and space.

This form of poetry, the haiku,

became popular in the 17th century,

its minimal form a model illustration

of Japanese aesthetics and values.

Haiku is the expression

of a precise view of nature -

personal and universal in equal parts.

It is the distillation of time,

a representation of a

single spontaneous moment -

an eternity captured

in a mundane instant of reality.

Haiku is an interpretation

of the brevity of life

and the never-ending cycle of nature -

the unyielding passing of the seasons.

Similar to the concept of

Mono No Aware,

haiku is about the transience of all things

and the perception of intimate nature

without intermediaries.

Haiku is man as part of nature,

or more exactly

man as nature.

Meeting In Flight

How gracefully do the dragonflies

Glance away from each other.

As a measure of their belief

that all creatures exist on an equal

plane of capacity and possibility,

the Japanese often assigned

traditionally human,

emotional characteristics to insects.

Because of the shrewdness

with which it caught its prey,

the dragonfly was a favorite emblem

among the warrior class.

It was called the "Victory Insect,"

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