Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo Page #3

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the perfect clarity with which the insects

could convey their mood:

Always more clear and shrill,

as the hush of the night grows deeper,

the Waiting-Insect's voice;

And I that wait in the garden,

feel enter into my heart

the voice and the moon together.

From Chomon-Shu,

written in the 13th century,

there is the first literary record

of the recreation of insect-hunting

for these beloved singing crickets.

The emperor ordered his

pages and chamberlains

to go to Sagano

and find some insects.

The emperor gave them a cage

of network of bright purple thread.

All, even the head-chamberlain

and his attendants,

went on horseback

to hunt for insects.

Tokinori Ben proposed to the party

as they rode to Sagano,

a subject for poetical composition.

The subject was, "Looking

for insects in the fields".

In the evening they returned to the palace.

The cage was respectfully presented

to the Empress.

There was sake drinking

in the palace that evening;

And many poems were composed.

I look back at these specimens and

each one tells a particular story for me.

Like this one here: This Red Admiral.

It's not a particularly good specimen.

But when I look at it, I can immediately

remember where I was, at what time...

what the weather was like,

what I was feeling.

It's sort of like a diary, in a way.

I can look back at these specimens

and they tell a story for me.

The art of the Zen garden,

at its height when the Chomon-Shu

was written,

created new ideas about the presentation

of and interaction with nature.

The gardens were laid out in rectangles

with large rocks as islands

and white pebbles or sand as the ocean,

rippling against the islands

in a motionless eternity.

Similar to haiku,

the gardens were meant

to be a representation of the universe,

scaled down to allow for the

contemplation and mediation of its nature.

The miniaturization of everyday objects

and the shrinking of worlds,

as with Zen gardening or bonsai,

lends itself to the exposition

of nature's smallest creatures.

Insects, which could easily have been the

inhabitants of these diminutive universes,

could be loosely recognized as their translators,

beings that held all of the truths of nature

in their tiny, delicately ergonomic lives.

In the Nihon Shoki,

the legendary account of Japan's

beginning written in the 8th century,

there is a well-known story of a dragonfly.

Emperor Jimmu, Japan's fabled

first emperor, is out hunting.

While resting a gadfly appears and bites him.

Within moments, a dragonfly proceeds

to catch and eat the gadfly.

The emperor is so pleased,

he commands a poem to be written.

As none of the hunting party

were bold enough to compose an ode,

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