Plovers over Waves

Rough waves crashing onto the sandy beach (suhama), the green leaning reeds imply the presence of a strong wind. Plovers arrive—a sign of winter, and a favorite topic in Japanese poetry. Birds were poeticized in classical Japanese poetry; certain birds and plants came to represent the seasons—the bush warbler for spring; the small cuckoo for summer; the wild goose for autumn. The birds of winter, however, are mainly waterbirds—the mandarin duck, the wild duck and the plover (chidori). Chidori, literally “a thousand birds,” are sandy, grayish brown birds with white underparts, long legs and relatively short bills found throughout most of the world. In Japanese poetry, the focus is on their songs, or voices—in this case, soft, high-pitched vocalizations. In art, the plover might appear on a woman’s garment or a lacquer inro against a background of fishing nets or paired with jakago.