Japan in September is a month of slow cooling. The heat of August stays in Tokyo and Kyoto through the first weeks, the evenings grow cooler towards the equinox, and at the far end of the country, on the slopes of Asahidake in the Daisetsuzan mountains of Hokkaido, the first leaves of the Japanese autumn turn red in the second half of the month, two months before the maples in Kyoto.
kyoto
The harvest moon in Kyoto
Tsukimi, moon viewing, falls on the night of the harvest moon, in September or the first days of October by the old lunar calendar. Households set out white rice dumplings and stems of silver pampas grass by an open window. At Daikaku-ji, in the west of Kyoto, the temple puts two boats on the Osawa pond, one with the carved head of a dragon at its prow and one with a mythical water bird, and guests drift out on the water to watch the moon rise over the trees and look for its reflection, as the Emperor Saga, whose palace this was, did twelve centuries ago.
On 9 September, the old festival of chrysanthemums, Kamigamo Shrine stages one of the strangest rites of the Kyoto year, karasu-zumo, the crow sumo. Two priests hop sideways across the gravel in white robes, cawing like crows in honour of the three-legged crow that guided the first emperor, and then the boys of the district wrestle in a ring before the shrine's two cones of white sand. Guests at the shrine that day are offered chrysanthemum sake.
the equinox
Red lilies and wooden carts
Around the equinox, which falls on 22 or 23 September, the red spider lilies, higanbana, come up along the edges of the rice fields all at once, a line of scarlet between the green of the paddies and the gold of the ripening rice. The equinox week, higan, is when families visit the graves of their ancestors.
South of Osaka, the town of Kishiwada stages the Danjiri Matsuri on the weekend before Respect for the Aged Day. Each neighbourhood has its danjiri, a two-storey wooden shrine cart carved with warriors and dragons and weighing several tonnes, and the teams haul them through the narrow streets at a run, swinging them round the corners without slowing, while a carpenter dances on the carved roof with a fan in each hand.
the table
The first autumn food and sake
Sanma, the Pacific saury, is grilled whole with salt and eaten with grated radish, the smoke of it drifting from every small restaurant on the street. The first matsutake come from the red pine woods, and figs, grapes and pears arrive in the markets.
The sake breweries release hiyaoroshi. It is sake pressed the previous winter and pasteurised only once, before it goes into the tank, then left to mature there through the summer, and it goes out to the shops in September without a second heating: rounder and softer than it was in spring, and made to be drunk with the autumn food.
hokkaido
Hokkaido turns first
The colour begins high on Asahidake, the highest peak of Hokkaido, around the Sugatami pond below the summit, where the dwarf rowan and the blueberry bushes turn red on the slopes around the steaming vents while the valleys below are still green. It is reached by a ropeway from the hot spring village at its foot. On the coast, the autumn salmon, akiaji, are running into the rivers, and the ikura, their roe, is marinated in soy and piled on rice in the markets of Sapporo and Hakodate. In the middle of the month the Sapporo Autumn Fest turns Odori Park into a long table of the island's food, running into the first days of October.
the weather
September weather: one of the wettest months in Tokyo
September is one of Tokyo's two wettest months, with 224.9 millimetres of rain on the Meteorological Agency's 1991 to 2020 normals, and the heat has not yet broken: days reach 27.5°C (82°F) and nights 20.3°C (69°F). Kyoto, in its basin, stays hotter still, at 29.2°C and 20.7°C (85°F and 69°F). Sapporo, at 22.8°C and 14.8°C (73°F and 59°F), already has the clear, cool evenings of autumn.
the calendar
Silver Week
Respect for the Aged Day, on the third Monday, and the autumnal equinox are both national holidays, and in the years when they fall close together the days between them make a long holiday, Silver Week, that fills the trains. Outside those days September is one of the quieter months of the year for travel inside Japan.
the journey
Travelling in Japan in September
September belongs to the Custom Tour of Japan, a private journey designed for one party on its own dates, from five nights. It can seat its guests in the dragon-headed boat on the Osawa pond at Daikaku-ji for the harvest moon, put the season's first hiyaoroshi beside the grilled sanma at dinner, and carry the journey north to Hokkaido for the first red on the slopes of Asahidake, with a Tour Director beside the party every day and a private car and driver waiting in each city.
