NOTES
Nodding heavily in the field, ripening stalks of Japanese rice (Oryza sativa subsp. japonica) represent the autumn harvest season. In Japanese culture, rice is reaped around the middle of the eighth lunar month, roughly September. New grain was dedicated to the deity Inari with festivals and Shintō rituals that continued well into the ninth lunar month, roughly October.
A feather suspended from a hemp cord alludes to the ancient belief that agriculture in Japan began when a bird dropped a rice seed from its mouth. In the left corner, the green bamboo rod and white paper strips suggest a temporary shrine. Perched on another hemp cord is a rice grasshopper (Oxya yezoensis), which is a pest farmers strive to keep away. The artist cleverly made a visual pun, because in Japanese, an ear or head of rice is called inaho, which sounds like inago (“child of rice”), the rice grasshopper.
