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Bringing Back Tokyo’s Fireflies

Emily Cousins

Nestled somewhere along the Nogawa river in Osawa, Tokyo, is a small rice paddy known as Hotaru No Sato, or “home of the fireflies.” If you walk along the rickety wooden plank that cuts across the field, you’ll arrive at a small forested enclave. Every summer, sometime in late June, fireflies (hotaru) make this place their home.

I always look forward to visiting the hotaru. There’s something about their transient beauty that makes them one of the most compelling insect species you can encounter in Japan. Fireflies in Japan are aquatic, meaning they need fresh water in their larval stage. They stay underwater in clean rivers, streams and rice paddies as larvae, feeding on marsh snails (kawanina). After pupating in late spring, hotaru emerge as winged adults in the summer, usually for no more than a mere ten days. The two major types of hotaru in Japan were named, or so the myth goes, after a battle between the Genji and Heike clans in 1185.

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Emily Cousins recently graduated from Carleton College and currently lives in Tokyo, where she works at the American School In Japan.

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