Someone in Japan Spotted a Little Autumn. It Got Away.

What's going on

Almost everyone in Japan knows Chiisai Aki Mitsuketa ("I Found a Little Autumn"), a children's song from 1955 that kids still learn at school. A "little autumn" is one of the small, early signs that the season is turning: a single red leaf, a cooler breeze, the sound of insects at night. The song has a quiet, slightly melancholy minor-key melody, and in it the person who finds the little autumn is only ever called "somebody."

In recent years, though, summers in Japan have been running long and hot, and plenty of people joke that autumn has shrunk to a week or two squeezed in before winter. So when someone posted a line treating a "little autumn" as a wild animal that had just been sighted and bolted, everyone knew exactly what they meant.

The replies joined the hunt. Then they started arguing about conservation.

Comments

There it is! A little autumn! It’s getting away! Catch it!

いたぞ！小さい秋だ！逃げたぞ！捕まえろ！

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It’s Somebody’s account!

誰かさんのアカウントだ！

So it’s the “Did a little autumn just come through here?!” kind of thing, huh.

「今ここに小さい秋が来なかったか！？」ってやつですかね。

Ah! It went that way! Surround it! Surround iiit!

アッ！そっち行きました！囲め！囲めー！

Surround it, surround it!!

囲め囲め！！

Surround it!!! Don’t let it escape for at least a month!!!

囲め！！！せめて1ヶ月は逃がすな！！！

So fast! Don’t tell me that’s… the Autumn of Sports?! (Japan nicknames autumn by what it’s best for: the autumn of sports, the autumn of appetite, the autumn of reading, and so on.)

早い！まさかやつはスポーツの秋か！？

Look, it’s pretending to be a dragonfly‼️ (Red dragonflies are a classic sign of autumn in Japan.)

ホラ、トンボのフリしてる‼️

“Aah, lost it!” “Dammit… it’s way too fast!” (Is that what it’s like on Honshu these days… (Honshu is Japan’s main island. Sounds like this person is watching from somewhere else.)

「あぁッ見失った！」「畜生…逃げ足早すぎる！」 (今や本州ってそんな感じなのかしら…

“It’s still warm… it can’t have gone far!”

「温かい…まだ遠くには行っていないはずだ！」

Summer: “There’s nothing here, I said there’s nothing here! Don’t come out!” (A nod to a flashback in Studio Ghibli’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind*, where young Nausicaä desperately tries to hide a baby Ohmu, a giant insect, from the adults who’ve come to take it away.)*

夏「なにもいないわ、何もいないったら！　出てきちゃだめ！」

Give it up, you’ll just wear yourself out. We let spring get away too, and even when we did catch it, it got weak right away, remember?

やめとけって疲れるだけですわ春だって逃がしたし捕まえてもすぐ弱っちゃったじゃないか

Stop using the little autumn as bait to lure out the big autumn, noooo

小さい秋で大きい秋をおびき寄せるのはやめるんだぁぁ

Careful how hard you grab it! It’ll get crushed between summer and winter in no time!

力加減に気をつけろ！すぐ夏と冬に押しつぶされるぞ！

Don’t kill it!

殺すな!

Take it alive!

生きて捕獲しろー！

Not this time! Throw the net! We take it without a scratch!

逃がすか！網を投げろ！傷つけず捕まえるぞ！

Ugh… slippery little thing! Dammit! Argh! It got away!

うぐっ...すばしっこいヤツめ！くっそ！ああ！逃がした！

It pops up anywhere, vanishes just as fast, and it’s quick on its feet. Close in from all sides and corner it!!

神出鬼没で足が速い。包み込むように追い込むんだ！！

Don’t chase it. Stay as quiet as you can, act like you don’t care, and wait with a Churu ready. (Churu is a lickable cat treat in a squeeze tube that cats famously lose their minds over.)

追いかけちゃ駄目だなるべく静かに無関心を装いつつもチュールを用意して待つんだ

Hyaaah!! …N-no… impossible… the Master Ball… got deflected?? (In Pokémon, the Master Ball catches any wild Pokémon without fail.)

どりゃぁっ！！…な…ばかな、、、マスターボールが、、弾かれただと、、

Feels like the population drops every year…… lol

年々生息数が減っている気がしますね……w

It’s people like this who are the reason autumn keeps shrinking every year.

こういう人がいるから年々秋が減少してる

This is exactly why autumn’s an endangered species these days. People hunt it before it has a chance to grow up.

こうやって大きくなる前に狩るから最近は秋が絶滅危惧種になっているんだよね

Theeere we go, good kid. Don’t worry, you’re not some little autumn. You’re a big autumn. You’re going to grow up to be a big autumn…

よーしよし、いい子だ。安心しろ、お前は小さい秋なんかじゃない、大きな秋だ。お前は、大きな秋になるんだよ…

Was that one big enough to keep? Mature autumns have gotten scarce lately, so they’re protected by local ordinance now.

それ捕まえても良い大きさでした？最近成熟した秋が少なくなったんで条例で保護されてるんですよ

The kinmokusei was blooming 🌼✨ Today was a fleeting bit of autumn ✨ (Kinmokusei, or fragrant olive, has tiny orange flowers whose sweet scent many people in Japan think of as the smell of autumn.)

金木犀が咲いていたのですよ🌼✨ 今日は束の間の秋でした✨

If you’re looking for the big autumn, it was up there.

大きい秋なら上に居ました

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My take

Autumn has become so rare lately that there are real worries about it going extinct. Let's all do our part to protect it.

#Funny #Culture

Source & translation note

Comments loosely translated for tone. Reactions collected from Togetter and X threads.

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