＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:https://skawa68.com/
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
1. Tiger beetle（斑猫：hanmyou）
Michi oshie hane hane Shōwa nagaki kana'(Hirahata Seitō)
「道をしへ跳ね跳ね昭和永きかな」（平畑靜塔）
kusa no to wo tachiizuru yori michi oshie'(takano sujū）
「草の戸を立出づるより道をしへ」（高野素十）
When we write “斑猫（spotted cat）,” we do not mean “speckled cat” or “blotched cat. Hanmyou is a beetle belonging to the family of the “osamushi（「筬虫」）”(weevil), also called “michi-oshie” (path teaching,wayfinder).
I know this is an off-season topic, but here is a story I remember from my summer days as an insect lover.
One hot afternoon during summer vacation, a cumulonimbus cloud grew larger and larger, so I went out to the backyard to get a closer look. In a puddle, I found a small, shiny insect I’d never seen before. That was my first encounter with a tiger beetle. I was impressed by how beautiful it was.
Later, when my father and I went to Settsu-kyo Gorge to catch rhinoceros beetles（カブトムシ） and stag beetles（クワガタムシ）, we saw an insect hopping along in front of the mountain path we were taking. My father told me, “That’s a wayfinder. Indeed, as if to show us the way, they would move on again after we had gone a little further. I was impressed that the old people called the tiger beetle（斑猫） a “wayfinder,” which well describes the habit and characteristics of this insect.
2. Longhorn beetle（髪切虫：kamikirimushi）
＜sesame-spotted long-horned beetle（「ゴマダラカミキリ（胡麻斑髪切）」）＞
Kamikirimushi sakagami tatete kaze ni tobu’ ( Yamaguchi Seishi )
「髪切蟲逆髪立てて風に飛ぶ」（山口誓子）
Kirikiri to kamikirimushi no hiru fukashi ‘( Katō Shūson )
「きりきりと髪切蟲の晝（ひる）ふかし」（加藤楸邨）
Kuragari ni suteshi kamikirimushi ga naku ‘ ( Hashimoto Takako）
「くらがりに捨てし髪切蟲が啼く」（橋本多佳子）
Many people may mistake “longhorn beetle/long-horned beetle（髪切虫：hair-cutting beetles)” for “（噛み切り虫：biting beetles）” or “（紙切り虫：paper-cutting beetles）,” but this is incorrect. Long-horned beetles are also called “鉄砲虫（gun beetles）,” and they are pests that drill holes in trees, lay eggs, and can even cause the trees to wither, so they may be disliked.
We often hear stories of pine trees dying（松枯れ） due to damage caused by pine bark beetles（松くい虫）, but pine wilt disease（松枯れ病） is an infectious disease（伝染病） caused by a nematode（線虫） called the pine wood nematode（「マツノザイセンチュウ（松材線虫）」）, which is transmitted by the pine sawyer beetle, Monochamus alternatus（「マツノマダラカミキリ（松斑天牛）」）.
Longhorn beetles are also written as “Tengyu（天牛）,” which refers to their long antennae which resemble cow’s horns.
The first long-horned beetle I encountered was a sesame-spotted long-horned beetle（「ゴマダラカミキリ（胡麻斑髪切）」） found at the base of a willow tree in the schoolyard. When I caught it, it made a plaintive cry, “Squeak, squeak.” It has sharp teeth on both sides of its mouth, so it hurts when it bites you. So if you bring hair or a small branch to its mouth, it will bite it off.
When I went to Settsu-kyo Gorge to catch rhinoceros beetles and stag beetles as usual, I found an ochre-colored insect high up in an oak tree, so I caught it and discovered it was a Massicus raddei（「ミヤマカミキリ（深山髪切）」）
＜Massicus raddei（「ミヤマカミキリ（深山髪切）」）＞
This one is larger than the sesame-spotted long-horned beetle, but I didn’t find it very interesting so I let it go straight away.
＜white striped longhorn beetle（「シロスジカミキリ（白筋髪切）」）＞
I also found a white striped longhorn beetle（「シロスジカミキリ（白筋髪切）」）, which does indeed have white spots in the picture book, but the actual living one has yellow spots.
However, when it died, the spots turned white. When viewed from the front, the white-striped longhorn beetle’s compound eyes were unusually large, and it later resembled the face of “Kamen Rider：仮面ライダー（masked rider）” that was shown on TV.
3. Hoping for a revival of the insect collecting boom
Teruyuki Kagawa, who is known to be a big insect lover, was the MC of the NHK Educational TV program “Teruyuki Kagawa’s Insects Are Amazing!” (broadcast irregularly) as “Kamakiri Sensei” (appearing wearing a praying mantis costume). I hope that this kind of program will encourage more children to like insects.
Interacting with insects is a very meaningful way to become familiar with nature. Although overhunting of giant stag beetles（オオクワガタ）by traders is a problem, I do not think there is any need to worry about the extinction of insects to the extent that children collect insects.
If you have grandchildren or children in elementary school, why don’t you go out with them next summer to collect insects? It might be a good idea to tell them about your own boyhood experiences.
This was just a rambling tale of memories, but I wrote it in the hope that it might be useful to anyone who has even the slightest interest in insects.