Late spring
outside reverse fold
of early fall
In Smaller Is Better: Japan’s Mastery of the Miniature, Korean scholar O-Young Lee makes the case for the folded fan as a Japanese invention. The Chinese and the Egyptians had the flat fans first, made from the tail feathers of a quail, according to Chinese legend. When the flat fan arrived in Japan, it was folded by the Japanese propensity to make things smaller, and thus easier to carry around. In this haiku, two seasons are folded into one another, in a figure borrowed from another distinctively Japanese art, which Lee does not examine, the art of origami.
