Thoreau's 72 Spells : An Attempt in 1852

摘要

This paper presents a brief process of creating a 72 spell calendar out of Henry D. Thoreau's Journal. The 72 Spells is a kind of Japanese calendar that shows the seasonal transitions by dividing one year into 72 segments. It serves as the basis of the Saijiki or the book of season-words which is commonly used among Japanese haiku and renku poets. Since 1969, when Octavio Paz organized the first international renku session in Paris, there has been a growing worldwide interest in the international renku. Consequently, there has been a growing need for an international version of the Saijiki. The 72 Spells can provide a common framework for classifying seasonal words on a global scale. In this paper I show the process of making a 72 spell calendar by analyzing the 1852 section in Journal. With the rapid development of databases and computer linguistics in the backdrop, I originally began a project of making a 72 spell calendar out of the database of the Journal. However, a lack of budget and limited time have forced me to present only a simplified version. Further information can be found in another paper, “Thoreau's Concept of Spring: A Comparative Study with the Japanese 24 Seasonal Periods and the 72 Spells,” in The Journal of the Faculty of Economics (Seikei University), No. 45(1), to be published on July 20, 2014.