Water of the Sky

In Water of the Sky, artist Miya Ando offers a rich, bilingual visual dictionary for rain. Through a collection of 2,000 Japanese words, their English interpretations, and 100 drawings, Ando describes the breadth and diversity of rain’s many expressions: when it falls, how it falls, and how its observer might be transformed physically or emotionally by its presence. The words range from prosaic to esoteric, extending from the meteorological (mukaame, or “very fine rain that falls in spring”) to the mystical (bunryūu, or “rain that splits a dragon’s body in half”) and from the minute (kisame, or “raindrops that fall off the leaves and branches of trees”) to the vast (takuu, or “blessed rain that quenches all things in the universe”).

This reminds me of the claim that Eskimo words for snow are unusually numerous, particularly in contrast to English. It’s a cliché commonly used to support the controversial linguistic relativity hypothesis (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis).

You can find Ando on Instagram as well for more of her indigo drawings.