Hand-bound Artist’s Book: “ Ama no Mizu: Water of the Sky/ Water that Belongs to the Heavens”. Hardcover (Watoji) with hand-dyed indigo linen, 2210 pages, Size: 12 x 13”, 2020, édition variée of two Essays by Roshi Joan Halifax and Lilly Wei Bound by Daniel Kelm, Wide Awake Garage, Easthampton MA Bilingual, visual dictionary that contains 2000 drawings and index of 2000 Japanese rain words, translated to English
Ama No Mizu (Water of the Sky or Water That Belongs to the Heavens), artist’s book, édition variée of two, hand-bound, 2,209 pages.
When residents of New York City were asked to shelter in place at the start of COVID, I began creating a visual, bilingual Japanese–English dictionary of rain as an extension of my study of mono no aware, an aesthetic awareness of the transience of natural phenomena. Each entry takes the form of a page-sized drawing on Hahnemühle or washi paper using natural indigo dye, micronized silver, graphite, and sumi. Across three years, this process resulted in two thousand drawings and an alphabetical index that collectively constitute a dictionary of two thousand Japanese words for rain.
The lexicon describes the breadth of rain’s many expressions, when it falls, how it falls, and the ways an observer may be changed by its presence. These words extend from the meteorological, mukaame (very fine rain that falls in spring), to the mystical, kitsune no yomeiri (rain that falls even though the sun is shining), from the minute, tamoto no shigure(rain on sleeves), to the vast, amagakeru (soaring rain). The drawings are not illustrations but evocations that seek to convey each rain’s particular character.
Ama No Mizu gathers terms drawn from Heian-period novels and poetry, calendars, religious documents, and other historic materials spanning roughly one thousand years. Many expressions have no direct English equivalent, and their descriptive English approximations reveal the lacunae or lexical gaps that arise when atmospheric phenomena are named with great precision. When something is valued it receives a name, and the dictionary reflects this principle through a taxonomy shaped by the minute observational attention to nature that characterizes Japanese cultural and perceptual practices.
Through this body of work, I seek to preserve Japanese rain words and their associated sentiments, many of which are anachronistic and have fallen out of contemporary use and have no counterpart in English. The project continues my inquiry into lacunae, which are the lexical gaps that emerge between languages—and how these absences reveal culturally specific understandings of nature. This interest in language and its intervals shapes my practice, informing both the research and the visual form of the dictionary.
To house the complete set of drawings, I created an edition of two artist’s books measuring twelve inches by twelve inches by ten inches. Each volume presents all two thousand drawings at scale and is hand-bound using watoji Japanese binding. The scale of the page count gives the books a sculptural presence. Each volume includes a hand-dyed linen cover in natural indigo dye and an alphabetical index. Essays by Lilly Wei and Rōshi Joan Halifax offer expanded perspectives on the historical, artistic, and contemplative dimensions of the project. Binding was completed by master bookbinder Daniel Kelm.
The title Ama No Mizu is an archaic expression for rain recorded in early Japanese chronicles. The term joins ama, meaning the heavens, with mizu, meaning water. The phrase conveys rain as water that descends from a celestial realm shaped by ritual and cosmology. It reflects early naming practices that recognized the atmosphere as an active presence and speaks to the shifting conditions that shape perception.
A version titled Water of the Sky: A Dictionary of 2000 Japanese Rain Words, containing one hundred drawings and the full index of two thousand terms, was published by the MIT Press in November 2025.