MIYA ANDO

Water of the Sky: A Dictionary of 2,000 Japanese Words for Rain is a visual and linguistic archive I created over the three years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The project comprises 2,000 Japanese terms related to rain, each paired with a drawing executed in natural indigo, pure silver powder, and graphite on paper. Published by The MIT Press in 2025, the project developed from my interest in the extraordinary specificity with which rain has been observed and named in Japanese.

Drawing on historical sources, including Heian-era literature, Buddhist texts, and calendars, I became interested in how different words distinguish rain through season, time of day, intensity, duration, sound, landscape, plants, clouds, and the appearance or disappearance of the moon. This led me to a larger question that has become increasingly central to my practice: What happens to our perception of an ephemeral phenomenon when it is given a name? Language can direct our attention toward subtle distinctions in the natural world, making perceptible conditions that might otherwise pass unnoticed.

Translation became another form of close observation. Moving between Japanese and English revealed lexical gaps and differences in what each language distinguishes and preserves. Informed by my bicultural background, I became interested in how these distinctions can be carried from language into visual and material experience.

The terms range widely, from the meteorological (mukaame, “very fine rain that falls in spring”) to the mystical (bunryūu, “rain that splits a dragon’s body in half”), and from the delicate (kisame, “raindrops that fall off leaves and branches”) to the vast (takuu, “blessed rain that quenches all things in the universe”). These words serve as titles for my drawings. I think of drawing as a continuation of this sustained attention. Each drawing begins with a distinctly named condition of rain, giving a temporary phenomenon duration and physical presence.

Link to purchase book.

The following are ten entries from the rain dictionary.