RAIN

Water of the Sky: A Dictionary of 2,000 Japanese Words for Rain is a visual and linguistic archive by artist Miya Ando. It comprises 2,000 Japanese terms related to rain, each accompanied by a drawing executed in natural indigo, micronized silver, and graphite on paper. Created during the COVID-19 lockdown, the project transforms a dictionary into a perceptual system—an index of nuanced, often untranslatable terms that describe rain in its many physical, emotional, and temporal registers.

Drawn from historical sources including Heian-era literature, Buddhist texts, calendars, and oral traditions, these words reveal a microprecision awareness of natural phenomena largely absent in English. Ando’s translations position the dictionary as a study in lexical lacunae—gaps in language that mirror cultural absences in perception. The investigation of language reveals the value systems of a society: when something is valued, it is given a name. Informed by her bicultural identity, Ando’s interpretations reflect a diasporic sensitivity—an awareness shaped by navigating linguistic and cultural thresholds. Her approach to translation becomes a perceptual act: not only bridging Japanese and English, but revealing what each language holds, omits, or resists expressing.

The terms range from the prosaic to the esoteric, extending 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 minute (kisame, “raindrops that fall off the leaves and branches of trees”) to the vast (takuu, “blessed rain that quenches all things in the universe”). These words become the titles for drawings—each one an attempt to perceive, render, and imagine the quality of a specific kind of rain. In addition to the 2000-page-sized works, Ando created larger-format versions of select terms on 39", 79", and 94" paper, expanding the scale and resonance of these linguistic-weather phenomena.

The dictionary of rains was published by The MIT Press in 2025.