Feature
The Turtle Calendar — A Year in Turtles
Turtle holidays, nesting seasons, even a haiku season-word. The Turtle Club's official guide to filling your calendar with shells.
Spring — the season when 'turtles sing'
Japanese haiku has a spring season-word, kame naku — 'a turtle sings'. Turtles don't actually sing (though they do make sounds); the word captures the poetic feeling that, by a warm spring pond, one just might. Imagination, enshrined in the dictionary.
Real spring is wake-up season: when pond turtles emerge from brumation and line up on rocks to bask, the turtle year has begun.
Summer — holidays and hatchlings
May 23 is World Turtle Day, established in 2000 by American Tortoise Rescue. June 16 is World Sea Turtle Day, honoring the birthday of Dr. Archie Carr, the father of sea turtle conservation.
On Japanese beaches, May through August is sea turtle nesting season — mothers hauling ashore at night, hatchlings dashing for the waves by summer's end (see Sea Turtle Nesting). The hottest stretch of the turtle calendar.
Autumn — release rites and departures
Autumn brings hōjō-e, the Buddhist rite of releasing captured creatures to earn merit; the ceremonies at Hakozaki-gū in Fukuoka and Iwashimizu Hachiman-gū near Kyoto go back over a thousand years, and turtles were once their stars (modern releases raise ecological concerns — see Turtles & Shrines).
At sea, summer's hatchlings ride the Kuroshio current outward. Loggerheads born in Japan swim clear across the Pacific.
Winter — sleep through it
As water cools, Japan's turtles settle into the mud and pond bottoms to brumate — barely moving, barely breathing, waiting out the cold. Two hundred million years of energy-saving engineering, on full display.
And one bonus date: July 2 is Tawashi Day in Japan, marking the 1915 patent of the kamenoko tawashi — the turtle-shaped palm-fiber scrubbing brush that has guarded Japanese kitchens for a century.
The Turtle Club calendar, at a glance
For your planner — and whatever else you skip, never miss May 23.
· May 23 — World Turtle Day
· May–Aug — sea turtle nesting season (Japan)
· June 16 — World Sea Turtle Day
· July 2 — Tawashi Day (1915 patent)
· From ~August — hatchlings emerge and depart
· Sept 12–18 — Hōjō-e at Hakozaki-gū, Fukuoka
· Late autumn–spring — brumation (wild turtles in Honshu)
· Spring — 'turtles sing' season; first basking of the year
