Cicadas

Cicadas are a recurring presence in the island scenes, where their calls help register changing hours and seasons while shaping the emotional force of the surrounding quiet. Their sound is not merely constant background: it rises and recedes among birds, other insects, human activity, and, at a crucial moment, a rocket launch. The contrast between their chorus and its abrupt absence makes the natural soundscape a measure of both ordinary time and sudden emotional change.

Sound and the Passage of Time

In one evening scene, Kanae Sumida notes that calls from bear cicadas have given way to evening cicadas, which she expects will in turn be replaced by bush crickets. The change accompanies the fading light: the surroundings are already dim, while the high clouds still catch the sun and appear to travel west. The sequence makes dusk perceptible as a succession of sounds as well as a change in the sky. In this setting, cicadas belong to a wider cycle of seasonal and daily activity, rather than serving as an isolated emblem.

A separate afternoon scene offers another transition. Bear cicadas have been calling in the trees, but their voices fall silent; varied insect songs then rise from the long grass near Kanae. She is waiting in the shadow of the school building, watching the motorbike parking lot for Takaki Tohno, and her pulse is already racing. The shift in sound does not explain her nervousness, but it gives the moment a changing acoustic background: one chorus ends as another, more varied set of calls emerges around her.

The Island’s Shared Soundscape

The calls also establish the scale and character of the island setting. As Kanae and Takaki Tohno walk home along a narrow path between fields of sugarcane and sweet potatoes, cicada cries echo across the island. Faint bird calls from a distant forest accompany them. The sounds extend beyond the two people and the immediate path, placing their silence within a landscape that continues around them. Their footsteps and the space between them remain the focus of the encounter, but the insect chorus makes the setting feel larger than their private, unresolved conversation.

Cicadas recur in scenes with different immediate concerns: Kanae’s wait at school, her later walk with Takaki, and the moment when she cannot bring herself to confess her feelings. That recurrence links ordinary observation to personal tension without making the insects aware of, or responsible for, the human events. The same kind of sound can be part of daily island life and, by changing in volume or stopping, become newly prominent to the listener.

Chorus, Silence, and the Rocket Launch

During the walk home, the cicada chorus seems far louder to Kanae after she begins crying and hears sadness in Takaki’s voice. Her plea that he not be kind to her is followed by a sudden hush: the calls stop, and the silence seems to envelop the island. The sequence gives the pause a clear place in the scene’s emotional movement. A familiar sound that had filled the surroundings is removed just before a new, much louder event breaks in.

A roar then shakes the atmosphere as a rocket rises from a distant hill. Its launch occupies the acoustic space opened by the cicadas’ silence; the account follows the rocket’s ascent and the lingering echoes before birds, insects, and wind gradually become audible again. The rocket’s sound is technologically produced and momentous, while the insect calls belong to the island’s recurring environment. Their succession places a brief human crisis and a spectacular event within the same changing soundscape, without suggesting that either has permanently displaced the other.

Narrative Significance

Cicadas help organize these scenes through recurrence and contrast. Their calls mark the approach of evening, contribute to the sense of place, and make silence noticeable when the chorus abruptly stops. The shift from insect noise to the rocket’s roar changes the scene’s scale: attention moves from Kanae’s private distress to an event visible and audible across the island, then returns gradually to the ordinary sounds of the surroundings.

Their narrative role remains grounded in perception rather than explanation. The changing chorus accompanies Kanae’s waiting, hesitation, and distress, but the evidence does not make the insects a direct symbol of her feelings. Instead, the environment retains its own rhythms—the succession of insect calls, their intervals of silence, and their return—alongside the characters’ uncertain relationships. That independence allows the soundscape to carry emotional weight without reducing the island to a mere reflection of human experience.