What Is Komorebi? Meaning, Kanji, and How to Bring It Home

Komorebi (木漏れ日, pronounced ko-mo-reh-bee) is the Japanese word for sunlight that filters down through the leaves of trees. English needs a whole phrase for it. Japanese has one word, and children learn it early.

I'm Ryushi Nagata, and I run the MA walls from Japan. One of our collections is named after this word. This is what it means, how we use it, where I first noticed it, and how to bring some of it into a room.

What does komorebi mean?

Komorebi means sunlight that comes through the gaps between leaves and branches. The word is built from three parts:

Read literally, it is "sunlight leaking through trees." On its own, 日 is read hi. Inside this word the sound softens to bi, which is a common thing in Japanese when two words are joined.

The closest English is "dappled light," but that usually describes the pattern on the ground. Komorebi is the light itself, on its way down. It covers the bright patches on the forest floor, the glow of the leaves overhead, and the beams you can see in the air on a misty morning.

Two ways to write it

You will see both 木漏れ日 and 木洩れ日. They are read the same way and mean the same thing. The first uses the standard character taught in schools, so it is the one you find in newspapers and textbooks. The second uses an older character and turns up more in poems, song titles and novels.

Related words

Two neighbours are worth knowing. Kokage (木陰) is the shade under a tree, the place you go to get out of the sun. Hidamari (日だまり) is a spot where sunlight pools, like the warm patch on the floor that a cat finds. Komorebi sits between them: it is what happens when the sun gets into the shade.

How do Japanese people use the word?

It is an everyday word. You might say it on a walk:

木漏れ日がきれいだね。
Komorebi ga kirei da ne.
"The light through the trees is beautiful, isn't it?"

When a Japanese person hears komorebi, most of us picture the same scene: a wood in spring, the air fresh, the light warm but not hot. There are small birds somewhere above. The feeling that comes with it is gentle. You notice the trees and the light, and for a moment you feel like part of the place.

So the word carries a mood as well as a meaning. Nobody uses it for harsh light. Komorebi is always soft.

Where I first noticed komorebi

My first memories of it are from camping trips with my parents when I was in elementary school. Japanese summers are hot, and an open campsite under the sun is hard going. So we went to campsites in the woods, where the trees keep the heat off.

I loved collecting insects, which meant I spent most of those trips looking up into the branches. That is how I came to know this light. I was searching for insects, and what I remember now is the sun coming through the leaves.

Autumn has its own version. Most people look at red maple leaves from the outside, with the sun shining on them. I like that too. But I like it more from underneath, standing near the trunk and looking out, with the sun behind the leaves so that each one glows.

My grandfather's house in Nagasaki

The memory that stayed with me longest is indoors. When I was small, I spent about a month of every summer at my grandfather's house in Nagasaki, far from our home in Tokyo.

He was a carpenter, and he had built his own house with a great deal of care. The rooms had shoji, the sliding screens made of wood and paper. The trees outside threw their shadows onto the paper, and when the wind moved the branches, the shadows moved too.

I was too young to have a word for why I liked it. I just remember watching it.

The shadows of the trees moved across the paper screen whenever the wind blew. I was a small child, and I have never forgotten it.

How to bring komorebi into your home

You cannot install a forest. But the idea behind komorebi is simple: light is nicer when something stands between you and the sun. Here are four ways to use that.

1. Filter the light you already have

Bare glass gives you a hard rectangle of sun. Put something in the way and the light changes. Sheer linen curtains work. So does a paper blind, or a tall plant on the windowsill whose leaves throw shadows across the floor. This is what the shoji in my grandfather's house were doing.

2. Notice which wall the light moves across

Every home has one wall where the sun travels during the day. Find it before you decide where furniture and pictures go. A piece of art on that wall looks different at nine in the morning and at four in the afternoon, and that is the point.

3. Hang light-filled art where you pass by

I suggest two places. The first is the entryway. It is the last thing you see before you leave the house, and a picture of morning light in a forest is a good send-off for the day ahead. The second is the bedroom. At the end of the day you have done what you could, and now it is time to rest. Soft light through trees is easy to fall asleep near.

4. Keep the rest of the room quiet

Komorebi is a small thing, and it gets lost in a busy room. Natural wood, plain walls and two or three colours are enough. Leave empty wall around the picture so the light in it has somewhere to go.

Choosing komorebi wall art

Nature has expressions that last only a moment, and light through leaves is one of them. People in Japan are raised to notice these moments. I wanted to put that way of noticing into pictures and send it to people who did not grow up with it. That is why we made the Komorebi collection.

It has five pieces, and they fall into two groups.

Light outdoors. Forest Filter is sun coming down through a canopy of trees. Morning Mist is first light through bamboo. Golden Hour is a single reed against an amber sky at dusk. These suit rooms that have little greenery of their own.

Light indoors. Shoji Light shows the shadows a paper screen casts in the morning, and Shadow Play is a window frame projected onto a bare wall. These are calmer and more geometric, and they sit well in a hallway or above a desk.

If I had to choose the one closest to the word, it is Forest Filter. It takes me straight back to those campsites. There is a path in it that leads further into the trees, and I look at it the way I did as a boy, wondering what is down there. It is a hopeful picture.