Source — Tokyo Weekender, "Japanese Words We Can't Translate: Komorebi"

Title: Japanese Words We Can't Translate: Komorebi
Author: Lisandra Moor
Publication: Tokyo Weekender
Date: 2020-09-03 (updated 2024-01-10)
URL: https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/history/japanese-words-we-cant-translate-komorebi/
Type: secondary/popular, credulous stance (explicitly frames the word as "truly the perfect example of an untranslatable expression" without testing that claim against dictionary or translation evidence)
Accessed: 2026-08-30

Extract

Defines komorebi as "the sunlight shining through the trees," giving the same 木/漏れ/日 compositional breakdown as the Wiktionary entry (tree / leak-through / sunlight).
Calls it "truly the perfect example of an untranslatable expression" — an unsupported evaluative claim, not a sourced one; filed as an example of the popular genre's rhetoric, not as evidence the claim holds.
States the word "is so popular... in Japanese pop songs" and "popular in haiku, especially using its more archaic spelling," but gives no specific song, poem, or citation for either claim.
Notably, the author volunteers a limitation rather than papering over it: "how little information on its history I could find on the internet" — i.e. even this piece, part of the popular untranslatable-words genre, could not source a genealogy for the word's own popularization in English, unlike (for example) hygge's well-documented 2016 wave.
Does not discuss when or how komorebi entered English-language "untranslatable words" lists, or cite any dictionary.

No sourcing for the "popular in pop songs/haiku" claims — treat as asserted, not established.
No discussion of dictionary status (contrast this project's own finding, via Weblio/Daijisen and JMdict, that komorebi is an ordinary headword in Japanese reference dictionaries).
Typical of the genre discussed on the popular-phenomenon topic page: asserts untranslatability rhetorically rather than testing it.