On Haiku

by Hiroaki Sato

  One is link 58, which reads:

  心ありけり釣のいとなみ

  kokoro arikeri tsuri no itonami

  with something in mind he’s engaged in angling

  This link at once evokes the image of Lu Shang, the legendary military strategist in China around the eleventh century BC. When King Wen observed him angling by the Wei Shui, a tributary of the Yellow River, without dipping the hook in the water, he exclaimed, “This is the very man my grandfather was hoping to see!” and asked him to be his strategist. The suggestion, of course, is that Lu Shang was contemplating various military strategies while angling. He went on to win many battles for King Wen and established his own country, Qi. Later, he was conferred the respectful epithet Taigongwang, “Grandfather Hope.”

  Another is link 95, which reads:

  縄手の行衛ただちとはしれ

  nawate no yukue tadachi to wa shire

  know that the path ahead is straight

  Take the preceding link into account, and nawate here suggests the ridge or path between rice paddies, though the word also means a straight road, as well as a rope or the appearance thereof. Tadachi, “straight,” also means “immediate,” “impending.” As if sensing what Mitsuhide is saying, or so we can interpret, the next link, by Shōshitsu, suggests a battlefield where a warrior, warned of what is to come, nonetheless mounts a horse, as Minamoto no Yoshinaka does in a famous episode in The Tale of the Heike. Yoshinaka fights through several masses of enemies with his men, and finally, after plunging alone into paddies covered with thin ice, an arrow wounds him mortally and an enemy soldier takes his head.

  The Aftermath

  Upon receiving the news of Mitsuhide’s assassination of Nobunaga, Hideyoshi struck a truce with Mōri Terumoto, withdrew his army from Takamatsu, dashed back to Kyoto, attacked Mitsuhide, and destroyed him in Yamazaki, on the border between Osaka and Kyoto, on the thirteenth of Sixth Month. Defeated, Mitsuhide was escaping on horseback with a group of stragglers toward Sakamoto Castle, when a peasant hiding in a thicket stabbed him in the side with a bamboo spear. Mitsuhide kept galloping his horse for about three hundred meters, then stopped and dismounted. He asked one of his men to behead him and disemboweled himself.

  During the ensuing chaos, the resplendent Azuchi Castle and the Sakamoto Castle, reputed to have been only a little less dazzling than Azuchi Castle, were burned down.

  When the hyakuin came to light, Hideyoshi took Jōha to task for allowing such a palpable declaration of intent to go unreported. Jōha insisted that the hokku said no such thing. With permission, he went back to the Shirakumo Temple, examined the hyakuin, and secretly rewrote what was originally “ama ga shita shiru” to read “ama ga shita naru.” The word naru would change the meaning to say “we are under Heaven.” He returned to Hideyoshi and reported that someone had tampered with the hokku, and that this tampered version had come to light. Or so legend has it.

  Yamada Yoshio, a scholar of Japanese literature whose father was the last renga master from the Tokugawa government, accepted this legendary story, as did Shimizu Tadao, one of the more recent annotators of the Atago Hyakuin. But others have strongly doubted this version. Kuwata Tadachika, the historian of Japan’s Age of Warring States, argued that the legend had it backward. Mitsuhide could not possibly have been so stupid or careless as to reveal his deadly intent on such a public occasion. It was the legend-mongers who later tampered with the hokku and invented the version that has made the renga so famous, he wrote.

  Whatever the truth, Atago Hyakuin has come down to us with a singular reputation—the only renga of its kind in the history of Japanese literature.

  Issa and Hokusai

  It was the scholar of Japanese literature Kuriyama Riichi who noted a striking similarity between the ukiyo-e painter Katsushika Hokusai and the haikai poet Kobayashi Issa: deployment of exaggerated perspectives.

  Is there anyone who knows the name Hokusai and doesn’t think of his painting of a giant wave toppling over three wooden skiffs in the foreground, and a magnificent, but tiny, Mount Fuji far in the distance? There are images with a similar composition in Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugoku Sanjūrokkei): Fuji beyond the vertically lined-up boards in a lumberyard; Fuji between vertical columns of a water gate; Fuji almost overwhelmed by the skimpy sail of a large wooden boat; and so forth. Some say that Hokusai, along with some of his contemporary painters, learned Western perspective from the paintings Dutch traders brought to Japan, but the playful, humorous touch was his own.

  We don’t know if Hokusai and Issa knew each other, but they were similar in many ways. They were very poor for much of their lives and were known for their eccentric behavior. They were also keen observers of daily goings-on. Issa, in fact, is thought to be the first haikai poet to record his day-to-day feelings.

  In contrast to Matsuo Bashō, who has left about 1,000 hokku, and Yosa Buson, about 3,000, Issa has left at least 24,000 hokku, along with a good deal of other writings. The small selection that follows shows his similarity to Hokusai in the use of perspective. Though the selection begins with an early piece, it is not exactly chronological.

  In the first of these three hokku, Shiohama, “Briny Shore,” likely refers to the large saltern on Edo Bay that supplied salt to the capital. Named Gyōtoku, it was one of the must-see places in Edo, provided as it was with a viewing teahouse or two. The salt fields were also known for large flocks of plovers, as the Famous Edo Places Illustrated (Edo meisho zue) shows. Issa probably wrote this in 1790.

  汐浜を反古にして飛ぶ鵆かな

  Shiohama o hogo ni shite tobu chidori kana

  Crumpling the Briny Shore into waste paper plovers fly

  只一ッ耳際に蚊の羽かぜ哉

  Tada hitotsu mimi giwa ni ka no hakaze kana

  A single mosquito stirs up a wind near my ear

  つかれ鵜の見送る空やほとゝぎす

  Tsukare u no miokuru sora ya hototogisu

  A tired cormorant watches a cuckoo pass in the sky

  The next piece appears in Issa’s Travelogue of Western Provinces (Seigoku kikō), in which he describes his treks from Shikoku, Okayama, to Sakai in the early months of 1795. “The Imperial Inn” here was in fact not anything palatial, but a simple shrine-like structure in Sakai that the emperor used during his annual visit to the port town for his Sixth Month ablutions, misogi. This purification rite was part of Shintoism. It also marked the end of summer, Sixth Month being the last month of that season according to the lunar calendar.

  御旅所を吾もの顔や蝸牛

  Otabisho o wagamono gao ya katatsumuri

  At the Imperial Inn a snail acts as if it were all his

  Awaji Island appears in the next verse; it is the largest island in the Inland Sea, ensconced between Harima Sound and Osaka Bay. In classical Japanese poetry, the island serves as a poetic pillow (utamakura), an epithet that modifies “plovers.”

  うぐひすの腮の下より淡ぢ嶋

  Uguisu no ago no shita yori Awajishima

  Under the bush warbler’s jaw appears Awaji Island

  山風に踏こたへたるみそさゞい

  Yamakaze ni fumikotaetaru misosazai

  In a mountain gust the wren struggles to stay put with its legs

  雲の岑の下から出たる小舟哉

  Kumo no mine no shita kara detaru kobune kana

  From under peaks of cloud appears a tiny skiff

  雷に鳴あはせたる雉哉

  Kaminari ni nakiawasetaru kigisu kana

  Timing with a thunderclap a pheasant calls

  女から先へかすむぞ汐干がた

  Onna kara saki e kasumuzo shiohigata

  The women first turn hazy over the tidal flats

  This hokku plays with the word shiohigata, “tidal flats,” which r
eadily invokes shiohigari, “digging for clams.” In Japan, clamming became a popular recreational activity with women, and a number of ukiyo-e show scenes of clamming on tidal flats. Issa says women go farther out from the shore than men.

  朝やけがよろこばしいか蝸牛

  Asayake ga yorokobashii ka katatsuburi

  Snail, are you delighted with the morning glow?

  山おろし鰒の横面たゝく也

  Yamaoroshi fugu no yokotsura tatakunari

  A mountain gust slaps the blowfish smack on the cheek

  Given Issa’s sense of humor, you may be tempted to imagine a blowfish sticking its face out of the waves and having its cheek blasted by a gust from the mountains. But Issa is most likely describing a lantern made of blowfish skin. The blowfish is prized for its taste in Japan, and the skins of larger species are made into lanterns and figurines.

  巣乙鳥の目を放さぬや暮の空

  Su-tsubame no me o hanasanu ya kure no sora

  Swallow nestlings keep their eyes glued to the evening sky

  尻尾から月の出かゝる雉哉

  Shippo kara tsuki no dekakaru kigisu kana

  From the tip of a pheasant’s tail the moon’s about to rise

  青天に産声上る雀かな

  Seiten ni ubugoe ageru suzume kana

  A sparrow raises its birth cry into the azure sky

  The next three pieces are the opening two verses, hokku and waki, and the closing verse, ageku, of Issa’s thirty-six-link renga (kasen), “On the fourth of Fifth Month at Sekkō-an,” which he composed in 1811 with his monk friend Ippyō at the Sekkō-an, a residential detachment of Hongyō Temple, Yanaka. Ippyō, “One Gourd,” was a haikai name of Holy Priest Nikkan. Sekkō-an, “Snow-Cultivating Hut,” was also a nickname of the Buddhist priest. Issa’s ageku, made up entirely of the year and the place of composition, Nippori, fits neatly into 7-7 syllables. Nippori, which literally means “village where the sun sets,” is an area in today’s Arakawa Ward, Tokyo.

  夕暮や蚊が啼出してうつくしき

  Yūgure ya ka ga nakidashite utsukushiki

  The evening: mosquitoes begin to whir, so beautiful

  Issa

  すゞしいものは赤いてうちん

  suzushii mono wa aka chōchin

  what cools us are red lanterns

  Ippyō

  文化八年日暮里の春

  Bunka hachi-nen Nippori no haru

  the eighth year of Bunka the spring in Sunsetville

  Issa

  Issa, like Hokusai, loved to depict Japan’s tallest and most admired mountain, Fuji, as something small, far-off in the distance, as he does in the following two hokku.

  夕不二ニ尻を並べてなく蛙

  Yū Fuji ni shiri o narabete naku kawazu

  Against evening Fuji asses side by side frogs croak

  なの花のとつぱづれ也ふじの山

  Na no hana no toppazure nari Fuji no yama

  Damned far beyond the end of rape flowers rises Mount Fuji

  On the eighteenth of Second Month in 1812, Issa composed a group of hokku on another visit to Ippyō at his temple. It appears at the end of Kabuban, his diary-like book of hokku, prose, and miscellany for the year. Part one of it includes descriptions of a young demented woman, as well as of chickens fighting over the grains of rice Issa bought for them out of pity, pigeons and sparrows stealing them whenever the chickens got too involved in the fight among themselves.

  The following piece is one of a group of hokku on the cuckoo placed at the beginning of part two.

  時鳥花のお江戸を一呑みに

  Hototogisu hana no o-Edo o hitonomi ni

  A cuckoo swallows flowery Edo in a single gulp

  雲の峰艸にかくれて仕廻けり

  Kumo no mine kusani kakurete shimaikeri

  The clouds’ peak has hid itself behind a clump of grass

  むさしのや蚤の行衛も雲の峰

  Musashino ya nomi no yukue mo kumo no mine

  On Musashi Plain the flea’s destination’s also the clouds’ peak

  The next verse also comes from part two of Kabuban. On the seventeenth of Fifth Month, Issa composed a hundred hokku, apparently in one sitting, while at the house of Zuisai, one of the haikai names of the wealthy merchant and Issa’s patron Natsume Seibi, a good haikai poet himself.

  湖ニ尻を吹かせて蝉のなく

  Mizuumi ni shiri wo fukasete semi no naku

  Letting the lake wind blow on his ass a cicada chirps

  艸原や何を目当ニ蚤のとぶ

  Kusahara ya nani o meate ni nomi no tobu

  In a grassfield, aiming for what, a flea leaps

  In 1813, from about the start of Sixth Month, Issa suffered from a terrible carbuncle on his buttocks, “its pain as if stabbed with a spear or as if you sat in flames when you have a high fever.” The following hokku, “Tanabata, in Illness,” is included in part two of another diary-like chronicle of that year, Shidara.

  うつくしやセうじの穴の天の川

  Utsukushi ya sh ōji ga ana no Amanokawa

  Beautiful: in a hole in the shoji the River of Heaven

  Tanabata, on the seventh of Seventh Month, is also called the Star Festival; the River of Heaven is the Chinese name for the galaxy.

  Issa’s Seventh Diary (Shichiban nikki) extends from the start of 1810 to the end of 1818. In the next hokku, along with a brief description of its background, Issa refers to Mount Chōkai and Kisagata. Mount Chōkai is an active volcano located between Akita and Yamagata in northern Japan, near the Japan Sea. In 466 BC, geologists tell us, it erupted and created a lagoon. Some one hundred isles formed in the lagoon, called Kisakata, creating a landscape comparable to Matsushima on the Pacific side. From 1800 to 1801, lava flowed out of Mount Chōkai; then early in the morning on the fourth of Sixth Month 1804, an earthquake off its coast created a tsunami, killing nearly four hundred people and destroying around fifty-five hundred houses. The earthquake also lifted the lagoon, turning it into mudflats.

  Bashō had visited the area in 1689, and described it in Narrow Road to the Interior. In writing the heading to his hokku, Issa apparently had Bashō’s words in mind: “Matsushima seemed to be smiling, Kisakata resentful.” Plovers used to migrate to Japan in great flocks, hence Issa’s description of the way they fly up.

  During the great tremblors in previous years, Mount Chōkai collapsed and buried the sea, shaking the Kanma temple into the ground, and turning the area into marshes. However reputed it might have been for its view, it appears resentful of those events.

  象潟の欠を摑んで鳴千鳥

  Kisagata no kake o tsukande naku chidori

  Clutching a scrap of the Kisakata marsh plovers cry

  やよ虱這へ這へ春の行方へ

  Yayo shirami haehae haru no yuku kata e

  Look here: louse, crawl, crawl to where spring’s going

  夜涼や足でかぞへるゑちご山

  Yosuzumi ya ashi de kazoeru Echigoyama

  Cooling off at night I count Echigo mountains on my toes

  In Echigo (today’s Niigata), three mountains rise in a row: Echigo Komagatake, Nakanodake, and Hakkaisan. The last of these has been revered as a holy or spiritual mountain.

  蜻蛉の尻でなぶるや角田川

  Tombō no shiri de naburu ya Sumidagawa

  With his ass a dragonfly licks the Sumida River

  The Sumida River flows through Edo on the Kantō Plain. A section of the river has been called Ōkawa, “The Big River.” The hokku describes the act of dragonflies laying their eggs in the river.

  In 1819, Issa wrote The Spring of My Life (Oraga haru), another diary-like recording of various daily happenings. Af
ter describing a rather cruel local custom among children, called “the funeral for a frog,” he thinks of a toad.

  . . . on summer evenings I spread a straw mat and call out, “Happy, Happy.” At once the toad crawls out of the bush in the corner, comes near me, and cools himself off just like a regular man. From the look of his face, he seems to want to turn out a hokku. That Chōchōshi chose you as the judge for the small critter matches must be the greatest honor in your life.

  ゆうぜんとして山を見る蛙哉

  Yūzen to shite yama o miru kawaza kana

  In grand composure a toad surveys a mountain

  Chōchōshi is a tanka name of Kinoshita Katsutoshi. Katsutoshi may have failed as a warrior-commander, then as a daimyo, but he gained some influence as a man of letters. His “freedom” and “licentiousness” in his tanka, for example, led to Bashō’s style of haikai, according to Ishikawa Jun, the novelist with a deep knowledge of Edo literature. In 1640, one of Katsutoshi’s books, in which he matched pairs of tanka describing small creatures (mushi) and then had them judged by a “toad under the bush,” was illustrated by Sumiyoshi Jokei. The result was Small Creatures Tanka Matches Illustrated (Mushi utaawase emaki).

  The Spring of My Life includes Issa’s most famous hokku, which laments the transience of the world—the death of his daughter, Sato, on the twenty-first of Sixth Month, “like a morning-glory flower, wilting away out of this world.” She was just a little over one year old.

  露の世ハ露の世ながらさりながら

  Tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sarinagara

  The world of dew is a world of dew and yet and yet

  Issa listed the following one in a letter he wrote in Sixth Month 1821. The recipient is unknown.

  寝筵やたばこ吹かける天の川

  Nemushiro ya tabako fukikakeru Amanokawa

  On a sleeping mat I blow tobacco smoke at the River of Heaven