by Hiroaki Sato
This one about a praying mantis recalls Buson’s hokku about a butterfly: “Perched on a temple bell sleeps a small butterfly.”
蟷螂が片手かけたりつり鐘ニ
Tōrō ga katate agetari tsurigane ni
The praying mantis places one hand on a temple bell
For the next hokku, Issa may have been thinking about two legendary Chinese beliefs. One of the seventy-two, five-day seasonal segments that divide the year is defined as a time when “a sparrow flies into the sea and turns into a clam.” This occurs in late autumn. The other belief says that a clam—some believe it was a dragon—once created a mirage of resplendent mansions.
蛤も大口明くぞ鳴く雲雀
Hamaguri mo ōguchi aku zo naku hibari
Even a clam opens his big mouth, singing skylark
There are many more hokku Issa wrote that employ an exaggerated, Hokusai-like perspective. Here is a last sampling that should give you a fair idea of what he did.
稲妻につむりなでけり引蟇
Inazuma ni tsumuri nadekeri hikigaeru
At lightning a toad gives himself a pat on the head
斯々と虻の案内や不二詣
Kōkō to abu no anai ya Fuji mōde
This way that way a horsefly guides us in Fuji pilgrimage
朝やけに染るでもなし露の玉
Asayake ni somarudemonashi tsuyu no tama
Not exactly dyed by the morning glow these beads of dew
炎天のとつぱずれ也炭を焼
Enten no toppazure nari sumi o yaku
Far at the end of the burning sky they make charcoal
蜻蛉やはつたと睨むふじの山
Tombō ya hattato niramu Fuji no yama
A dragonfly gives a theatrical glare at Mount Fuji
有明や不二へ不二へと蚤のとぶ
Ariake ya Fuji e Fuji e to nomi no tobu
At daybreak toward Fuji toward Fuji a flea leaps
かたつぶりそろそろ登れ富士の山
Katatsuburi sorosoro nobore Fuji no yama
Snail, carefully, slowly, climb Mount Fuji
From Wooden Clogs to the Swimsuit: Women in Haikai and Haiku
When we bring up the subject of haikai during the Edo period (1603–1868), we immediately think of the triumvirate: Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa. But in the immense popularity and popularization of haikai, one can argue that Bashō—with his pursuit of exalted ideals, with his attempt to seek the meaning of life in verse-writing itself—was an anomaly. One can also argue that, of the other two, Issa is simply the most readily accessible representative of the popular notion of haikai that Bashō tried to transcend. As Kōda Rohan, one of the greatest early-modern commentators on Bashō, wrote in his haikai talks, “Bashō disliked zoku [being vulgar, mundane, secular] to an excessive degree. . . . Issa was good at handling it,” and added, “Never try to imitate Issa unthinkingly.”
The remaining one of the three, Buson, though he became one of the many to advocate “Return to Bashō,” falls somewhere between the two. It is highly misleading to look at the three poets as representing the same haikai spirit.
What exactly then was the popular notion of haikai? Or, because haikai—aside from its extemporaneity and humor—can be readily associated with a certain attitude, we can pose the question differently: How was a typical haijin, a haikai man or woman, expected to behave?
One good place for gaining an answer to this question is in Episodes of Eccentrics Among Haikai Poets (Haika kijin dan), compiled by Takenouchi Gengen’ichi and published in 1816, and its sequel, which was compiled by his son, Seisei, and published in 1832. (Gengen’ichi, who was blind, is said to have compiled Eccentrics by having his family members read various books to him.) In the survey of women in haikai and haiku that follows, let us first turn to some of the women who appear in these two volumes.
Haikai Spirit
First, there was Den Sutejo. Jo, “woman,” is simply a sex-identifying suffix, but the name Sute (捨), which means “abandon,” itself could be haikai. Such contrarian or deprecatory names were rather common and may show some Taoist influences, though I’m merely guessing here. Den Sutejo came from an illustrious samurai family, as did a woman with a similar name who lived more than two hundred years later: Ōyama Sutematsu, “abandoned pine.” In the latter’s case, a clear reason for her naming is known.
Ōyama’s original name was Yamakawa Saki (山川さき), but when in 1871 she was chosen to be one of five young women sent to the United States for a ten-year education, her mother changed her given name to Sutematsu (捨松); her motherly idea was to send her daughter off on the precarious, long-term venture while waiting for her return: matsu puns “pine (tree)” and “wait.” Fortunately, Sutematsu, who studied at Vassar College, graduated magna cum laude and, after returning to Japan, married Oyama Iwao, an army officer who would go on to serve as the first minister of war, and later led Japan to victory in the Russo- Japanese War as field marshal. Sutematsu became a pioneer in both women’s education and in Japan’s Red Cross.
Eccentrics begins its description of Sutejo this way:
Sutejo was a daughter of Mr. Den, in Kayahara, of the province of Tanba [today’s Hyōgo]. From a very young age, she showed signs of a poetic turn of mind. In the winter of her sixth year, she made:
雪の朝二の字二の字の下駄の跡
Yuki no asa ni no ji ni no ji no geta no ato
Morning snow: figure two figure two wooden-clog marks
Because of this, one year she received a poem from someone exalted:
萱原にをしや捨ておく露の玉
Kayahara ni oshi ya sute oku tsuyu no tama
Too good to be left in a weedy field: this drop of dew
The original word for what’s given as “a poetic turn of mind” is fūryū (風流), literally “wind flow”—an expression that can’t be translated to anyone’s satisfaction. It refers to a liking for things somewhat unworldly or transcendental or the object of that inclination, such as poetry. Among its synonyms is fūga (風雅), which carries a greater dose of “elegance” or “refinement.” Another synonym, fūkyō (風狂), suggests “poetic dementia.” Any haikai person must be imbued with fūryū, fūga, or fūkyō.
The Chinese character for “two” looks more or less like two parallel bars, and Sutejo here describes the marks that the two-piece support of each wooden clog has left on the freshly fallen snow. A natural, though somewhat precocious mind that associates the marks of wooden clogs with the character for two and effortlessly describes them is a prime example of fūryū, although the story that a six-year-old composed it may make the piece more legendary than factual, some say.
Eccentrics also cites a “self-deprecating” piece that Sutejo wrote.
粟の穂やみは数ならぬ女郎花
Awa no ho ya mi wa kazu naranu ominaeshi
Millet ear: myself an undeserving maiden-flower
This hokku plays on the word mi, which means “seed” and “self,” or “body,” and on the two plants mentioned, awa, “millet,” and ominaeshi (Patrinia scabiosifolia), “golden lace,” here given as “maiden-flower.” In old Japan millet was counted among “the five kinds of produce” along with rice and wheat, but later began to be regarded as a humble source of food, a poor cousin of rice. The other plant, ominaeshi, may derive from ominameshi, which some say meant omina, “(young) woman,” + meshi, “rice (meal),” because the flowers of the plant in bloom look like millet seeds, hence “(gentle, feminine) humble rice.” In fact, ominameshi is the word used for the title of a nō drama attributed to Konparu Zenchiku, a story about a woman who, thinking her husband has left her, throws herself into a river and drowns, only to turn into this plant. The husband follows suit and drowns himself.
There is a
lso otokoeshi (Patrinia villosa), “male + rice,” a similar wildflower to ominaeshi that appears somewhat tougher.
With the next haikai writer, Shiba Sonome (me is also a suffix indicating “woman”), we have a fuller account of fūryū akin to fūkyō, as Gengen’ichi describes her. Sonome became famous in part because she and her husband, Isen, once invited Bashō to their house, and in the renga session that ensued, Bashō used his hokku to compliment her beauty, with her responding with an elegant waki. She was proud of this exchange, and named her collection of haikai accordingly. Bashō’s hokku went:
白菊や目に立てて見る塵もなし
Shiragiku no me ni tatete miru chiri mo nashi
This white chrysanthemum has no dust that hits the eye
And Sonome’s waki:
紅葉に水を流す朝月
momiji ni mizu o nagasu asazuki
water flows over fallen leaves in morning moon
Sonome called her collection Speck on Chrysanthemum (Kiku no chiri).
Episodes of Eccentrics describes what Sonome did after she had the honor of holding a renga session with Bashō:
Following her husband’s death, she went down East and accompanied Bashō wherever he went. After the venerable man died, she turned to Shinshi [Kikaku] and studied with him. One year she set out on a journey, wandered around in Kyoto, and returned to Edo, where she settled down in Fukagawa and earned her daily income as an eye doctor. According to her friend Kinpū’s account, she was non-conversant with worldly matters and would cut a piece from the crimson-dyed silk of her sleeve to make thongs for her clogs, or pick up the lid of a paper box for use as a water conduit. Such puzzling behavior is perhaps amusing in fūga terms. Recently, she has taken Buddhist vows and shaved her head but, funny enough, she leaves about ten strands of hair in the middle of her pate. This must be because she’s mindful of her Yuiitsu past. The way she is, she must have achieved enlightenment in Zen principles, for in responding to Monk Unko, she wrote:
I have read what you said in your letter. “Not seeking the truth” and “not seeking forgetfulness” are both the foundations of the Great Way, as everyone knows, and I dare say there is nothing new about them. Leaving willow green, the flower red, simply as they are, you just make hokku and write down uta as you go along, you say. If mouth-provoked actions are of no use, all sutras are also mouth-provoked actions of no use. You dislike things suggestive of dharma, and your daily training turns into prayers, hokku, and uta (you say). It’s good to go to Paradise. To fall into Hell is felicitous. . . .
Sonome was raised in a Shinto family who followed Yuiitsu Shinto, the branch established by Yoshida Kanetomo. Uta refers to tanka, the 5-7-5-7-7-syllable verse.
Sonome also made a living as a tenja, a haikai judge, so let us look at one of the hokku she placed in lieu of the prefaces to the collections she judged and edited, of which she compiled many. The hokku for the collection she edited in 1701 has the headnote: “I looked at the winning piece of a fūryū man-of-the-world, and it was so cleverly phrased.” The hokku reads:
かはりごま秋の胡蝶やうつゝなき
Kawarigoma aki no kochō no utsutsunaki
A varied top: a small autumn butterfly unreal
Kawarigoma, here given as “varied top,” is a multicolored top that, while spinning fast, turns white. An autumn butterfly, as a seasonal word, suggests something pretty but near its death. The combination of a butterfly and the word utsutsunaki, “not real,” brings to mind the butterfly’s dream in Chuang Tzu, the primary Taoist text. Burton Watson translated it:
Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou. Between Chuang Chou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of things.
Let me cite two more hokku of Sonome’s that aren’t in Eccentrics. The first one goes:
すゞしさや額をあてゝ青畳
Suzushisa ya hitai o atete ao-datami
Coolness: I place my forehead on the green mat
The tatami, the flooring of a traditional Japanese house, mainly consists of two parts: the mattress made from straw and the surface covering made from rushes. The surface covering wears out rather easily and is changed from time to time. When it’s new, it has the sweet smell of a fresh plant, and it feels cool in the summer.
はや酒の膝にかゝりし更衣
Haya sake no hiza ni kakarishi koromo-gae
Already sake splashed in my lap: clothes changed
Koromo-gae, which I have translated as “clothes changed,” is a noun and refers, originally, to the custom of changing clothes for the summer and for the winter. Today it is a kigo for the summer only. Either way, it isn’t just changing clothes for sallying forth to a dinner party, for example.
Eccentrics ends with Sonome’s farewell-to-the-world uta. “Kanri” was the haikai name of the daimyo Andō Nobutomo, of the Matsuyama Fiefdom, who served Tokugawa Shogun Yoshimune as administrator. He studied haikai with Kikaku and started his own tea ceremony school.
In the eighth year of Kyōhō [1732], when she was sixty years old, she changed her name to Chikyō (“Knowing the Mirror”), served Lord Kanri’s mother; in Fourth Month of the eleventh year of the same, she died at sixty and three. Her farewell-to-the-world:
秋の月春の曙見し空は夢か現か南無阿弥陀仏
Aki no tuki haru no akebono mishi sora wa yume ka utsutsu ka Namu Amidabutsu
Autumn moon spring dawn I saw in the sky: was it a dream or reality: Namu Amidabutsu
The last phrase means “I Revere the Amida Bodhisattva,” a Buddhist invocation recited often before death.
Next, we’ll look at Shōfū to see how Eccentrics describes her:
The one called the Nun Shōfū, in Ueno, of the province of Iga [today’s Mie], was Ogawa Fūbaku’s daughter, and is said to have married Mr. Tomoda, of the same fiefdom. She shed her hair after her husband’s death and sought pleasure in haikai. She stands out in the Bashō school. The following is known to be her superior piece:
名月やもたれてまはる掾ばしら
Meigetsu ya motarete mawaru en-bashira
Bright moon: holding on to the porch pillar I turn round
She collected all her pieces in her lifetime and named the collection Collection of Leaves (Konoha shū). It is regrettable that it is not known widely. When Bashō was still in his hometown and was known as Chūzaemon, she tended to his clothing needs, or so the story goes. In later years, she wrote him in Fukagawa, sending along a gift of what she called a “haikai sleeve.” She was eccentric enough to make something like that, to facilitate writing at a haikai desk; it was a jacket, it is said, whose right sleeve was shorter by just about an inch. Her fūryū was incomparable.
Ueno, in Iga, is where Bashō was born and spent his formative years, hence the linkage between the two poets. The story is in doubt, however. By the time Shōfū—that’s her haikai name—was born in 1669, Bashō probably had moved away from Iga for some years. They did become acquainted with each other much later, as Shōfū herself recorded, when Bashō visited Ueno at the end of 1687 and stayed until early the next year. It was either during that visit or another visit after he completed his famous journey to the interior, in 1689, that Bashō gave her the name Shōfū (松風), “pine wind.” Later, when she was having fun with a dancer friend by the name of Nokaze (野風), “field wind,” in Kyoto, exchanging jackets, she decided to use “tree top” for the first character, with the same pronunciation, so her name became 梢風 “tree-top wind.” This is a story told by Hakuzetsuba, who wrote the preface to her collection.
What I’ve given as “haikai desk
” is bundai, an indispensable prop for any haikai session (or any other group poetry-writing session). Among the more memorable observations ascribed to Bashō is the one concerning this desk, recorded in Three Booklets: “The moment you take [your haikai composition] down from the desk, it becomes waste paper”—meaning, I take it, that in haikai the process is what counts, not the result.
About the haikai sleeve, Shōfū herself gives a different account, in her note on the hokku inscribed on a portrait of Bashō, which reads:
俳諧の袖もばせをもかれ野かな
Haikai no sode mo baseo mo kareno kana
Both haikai sleeve and banana withered in the field
Bashō, as a common noun, refers to the fiber banana (Musa basjoo), whose broad leaves tear easily—one reason he adopted it as a haikai name. The hokku alludes to Bashō’s farewell-to-the-world hokku: “Falling ill on the journey my dreams run round the withered field.” About the haikai sleeve, Shōfū wrote: “During the days when Bashō used to visit us in our house, I would sew summer and winter clothes for him. He preferred the right sleeve to be shorter by an inch. He would say, laughing, ‘This is better for someone who uses a brush. You might call it a haikai sleeve.’”
Kawai Chigetsu was another famous woman who studied with Bashō. She did so with her younger brother, Otokuni, whom she adopted as her son. Her husband in Ōtsu was in the business of handling relay horses, and Otokuni traveled often. Once, when he had to go east, Chigetsu turned out a hokku:
わざとさへ見にゆく旅を不二の雪
Waza to sae mini-yuku tabi o Fuji no yuki
One would make a special trip to see the snow on Fuji
The haikai or fūryū implied here is that Otokuni is lucky enough to be able to see Mount Fuji while on a business trip. Of Chigetsu’s six hokku that Eccentrics cites, this one is likely to appeal to the modern reader:
鶯に手元やすめむ流し本
Uguisu ni temoto yasumemu nagashimoto