Haiku:An Anthology Of Japanese Poems Read online

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  HAIKU

  AN ANTHOLOGY OF JAPANESE POEMS

  Stephen Addiss, Fumiko Yamamoto,

  and Akira Yamamoto

  SHAMBHALA

  Boston & London

  2011

  FRONTISPIECE: Stream, Tachibana Morikuni

  SHAMBHALA PUBLICATIONS, INC.

  Horticultural Hall

  300 Massachusetts Avenue

  Boston, Massachusetts 02115

  www.shambhala.com

  © 2009 by Stephen Addiss, Fumiko Yamamoto, and Akira Yamamoto

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Haiku: an anthology of Japanese poems / [edited by] Stephen Addiss, Fumiko Yamamoto, and Akira Yamamoto.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN 978-0-8348-2234-4

  ISBN 978-1-59030-730-4 (acid-free paper)

  1. Haiku—Translations into English. I. Addiss, Stephen, 1935–II. Yamamoto, Fumiko Y. III. Yamamoto, Akira Y.

  PL782.E3H236 2009

  895.6′104108—dc22

  2009010381

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  The Pulse of Nature

  Human Voices

  Resonance and Reverberation

  The Poets

  The Artists

  The Illustrations

  INTRODUCTION

  HAIKU are now one of the best-known and most practiced forms of poetry in the world. Simple enough to be taught to children, they can also reward a lifetime of study and pursuit. With their evocative explorations of life and nature, they can also exhibit a delightful sense of playfulness and humor.

  Called haikai until the twentieth century, haiku are usually defined as poems of 5-7-5 syllables with seasonal references. This definition is generally true of Japanese haiku before 1900, but it is less true since then with the development of experimental free-verse haiku and those without reference to season: for example, the poems of Santōka (1882–1940), who was well known for his terse and powerful free verse. Seasonal reference has also been less strict in senryū, a comic counterpart of haiku in which human affairs become the focus.

  Freedom from syllabic restrictions is especially true for contemporary haiku composed in other languages. The changes are not surprising. English, for example, has a different rhythm from Japanese: English is “stress-timed” and Japanese “syllable-timed.” Thus, the same content can be said in fewer syllables in English. Take, for example, the most famous of all haiku, a verse by Bashō (1644–94):

  Furu ike ya

  kawazu tobikomu

  mizu no oto

  Furu means “old,” ike means “pond or ponds,” and ya is an exclamatory particle, something like “ah.” Kawazu is a “frog or frogs”; tobikomu, “jump in”; mizu, “water”; no, the genitive “of”; and oto, “sound or sounds” (Japanese does not usually distinguish singular from plural). If using the singular, a literal translation would be:

  Old pond—

  a frog jumps in

  the sound of water

  Only the third of these lines matches the 5-7-5 formula, and the other lines would require “padding” to fit the usual definition:

  [There is an] old pond—

  [suddenly] a frog jumps in

  the sound of water

  This kind of “padding” tends to destroy the rhythm, simplicity, and clarity of haiku, so translations of 5-7-5–syllable Japanese poems are generally rendered with fewer syllables in English. Translators also have to choose whether to use singulars or plurals (such as frog or frogs, pond or ponds, and sound or sounds), while in Japanese these distinctions are nicely indeterminate.

  We have attempted to offer English translation as close to the Japanese original as possible, line-by-line. Sometimes a parallel English translation succeeds in conveying the sense of the original. This haiku by Issa provides an example:

  Japanese

  kasumu hi no (mist day of)

  uwasa-suru yara (gossip-do maybe)

  nobe no uma (field of horse)

  Close Translation

  Misty day—

  they might be gossiping,

  horses in the field

  Sometimes the attempt at a parallel translation results in awkward English, and a freer translation is necessary, as with this haiku by Buson:

  Japanese

  yoru no ran (night of orchid)

  ka ni kakurete ya (scent in hide wonder)

  hana shiroshi (flower be=white)

  Close Translation

  Evening orchid—

  is it hidden in its scent?

  the white of its flower

  Freer Translation

  Evening orchid—

  the white of its flower

  hidden in its scent

  Other times a parallel translation doesn’t have the impact that can be delivered in a freer translation, as in this haiku by an anonymous poet:

  Japanese

  mayoi-go no (lost-child of)

  ono ga taiko de (one’s=own drum with)

  tazunerare (be=searched=for)

  Close Translation

  The lost child

  with his own drum

  is searched for

  Freer Translation

  Searching for

  the lost child

  with his own drum

  Thus, the challenge for translators is to try to follow the Japanese word and line order without resulting in awkward English. While admirable, sometimes adhering to the original verses may make for weaker poems in English. Sometimes the languages are too different to make a close match without hurting the flow and even the meaning. However, when closer translations succeed, they are powerfully satisfying.

  The fact that the spirit of the haiku can be effectively rendered in English translation indicates that the 5-7-5 syllabic count captures the outward rhythmic form of traditional Japanese haiku but does not necessarily define them. The strength of haiku is their ability to suggest and evoke rather than merely to describe. With or without the 5-7-5 formula and seasonal references, readers are invited to place themselves in a poetic mode and to explore nature as their imaginations permit.

  Returning to Bashō’s frog, what does the poem actually say? On the surface, not very much—one or more frogs jumping into one or more ponds and making one or more sounds. Yet this poem has fascinated people for more than three hundred years, and the reason why remains something of a mystery. Is it that it combines old (the pond) and new (the jumping)? A long time span and immediacy? Sight and sound? Serenity and the surprise of breaking it? Our ability to harmonize with the nature? All of these may evoke an experience that we can share in our own imaginations.

  Whatever meanings it brings forth in readers, this haiku has not only been appreciated but also variously modeled after and sometimes even parodied in Japan, the latter suggesting that readers should not take it too seriously. To give a few examples, the Chinese-style poet-painter Kameda Bōsai (1752–1826) wrote:

  Old pond—

  after that time

  no frog jumps in

  while the Zen master Sengai Gibon (1750–1837) added new versions:

  Old pond—

  something has PLOP

  just jumped in

  Old pond—

  Bashō jumps in

  the sound of water

  Bashō has become so famous for
his haiku that this eighteenth-century senryū mocks the now self-conscious master himself:

  Master Bashō,

  at every plop

  stops walking

  In the modern world, new transformations of this poem keep appearing even across the ocean, including this haiku with an environmental undertone by Stephen Addiss:

  Old pond paved over

  into a parking lot—

  one frog still singing

  Perhaps one reason why haiku have become internationally popular in recent decades comes from our sensitivity to our surroundings, even to the development of towns and cities, often to the detriment of the natural world: poets have power to keep on singing the connection to nature in their new milieu.

  Haiku in Japan

  Although haiku is now a worldwide phenomenon, its roots stretch far back into Japan’s history. The form itself began with poets sharing the composition of “linked verse” in the form of a series of five-line waka (5-7-5-7-7 syllables), a much older form of poem. Waka poets, working in sequence, noted that the 5-7-5–syllable sections could often stand alone. Separate couplets of 7-7 syllables were less appealing to the Japanese taste for asymmetry, but from the 5-7-5 links, haiku were born.

  It is generally considered that Bashō was the poet who brought haiku into full flowering, deepening and enriching it and also utilizing haiku in accounts of his travels such as Oku no hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Interior). Bashō’s pupils then continued his tradition of infusing seemingly simple haiku with evocative undertones, while continuing a sense of play that kept haiku from becoming the least bit ponderous.

  The next two of the “three great masters” were Buson (1716–83), a major painter as well as poet who developed haiku-painting (haiga) to its height, and Issa (1763–1827), whose profound empathy with all living beings was a major feature of his poetry. With the abrupt advent of Western civilization to Japan in the late nineteenth century, haiku seemed to be facing an uncertain future, but it was revived by Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) and his followers, and it has continued unabated until the present day.

  Despite some historical changes over the centuries, certain features of Japanese life and thought have maintained themselves as integral features of the haiku spirit. For example, the native religion of Shintō reveres deities in nature, both a cause and an effect of the Japanese love of trees, rocks, mountains, valleys, waterfalls, flowers, moss, animals, birds, insects, and so many more elements of the natural world. Significantly, haiku include human nature as an organic part in all of nature, as in the following poems about dragonflies by Shirao (1738–91) and the aforementioned Santōka, respectively:

  The coming of autumn

  is determined

  by a red dragonfly

  Dragonfly on a rock—

  absorbed in

  a daydream

  In each case, the observation of an insect leads to a deeper consideration of our own perceptions, although neither poem has a “moral” or an obvious message. We may well ask who is judging, and who is daydreaming? In this sense, it could be said that every haiku is at least partially about human beings, if only the one who originally composed it and the one reading and experiencing it now. Perhaps all fine poems are expressions of experience rather than merely “things,” and haiku, above all, elicit our own participation as readers, almost as though the poet had disappeared and left us to determine our own experience.

  There has been some controversy about the influence of Zen in haiku. Certainly some poets (such as Bashō) studied Zen, and a few were actually Zen masters (such as Sengai). Many other Japanese poets, however, followed other Buddhist sects, Shintō, or were completely secular, so we should be careful about claiming too much direct influence of Zen. In a broader sense, however, Japanese culture and the arts during the past seven centuries have been suffused with Zen influence, ranging from the tea ceremony and flower arranging to Noh theater, ink painting, and shakuhachi (bamboo flute) music. In particular, Zen’s insistence on the enlightenment of the ordinary world at the present moment, right here and right now, has both mirrored and influenced the haiku spirit. As Issa wrote:

  Where there are people

  there are flies, and

  there are Buddhas

  The Zen influence in haiku may need more examination, but it has touched Japanese culture so deeply that it can never be entirely absent. What Zen, other Buddhist sects, and Shintō all have in common with haiku is the harmony between nature and humans.

  Regarding This Volume

  The three author-editors of the present volume have previously published a series of five books: A Haiku Menagerie (Weatherhill, 1992), A Haiku Garden (Weatherhill, 1996), Haiku People (Weatherhill, 1998), Haiku Landscapes (Weatherhill, 2002), and Haiku Humor (Weatherhill, 2007). The haiku in this new book are excerpted from those books, with some modifications in translation, along with newly added verses. This anthology includes a representative number of poems by each of the three great masters (Bashō, Buson, and Issa), a generous group of haiku by observant and creative poets ranging in time from the early fifteenth through the later twentieth centuries, and a sprinkling of anonymous comical senryū.

  The poems are grouped into three categories: The Pulse of Nature, Human Voices, and Resonance and Reverberation. Each category moves along a time line, not linearly but rather cyclically, reflecting natural life rhythms.

  These poems are expressions not only of Japanese sensibilities but of age-old human responses to the world around us. We wish all of our readers the joy of experiencing this kaleidoscope of all living creatures and their multifaceted interactions with enveloping nature as expressed by the finest Japanese haiku and senryū poets.

  The Pulse of Nature

  Illustration 2

  Opening their hearts

  ice and water become

  friends again

  —TEISHITSU

  The spring sun

  shows its power

  between snowfalls

  —SHIGEYORI

  Not in a hurry

  to blossom—

  plum tree at my gate

  —ISSA

  White plum blossoms

  return to the withered tree—

  moonlit night

  —BUSON

  The warbler

  wipes its muddy feet

  on plum blossoms

  —ISSA

  With each falling petal

  they grow older—

  plum branches

  —BUSON

  Dried grasses—

  and just a few heat waves

  rising an inch or two

  —BASHŌ

  Overflowing with love

  the cat as coquettish

  as a courtesan

  —SAIMARO

  Both partners

  sport whiskers—

  cats’ love

  —RAIZAN

  Spring sun

  in every pool of water—

  lingering

  —ISSA

  Is the dawn, too,

  still embraced by

  hazy moon?

  —CHŌSUI

  In the shimmering haze

  the cat mumbles something

  in its sleep

  —ISSA

  Spring rain—

  just enough to wet tiny shells

  on the tiny beach

  —BUSON

  Illustration 3

  The nurseryman

  left behind

  a butterfly

  —RYŌTA

  Again and again

  stitching the rows of barley—

  a butterfly

  —SORA

  A pheasant’s tail

  very gently brushes

  the violets

  —SHŪSHIKI-JO

  Over the violets

  a small breeze

  passes by

  —ONTEI

  Each time the wind blows

  the butterfly sits anew

 
; on the willow

  —BASHŌ

  Spring chill—

  above the rice paddies

  rootless clouds

  —HEKIGODŌ

  Daybreak—

  the whitefish whiten

  only one inch

  —BASHŌ

  Domestic ducks

  stretch their necks

  hoping to see the world

  —KŌJI

  The warbler

  dropped his hat—

  a camellia

  —BASHŌ

  Crazed by flowers

  surprised by the moon—

  a butterfly

  —CHORA

  White camellias—

  only the sound of their falling

  moonlit night

  —RANKŌ

  Squeaking in response

  to baby sparrows—

  a nest of mice

  —BASHŌ

  Illustration 4

  Out from the darkness

  back into the darkness—

  affairs of the cat

  —ISSA

  Joyful at night

  tranquil during the day—

  spring rain

  —CHORA

  A camellia falls

  spilling out

  yesterday’s rain

  —BUSON

  A hedge of thorns—

  how skillfully the dog

  wriggled under it!

  —ISSA

  Misty day—

  they might be gossiping

  horses in the field

  —ISSA

  An old well—

  falling into its darkness

  a camellia

  —BUSON

  Trampling on clouds,

  inhaling the mist,

  the skylark soars

  —SHIKI

  Crouching,

  studying the clouds—

  a frog

  —CHIYO-JO

  On the temple bell

  perching and sleeping—

  a butterfly

  —BUSON

  Could they be sutras?

  in the temple well

  frogs chant

  —KANSETSU

  Recited on and on,

  the poems of the frogs

  have too many syllables

  —EIJI

  Bracing his feet

  and offering up a song—

  the frog

  —SŌKAN

  From the nostril

  of the Great Buddha comes

  a swallow

  —ISSA

  Illustration 5

  On the brushwood gate

  in place of a lock—

  one snail

  —ISSA