Haiku by Issa

… a strange set this AM…

… one about fleas in the hut and someone looks skinny… a woman i am guessing…

… another about a zealous flea about to become a Buddha by the poet’s hand… a contradiction since Buddhism counsels non violence?…

… another about ducks bobbing on water and hoping to get lucky…

… another about a dragonfly dressed in red off to the festival…

… dragonflies are another animal that has cultural significance in Japan…

… this from Wikipedia…

_ As a seasonal symbol in Japan, the dragonflies are associated with season of autumn. In Japan, they are symbols of rebirth, courage, strength, and happiness. They are also depicted frequently in Japanese art and literature, especially haiku poetry. Japanese children catch large dragonflies as a game, using a hair with a small pebble tied to each end, which they throw into the air. The dragonfly mistakes the pebbles for prey, gets tangled in the hair, and is dragged to the ground by the weight.¹_

… the festival referred to in the poem is probably the festival of Obon, which is…

A Buddhist tradition celebrated in Japan for over 500 years, Obon is an annual three-day event held in honor of one’s ancestors, which sees families get together as the spirits visit household altars. More recently, the holiday has become a time for family reunions, as people return to their hometowns and revisit the graves of the deceased.²

… and it’s relation to Obon…

_ Although they are seen in abundance in early summer, tombo have become associated with the autumn and are often represented flying among the autumn grasses in Japanese art. A folk belief persists that the tombo is the steed of departed ancestors who return to visit their families during the summer festival of Obon.³_

The Daily Read

The Haiku of Issa…

… an interesting set of poems today…

… a cricket chirps in the belly of a scarecrow…

… crickets are symbols of fall in Japanese haiku… in the west, they are symbols of summer…

… scarecrows in Japanese mythology (Kuebiko) are wise creatures and is one of three knowledge deities…

… taken together, a cricket in the scarecrow’s belly might be seen as suggesting the autumn phase of human aging, there being wisdom associated with approaching old age…

… another talks about the face of a spring moon 12 years old… the 12 years old part is the dead giveaway to me that the poet speaks of a girl on the cusp of menstruation, becoming an woman…

… another speaks of a woman washing the dishes by moonlight in the shallows of a river…

… this seems a multiple reference to feminine fluidity, the moon being a complex symbol of fluidity in Japanese culture… the river being a direct symbol of flowing time, the woman washing the dishes… the dishes themselves being concrete items that around which all this fluidity revolves… everything is feminine here… evocative of intuitive understandings… evocative of inner knowledge… wow, what a beautiful poem!…

Washing the saucepans—

the moon glows on her hands

in the shallow river.

… i am going to have to continue looking into this last one… there seems to be so much to it…

02 Daily Read:

Haiku by Issa…

… six poems… none of them grabs me… maybe the one about one fly, one human and a large room… flies are annoying… Issa seems to have written a lot about flies… in searching for the cultural meaning of flies, nothing much comes up… an article in Kyoto Journal sites Issa as a major writer on the fly situation… i read the following poem a number of days ago…

やれうつな蠅が手をすり足をする

yare utsuna hae ga te wo suri ashi wo suru

No, not that fly!

It wrings its hands,

its feet, imploringly.¹

… about which the author of the Kyoto Journal article says…

_ Among the hundreds of poems written by Japanese authors about flies and their vexed hunters, the most famous —there’s a whole book about its long genealogy and vast progeny — is without doubt the one written by Kobayashi Issa (1763–1827):²_

… i wonder why Issa had such a preoccupation with flies?… i am not sure that the straightforward answer, that they are ubiquitous and utterly annoying, is the best answer… i think one needs to look to what the spiritual purpose of flies are in a religion like Buddhism, to remind one that being in the moment is important, but not always likable… and that compassion is often difficult…

… another article in Tricycle, a Buddhist publication… about compassion, about flies… a quote from it…

Compassion in all its flavors is woven through the enormous canon of Buddhist thought. Its root meaning is “to suffer with.” We are able to feel compassion toward those beings who look like us and those who are most familiar. (These are not the same thing; dissimilar creatures can be deeply familiar, as we know from our time spent with dogs, with horses—even lizards.) At what point do we extend this circle past what is known, past what looks like us? At what point do we suffer with what is completely strange? And how far must that circle extend before it includes the sheep bot fly?³

… well, it seems after all, there was something to pay attention to in the morning’s poems…

02 Daily Read:

Haiku by Issa…

… one about a staring contest with a very large frog… this is a famous one i think… i look up the cultural significance of frogs and find an article on the usc.edu website that has this to say about frogs in Japanese culture…

In Japan, the frog is usually seen as a symbol of good fortune associated with magical powers. Because the Japanese word for frog is “kaeru”, which is pronounced in the same way as “return”, travelers carry a small frog amulet with the intent of returning safely home.¹

… another article on frog symbolism confirms the above and adds the moon as an association with frogs, the three legged frog and the moon, the three phases of the moon…

… the frog is associated with rainfall and good harvests, and is a symbol of spring, the seasonal reference in the poem… that the artist has a staring contest with the frog presents a kind of stand off moment… is it reluctance to pursue a spiritual journey?… is it a latter stage in life confronting youth?…

… another poem about being a devout Buddhist while killing mosquitos… Buddhism argues respect to all creatures, even the annoying ones… some sects can barely walk through the landscape for fear of killing something unwittingly… yet, there are annoying creatures that can actually make us sick… we kill them regardless of our devotions… mosquitos are a spring-summer reference… the poem perhaps about spiritual journeys having difficulties…

… here is an article about insects and Japanese culture that is more general in nature…

03 The Daily Read, Part II:

The Haiku of Issa…

… today’s haikus are a little enigmatic…

… one about a moth finding brightness in the chamber of a woman, and being burnt to a crisp… the woman’s chamber is significant and brings the poet directly into the action… there is no need to describe the setting as a woman’s chamber unless there is an intended double meaning, that the poet is drawn to the flame of the woman and metaphorically burnt to a crisp for his labors… it does not sound as though his visit was entirely satisfactory… i look up moths as cultural symbols and find nothing substantial…

… another about scarecrows all being crooked… i look up the cultural significance of scarecrows in Japan and there is some… it is a folk deity, known as Kuebiko, representing folk wisdom, knowledge and agriculture¹… Issa notes that he doesn’t know about the people in the town but the scarecrows are crooked… is this meant in a corruption kind of way?… or just a state of general disorderliness represented by lack of attention to their scarecrows, which are deities after all… or that one can expect problems with wisdom, knowledge and agriculture from the town he is entering… he identifies the town as his home town, so maybe it is about memories and formative experience… is he talking about himself more than the town?…

… another about plum trees blooming in January in other provinces… this is odd, plum trees do bloom from January into February and are considered harbingers of spring… so Issa is saying they bloom in other provinces but not where he is… since he does not identify the province he is in, i assume it is metaphorical, something about old age perhaps?… reaching the place of having little life left to offer?… an article in Wikipedia² confirms the plum blossom as a symbol of spring and is believed to be a protective charm against evil… so the lack of blossoms is likely about old age and or lack of protection against evil… both?…

02 The Daily Read:

The Essential Haiku, edited by Robert Hass, translations by Hass and others…

… Issa…

… todays set of poems are not as remarkable to me as yesterday’s, or are they?… they seem more pedestrian, telling flies to relax and make love (the idea is kind of gross), since the poet is going out (and therefor does not have to be annoyed by the flies, their soul (i reread and think to correct the spelling and then decide the current spelling has more poetic depth) purpose as far as most humans are concerned)…

… another poem about a counting the flea bites on her baby as she nurses them…

… a poem about paying a dime to look through a telescope, were telescopes even around in Issa’s time?… yes, invented more than 150 years before his birth… and wouldn’t ten cents have been rather dear for a look through a telescope at the time?… i wonder if Hass has updated the pricing to make the poem more relatable?… or course today it would be a dollar…

… another poem about a snail being stripped to the waist in the moonlight… as with any animal in Haiku, one has to look up it’s possible cultural significance… snails are a symbol of fertility, tolerance and perseverance… also of duality because of their hermaphrodite nature¹… would this have been known in Issa’s time?…

… after some searching, an article that may explain the stripped to the waist reference in the snail Haiku… possibly referring to Saze Oni, a mythical snail creature that could shape shift into a beautiful woman… they bedeviled sailors much like the Sirens of Greek mythology²… i don’t know if this has anything to do with the snail poem…

… it is interesting that the reading of a small number of Haiku can generate so much additional reading as i look to see if their are meanings and allusions hidden from me, a Japanese culture outsider… much of the time there is…

02 Meditations:

Issa haiku…

… the one that catches my attention this morning is about being under a cherry tree and finding it strange to be alive… cherry blossoms are valued in Japan for there ephemeral nature, flowering briefly and gloriously, gone too soon¹… like life itself…

… Issa knows the lessons the cherry tree teaches, that life is brief and one needs to be alive to it… to find existence strange at any moment in time and space is being alive to it…

… this will be a bit of a non sequitur, but in the film Black Widow, the theme of family is the unifying good… family of Avengers, family, even make believe family, of Russian spies… family transcends everything…

… i find in literature and life, again and again, that what is truly important are the simple things… home, family, being alive to nature and life… all these things can be had and enjoyed for free (or little cost) as long as basic necessities are met… we are constantly being distracted from these core simple things, especially by the consumer culture we live in, where things upon things are the symbol of a good life… even as aware of this as i am, i struggle to execute, have never gotten close to centering my life around the simple pleasures…

… family is a particular challenge for me… my birth family is difficult and scattered to three of the four corners of the continent, my in law family is a good one, but not the family i grew up with… i have never had children, just wife, dogs and cats, which do teach me many things, including the brevity of life…

… as i write this, an epiphany of sorts… living well along the lines of simple pleasures is anti-market, anti-capitalist… it’s generally anti most forms of economic organization… it is rigorously repressed as a way to conduct one’s life…

02 Meditations:

Buson, from New Flower Picking…

… a story about foxes appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the night… foxes (Kitsune) have a long mythic tradition in Japan… old foxes are thought to be extremely intelligent, long lived, and have magical powers, like shape shifting into human form… the mythology of foxes is my main takeaway from New Flower Picking…

… anxious to move on to more haiku, i read the short biography on Issa, whose life was peppered with difficult situations with his step mother and with marriages which were tragic or unfortunate…

… of the first three poems, one about snow melting, the village flooding, with children, stands out, because the flood one expects is that of water, instead, it is of children…

… Issa is supposed to be more down to earth than Basho or Buson…

02 Buson Poetry:

… a poem cycle, about a beautiful young woman traveling home we are told… the willow tree is mentioned as it was yesterday… i am wondering about symbology of the willow tree…

… in Japanese myth and folklore, the willow is associated with ghosts¹…

… i look up river symbology in Japan, there is one article that talks about rivers representing the flow of life, which is so in many cultures… however, more generally water is significant in Japanese philosophy as one of the five elements of Godai…

水 Sui or mizu, meaning “Water”, represents the fluid, flowing, and the formless things in the world. Outside of the obvious example of rivers and the lake, plants are also categorized under sui, as they adapt to their environment, growing and changing according to the direction of the sun and the changing seasons. Blood and other bodily fluids are represented by sui, as are mental or emotional tendencies towards adaptation and change. Sui can be associated with thought, defensiveness, adaptability, flexibility, suppleness, and magnetism.²

… i return to yesterday’s poem and realize the broad symbology of water is important, along with the willow tree… a woman seeks to keep the poet to her, asks him not to journey on with the flow of the river, but he views her as the one journeying on while he remains as the ghost by the river that cannot follow… it’s a poem about death?…

… today’s poem talks about a young woman journeying through her life to return home to the brother and white haired mother she left to be on her own… again, the flow of life, the journey metaphorical… life’s journey…

02 Meditations:

Buson poetry: Song of the Yodo River…

… on the face of it, a poem about a man and a woman, she asking him to moor his boat and stay with her, he saying she is the one on the move and he cannot follower her…

… i follow up on the Yodo river and Naniwa (what is now central Osaka)…

… what i find is minimal, economic facts and statistics…

… here is a Hokusai print depicting the Yodo river…

… the woman appears to be Chinese, writing in Chinese verse, the man appears to be Japanses, writing in Chinese quatrain format, but in Japanese language… is this a poem about the relationship between two countries, two cultures?…

… the poem is a little sad…

02 Meditations

Buson, long poems…

… Mourning Hokuju Rosen

… so it’s not haiku, but long form poetry… i read the first one about someone loved departed… the poet grieves the absence, it is unclear whether the one loved will return, just that they left and went far away… then there is the friend who lives on the other side of the river…

… i do some research and discover that the poem is about the death of Hokuju Rosen and the great sadness it brings him… i am not able to find much about Hokuju Rosen, it seems he was a master Buson studied under… the last stanza of the poem…

By the image of Amida, I light no candle

and offer no flowers. I sit here alone,

my heart heavy, filled with gratitude.

… Amida, I learn, is Amida Nyorai, the Buddha of Limitless Light…

_ Amida Nyorai (Sanskrit: Amitabha Tathagata), the Buddha of Limitless Light, sits upon a lotus pedestal with his hands forming the mudra of meditation. Amida presides over his own paradise, the Western Pure Land, to which he welcomes any being who calls upon his name. His benevolent gaze, directed toward the viewer below, is symbolic of this boundless compassion. The Pure Land sects of Buddhism, with their emphasis on salvation through faith, stirred the imagination of both courtiers and commoners alike, and temples dedicated to Amida were constructed throughout Japan. Originally installed at a temple in the vicinity of Mount Kōya, this sculpture and the Dainichi Nyorai on the central altar were both acquired by the Museum through negotiations with Yamanaka & Co., the pioneering dealers in Japanese art.¹_

Public Domain photograph, via The Met, Fifth Avenue, NY

… i love the idea of a heavy heart filled with gratitude… contradictory feelings… Buson is sad to loose his teacher, but feels gratitude for his presence in his life…

02 Meditation

Buson Haiku…

… the very first poem i read is about cutting the last flower, a peony, from the garden… peonies are spring flowers and come relatively early… it is interesting that it is the last flower in the garden, unless it is a garden dedicated to peonies only… i suspect symbolism here, as it seems one always must…

Also known as the ‘King of Flowers’, the peony is a Japanese flower that is used as a symbol of good fortune, bravery, and honour. It is often used in tattoos to signify a devil-may-care attitude.¹

… so, a poem about old age?… a life that has run out of good fortune, bravery, honor?… both?…

… a poem with bird symbolism and historical reference, written on his death bed, a winter warbler in the hedge outside and a reference to Chinese poet Wang Wei… is the winter warbler the same as the Japanese bush warbler?… if so, it is a harbinger of spring and rebirth in Japanese literature, film and art… Wang Wei was a famous Chinese poet from the Tang Dynasty period…

This morning I posted three haikus I wrote yesterday on the Beach to Facebook. I described them as “haikus” because I was aware that I had not followed the traditional 5-7-5 syllable format when writing them. I was pretty sure someone would question me on this, and, someone did.

I wasn’t at all surprised because I had been taught, probably in High School, that the proper format for a haiku is five syllables, then seven syllables, then five syllables again. I think most of us in US English classes, at least of a certain era, were taught this.

While on vacation, I Have been making my way through The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson and Issa. I noticed that Robert Hass, the translator of the poems and editor of the book, had not rendered the poems in the 5-7-5 format I expected. I figured that rather than hold to syllable structure, which might have forced words that were not the best translation of intent, he had opted for making the cleanest translation rendering the mood and imagery of the poems most accurately. It turns out I figured well, but there was more to it than I thought. More about that in a minute.

Reading Hass’s translations gave me the idea that very brief poems focusing on the exquisite moments of a scene could be successful. I set out to ignore the 5-7-5 rule and focus on capturing the moment.

As I wrote all this to answer the individual who questioned the format on FB, it occurred to me that what constitutes a syllable in Japanese might be somewhat different than what constitutes a syllable in English. I did a search and this very detailed article about the differences popped up. I was right. Expecting Japanese syllables to be the equivalent of English syllables is, as the article put it, like expecting the one Japanese Yen to equal one American dollar. They aren’t and it doesn’t.

Japanese syllables are (almost?) always short and staccattic, whereas english syllables run a gamut of length and intonation. There are all kinds of subtle differences that start to arise as a result. For example, 17 syllables in English can be twice as many words as would be possible in Japanese pursuing the equivalency idea. Japanese Haiku are therefore almost always being more minimal with words than English haiku written to the 5-7-5 standard. For that reason, poets writing Haiku in English often don’t stick to it. It is also the reason why trying to preserve 5-7-5 structure in an English translation of a Japanese haiku is probably not the best way to go.

There are other fascinating nuances arising from the differences, making it counterproductive to try to adhere to 5-7-5 in english. You can read about them in the referenced article.

One other thing I learned about Japanese vs. English haiku that I might actually start to emulate. The arrangement of haiku into three separate lines is a western convention. The Japanese write it all on one line.