Contents
Early Haikai
Haikai is a shortened form of the expression haikai no renga, or "playful linked verse." This poetic form, which emerged as a distinct genre near the end of the Muromachi period (1333-1573), was a popular outgrowth of the more aristocratic (and hence more dignified) practice of composing linked sequences of waka poetry. Unhampered by the requirement to be decorous, haikai was characterized by greater spontaneity than traditional renga, by greater freedom in the choice of subject matter and, initially at least, by a strong emphasis on humor and verbal wit, all qualities that may be observed in the work of such early practitioners as Yamazaki Sōkan (? - ca. 1540) and Arikida Moritake (1473-1549).
The poet given credit for putting haikai on a firm literary basis is Matsunaga Teitoku (1571-1653). The school of poets who eventually gathered around him (collectively known as the Teitoku School, or Teimon) determined the direction taken by the genre in the first half of the seventeenth century. However, the school’s acceptance of haikai’s status as an essentially inferior form of renga resulted in an attitude toward composition that is perhaps best characterized as tepidly conservative: codification of rules and centralization of authority were achieved at the cost of a certain artistic integrity.
Beginning in about 1673, a new school of haikai gathered influence under the leadership of Nishiyama Sōin (1605-1682). This became known as the Danrin School (Danrin-ha), the style of which was characterized by a light, witty expansiveness that helped free haikai from the rather staid conventions of the Teitoku School. This new sense of artistic independence made itself felt in the broader choice of subjects considered suitable for treatment, in the everyday diction that was employed in composition, and in the deliberately unconventional linking techniques that poets adopted. One of the school’s more notable figures was Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693), now remembered chiefly for his fiction, who excelled in contests to see which poet could produce the largest number of verses within a limited period of time (yakazu haikai). Saikaku’s record was 23,500 verses, which he composed in 1684 in the course of a single afternoon and night at Sumiyoshi Shrine in Osaka. A number of the school’s adherents themselves tired of what often seemed to be the excessive emphasis on playfulness, and this minority attempted to compose haikai of greater artistic merit than those produced by the vast majority of their peers.
Matsuo Bashō
Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) was born in the town of Ueno in Iga Province (in what is now western Mie Prefecture). As a youth he entered the service of a family related to the province's feudal leader, and both he and his young master studied haikai under one of Teitoku’s disciples. After his master died an untimely death, Bashō moved to Edo, where he came under the influence of the Danrin School and eventually established himself as a haikai master in his own right. Late in 1680, Bashō moved away from the bustle of Edo to a solitary hut located in the rural district of Fukagawa. In spring of the following year, a disciple planted a bashō, or banana plant, next to the hut, giving it the name by which it was subsequently known—the Bashō Hut—and providing its master with the nickname he used for the rest of his life.
Bashō’s style as a poet underwent a number of significant changes during his career. Starting off in Edo as a poet in the witty but shallow Danrin style, he experimented with other traditional styles that allowed him to absorb influence from classical Chinese poetry and incorporate fresh techniques of juxtaposition in his verses. Both of these aspects can be found in the haikai collection Minashiguri (Shriveled Chestnuts, 1683). Bashō continued his efforts to establish an original poetic voice, showing the first signs of maturity in the travel diary Nozarashi kikō (The Records of a Weather-Beaten Skeleton, based on a journey to western Japan taken in 1684-85) and the haikai collection Fuyu no hi (The Winter Sun, 1684).
After 1684 Bashō became an inveterate traveler, each of his lengthy journeys ultimately resulting in a travel diary that typically interspersed hokku (a single, self-contained verse in 5-7-5 syllabic form, nominally intended to be the first verse in a haikai sequence) among passages of concise yet evocative prose (in other contexts, this type of writing is called haibun, or "haikai prose"). A total of five travel diaries were written, of which Oku no hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North)—based on a journey to northern Japan Bashō took in 1689 with his friend and disciple Kawai Sora)—stands out as a major work of premodern Japanese literature, and rare is the Japanese student unable to quote the first few lines. The epitome of the mature "Bashō Style" (Shōfū) of haikai poetry is usually considered to be the linked-verse collection Sarumino (The Monkey’s Straw Raincoat, 1691). This collection is where Bashō, having spent years spent developing an original style based on his own experience as a poet, gives fully realized expression to many of those qualities now considered his chief poetic legacy—above all the sublime quality of sabi, which depicts, or more accurately suggests, the solitary condition of a human being in relation to nature and the universe.
Yet sabi was not the final stopping place in Bashō’s development as a poet. In 1693 Bashō closed the gate of his hut for a month, refusing to welcome visitors. It would appear that he was attempting to work out an inner conflict between loneliness and despair on the one hand and a resigned acceptance of things as they are on the other. It was this latter attitude that led him to the ideal of karumi ("lightness") said to characterize many of Bashō’s later verses, including those contained in the 1694 collection Sumidawara (A Sack of Charcoal). Here Bashō often seems to be making the attempt to return from the solitude of nature to the everyday world of ordinary human affairs.
Bashō was a perennial wanderer who identified strongly with such earlier poets of travel as Saigyō (1118-1190) and Sōgi (1421-1502). It therefore seems somehow inevitable that he should have died in 1694 while undertaking yet another arduous journey by foot. Although at the end he seems to have had doubts about the ultimate value of poetry, there is no question that the world would be a far less meaningful place without his. The poetic principles of the Bashō School (Shōmon) were carried on by disciples who, in addition to composing verses in their own right, compiled editions of Bashō’s poetry and produced important critical commentaries on haikai. Chief among the latter are Sanzōshi (Three Booklets, 1702), by Hattori Dohō, and Kyoraishō (Conversations with Kyorai, 1704), by Mukai Kyorai. Needless to say, however, their master remained one of a kind.
Yosa Buson and Kobayashi Issa
After Bashō’s death, haikai grew increasingly popular among the population at large, but at the same time it also became vulgarized and trite. Its decline was briefly arrested in the Tenmei era (1781-89), when the activities of a number of poets in Edo, Kyoto, Owari, and Ise sparked a revival of sorts. The poet now best remembered from this period is Yosa Buson (1716-1783), who won fame as both a poet and a painter. Buson’s style is characterized by an outer pictorialism overlaying a romantically colored classicism. Nevertheless, the downward slide in the fortunes of haikai resumed toward the end of the eighteenth century, leading to a situation so grim that the Meiji poet Masaoka Shiki (who popularized the modern term haiku) remarked that most of the haikai composed after 1830 did not even bear looking at. The one point of light illuminating the general darkness of the time was Kobayashi Issa (1763- 1827), one of Japan’s best-loved poets, whose highly individualistic style is characterized by a passionate defense of the weak and helpless. Issa's haibun journal Ora ga haru (The Spring of My Life, published in 1852) is a poignant record of the events in his life in 1819, the year in which his oldest daughter died from smallpox.
Translations (emphasis on premodern poets; for the sake of neatness, all translations are listed according to the name of the translator or editor; the distinction between translations and studies is not always an easy one to make, so be sure to check the "Studies" section too).
- Andrews, James David, trans. Full Moon Is Rising: "Lost Haiku" of Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694), and Travel Haiku of Matsuo Bashō, a New Rendering. Boston: Branden Press, 1976.
- Barnhill, David Landis, trans. Bashō's Haiku: Selected Poems of Matsuo Bashō. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2004.
- Blyth, R. H., trans. Haiku. 4 vols.1949-1952. Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1981-1982.
- Bowers, Faubion, ed. The Classic Tradition of Haiku: An Anthology. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1996.
- Britton, Dorothy, trans. A Haiku Journey: Narrow Road to a Far Province. 1974. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1980.
- Chilcott, Tim, trans. The Narrow Road to the Deep North. An online translation first published in August 2004.
- Corman, Cid and Susumu Kamaike, trans. Back Roads to Far Towns: Bashō’s Oku-No-Hosomichi. 1968. Hopewell, N.J.: The Ecco Press, 1996.
- Gollub, Matthew, trans. and ed. Cool Melons—Turn to Frogs!: The Life and Poems of Issa. New York: Lee & Low Books, 1998.
- Hamill, Sam, trans. The Spring of My Life and Selected Haiku. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1997.
- Hamill, Sam, trans. The Essential Bashō. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1999. This is an earlier edition of Hamill's Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings, listed below.
- Hamill, Sam, trans. The Sound of Water: Haiku by Bashō, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2000.
- Hamill, Sam, trans. Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2000.
- Hass, Robert, ed. and trans. The Essential Haiku: Versions of Bashō, Buson, and Issa. 1994. Hopewell, N.J.: The Ecco Press, 1995.
- Henderson, Harold G., trans. An Introduction to Haiku. Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958.
- Japanese Classics Translation Committee, trans. Haikai and Haiku. Tokyo: Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkōkai, 1957.
- Keene, Donald, trans. The Narrow Road to Oku. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1996.
- Lanoue, David G., trans. Issa: Cup of Tea Poems, Selected Haiku of Kobayashi Issa. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1991.
- Lewis, Richard, ed. and trans. The Way of Silence: The Prose and Poetry of Bashō. New York: Dial Press, 1970.
- Mackenzie, Lewis, trans. The Autumn Wind: A Selection from the Poems of Issa. 1957. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1984.
- McCullough, Helen Craig, ed. Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990. Contains complete translations of two travel diaries, including Narrow Road to the Deep North.
- Miner, Earl, trans. Japanese Poetic Diaries. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1969.
- Miner, Earl and Hiroko Odagiri, trans. The Monkey’s Straw Raincoat and Other Poetry of the Bashō School. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981.
- Sakaki, Nanao, trans. Inch by Inch: 45 Haiku by Issa. 1985. Albuquerque, N.M.: La Alameda Press, 1999.
- Sato, Hiroaki, trans. Bashō’s Narrow Road: Spring & Autumn Passages. Berkeley, Calif.: Stone Bridge Press, 1996.
- Sawa, Yuki and Edith Shiffert, trans. Haiku Master Buson. 2nd ed. South San Francisco: Heian International Publishers, 1978.
- Stryk, Lucien, trans. On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1985.
- Stryk, Lucien and Noboru Fujiwara, trans. The Dumpling Field: Haiku of Issa. Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press, 1991.
- Ueda, Makoto, trans. Far Beyond the Field: Haiku by Japanese Women. Chichester, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 2003
- Yuasa Nobuyuki, trans. The Year of My Life: A Translation of Issa’s Oraga Haru. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.
- Yuasa, Nobuyuki, trans. Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1966. Contains all five travel diaries.
Studies (these center mainly on the premodern period rather than on haiku generally, for which the bibliography would now be quite long; again, it should be kept in mind that studies and translations are not always easily distinguished from each other.) I have published a paper titled The Beat of Different Drummers: English Translations of Hokku from Matsuo Bashō's Oku no hosomichi that may be viewed here as a (rather large) HTML document (formatting problems prohibit making a conveniently small PDF file), or, alternatively, in the pages of the July 2002 edition of the online World Haiku Review. I have also translated Kuwabara Takeo's controversial "Modern Haiku: A Second-Class Art" for the online journal Simply Haiku (4:1, Spring 2006).
- Aitken, Robert. A Zen Wave. New York: Weatherhill, 1978.
- Blyth, R. H. A History of Haiku. 2 vols. Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1964.
- Gill, Stepher Henry and C. Andrew Gerstle, eds. Rediscovering Basho: A 300th Aniversary Celebration. Folkstone, Kent: Global Oriental, 1999.
- Higginson, William J., with Penny Harter. The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku. 1985. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1989.
- Keene, Donald. World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600-1867. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976.
- Keene, Donald. Travelers of a Hundred Ages. New York: Henry Holt, 1989.
- Miner, Earl. ed. and trans. Japanese Linked Poetry: An Account with Translations of Renga and Haikai Sequences. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978.
- Shirane, Haruo. Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998.
- Ueda, Makoto. Zeami-Bashō-Yeats-Pound. The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1965.
- Ueda, Makoto. Matsuo Bashō. 1970. Tokyo, New York and San Francisco: Kodansha International, 1982.
- Ueda, Makoto. Bashō and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991.
- Ueda, Makoto. The Path of Flowering Thorn: The Life and Poetry of Yosa Buson. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998.
- Ueda, Makoto. Dew on the Grass: The Life and Poetry of Kobayashi Issa. Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004.
- Yasuda, Kenneth. The Japanese Haiku. Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1957.
Links
Although an Internet search now yields well over 100,000 references in English to Bashō, few sites contain biographical or bibliographical information that cannot be found in one of the major online encyclopedias. It takes a rather large store of patience to wade through hundreds of sites simply for the pleasure of reading perhaps a half dozen translations on any one page. Information about Buson and Issa is, of course, much harder to come by, and even when available it is not normally very detailed (two or three notable exceptions appear below). Some of Buson’s paintings can be viewed at online museum sites, although again a great deal of clicking usually provides only a meager reward.
The Five Hundred Essential Japanese Season Words
An online seasonal almanac categorizing many of the "season words" (kigo) used in haiku poetry. The page was edited by William J. Higginson and forms a part of the larger Renku Home site. The selection of seasonal words was made by Kenkichi Yamamoto and translated by Kris Young Kondo and William J. Higginson.
A recently started (2001) online haiku journal with an emphasis on humor, offering translations, articles, reviews, and other features.
A site (relocated from its original location in cyberspace because of Hurricane Katrina) managed by David G. Lanoue, professor of English at Xavier University of Louisiana, in New Orleans. The site offers a searchable archive of 7,700 of Issa's haiku, each dated and accompanied by romanized versions of the Japanese. An "advanced search" function also provides access to an archive of comments on the haiku. A section called "About Issa" contains relatively detailed biographical information; there is also a short introduction to haiku generally and a students' section meant to acquaint learners with basic principles and practices.
Haiku Poetry: Links, References, Guides
An extensive array of pages containing a wealth of material on haiku offered by Michael P. Garofalo, a former library administrator who lives in California. Garofalo includes all this information as part of his larger Spirit of Gardening Web site. Links, biographies (not only of poets but of translator R.H. Blyth as well), and a great deal of other information make it a very useful site indeed.
History of Haiku: 10 Haikuists and Their Works, from Basho to Koi
Very short introductions to ten famous haiku poets written by haiku poet Yotsuya Ryū. Bashō and Buson are the only premodern poets to receive pages of their own.
This site, developed by English educator and poet George Marsh, describes itself as offering "teachers and students an introduction to writing haiku poems, a chance to study the history and nature of haiku poetry and an introduction to the fundamental principles of creative writing." Although the site is primarily pedagogical in nature, the "Reference Section" contains useful discussions of haiku form, Zen, and haiku in English, among other subjects.
A site "provided by the Languages of the World by Computers and the Internet Home Page," apparently based in Nagano. Five pages are offered, although only three contain information directly related to Issa. Each page contains both English and Japanese (and in one case French), together with a few interesting pictures. One of the pages contains a rather haphazard list of links and sources.
Matsuo Basho’s "Narrow Road to the Deep North"
Part of a course-outline site for Stephen Kohl at the University of Oregon, the Bashō pages offer the complete text of English translations of Oku no hosomichi by five translators (Nobuyuki Yuasa, Dorothy Britton, Cid Corman, Helen McCullough, and Earl Miner), broken into the various stages of the journey and accompanied by photographs and illustrations. A brief chronology of Bashō’s life is provided, unattributed although the source is clearly Makoto Ueda’s Matsuo Bashō (listed above).
An online quarterly, begun in 2003, that deals with tanka, renku, senryu, haibun, and haiga as well as haiku. In addition to original compositions in English, the site also carries essays, interviews, and book reviews, along with other features that give each issue a substantial variety. I have published a translation here of Kuwabara Takeo's "Modern Haiku: A Second-Class Art."
According to its mission statement, the World Haiku Club is "a non-profit-making organisation, established for the purpose of creating a world-wide network of haiku poets through which to help disseminate and develop haiku, and also to raise standards and quality of the genre." The club, which was founded in 1998, sponsors the annual World Haiku Festival and publishes the ambitious online journal The World Haiku Review, which includes articles on and original work in the genres of senryū and renku as well as haiku and haibun. A great deal of useful information about haiku is available.
The Opening Lines of Bashō's Narrow Road to the Deep North
| English | The days and months are the wayfarers
of eternity, as are the constantly passing years. Both those who
spend their lives plying the waves in boats and those who grow
old holding tight to the lead ropes of packhorses make of each
day a journey, and of their journey a home. Many of the ancient
poets, too, met their end on a journey. From a certain age my own
thoughts turned ceaselessly to travel and, like a wisp of cloud
carried upon the wind, I wandered the coasts and bays, returning
last autumn to my tumbledown hut on the banks of the Sumida, where
I cleared away the cobwebs and saw the old year out. But with the
mists of spring rising into the sky, my senses once more fell thrall
to temptation, and I was filled with a longing to cross the barrier
at Shirakawa. The gods of the roadside beckoned to me in such a
way that I simply lost interest in everything else. I patched the
holes in my leggings, attached a new cord to my straw hat, and
strengthened my knees with moxa, a vision of the moon at Matsushima
taking form in my mind's eye. I sold my hut and composed the following
just before moving to a cottage owned by Sanpū: surely this grass hut will for the next owner be a festive house of dolls! I used this as the first of a page of eight verses, which I left hanging on a post inside the hut. |
| Japanese | 月日は百代（はくだい）の過客（かかく）にして、行かふ年も又旅人也。舟の上に生涯をうかべ、馬の口とらえて老をむかふる物は、日々旅にして旅を栖（すみか）とす。古人も多く旅に死せるあり。予もいづれの年よりか、片雲（へんうん）の風にさそはれて、漂泊の思ひやまず、海濱にさすらへ、去年（こぞ）の秋江上（こうじょう）の破屋（はおく）に蜘の古巣をはらひて、やゝ年も暮、春立る霞の空に白川の関こえんと、そゞろ神の物につきて心をくるはせ、道祖神（どうそじん）のまねきにあひて、取もの手につかず。もゝ引の破をつゞり、笠の緒付かえて、三里に灸すゆるより、松嶋の月先心にかゝりて、住る方は人に譲り、杉風（さんぷう）が別墅（べっしょ）に移るに、 草の戸も住替る代ぞひなの家 面八句を庵の柱に懸置。 |