NEW YEAR 1: TARŌZUKI. Tarō is one of the traditional
names for a first son, and so a nickname for the first month (Sasaki 2002, 45).
brief
notes translations
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New Year 1a. brief
notes translations
A yang water dragon, the new year dawns from the
old...And is that last night’s dirty faced fellow, in fresh
hat and trousers? Now what rich girl’s bridegroom is riding
by?
Allow me to present myself, Lazy Tarō Month!
烏帽子・袴のさはやかなるは、よべ見し垢面郎歟。そも誰殿のむこがねにて御わ
た り候ぞ
罷出たものは物ぐさ太郎月
Heading: e-
bo- shi,
hakama
no sawayaka-
naru
wa,
yobe
crow cap child,
kimono-trousers
’
refreshing become
as-for, last-night (obs.)
mishi
kō-
men- rō
ka. Somo
dare- dono
no mukogane
nite
seen
dirty face
root
? Now-then,
who mister
’s son-in-law
resembling
gyo-
watari sōrō
zo
riding
past
masu !
Haiku: makari- ideta/
mono
wa mono- gusa/
/
Ta- rō
Zuki
turned
out/ person
as-for thing
bad-smelling// Stout
Root Month
syllable count: 6/7/5
eboshi:
black hat, an element of traditional Japanese male dress.
The more formal versions are stiffened with lacquer.
hakama:
full pleated trousers worn over kimono
sawayaka~na: ‘fresh,
refreshing, reviving, delightful, bracing, soothing, clear
resonant, fluent, flowing, eloquent’
kōmenrō:
‘soiled-faced man’. The ‘root’ character is probably
meant to echo Tarō, ‘stout root’. Monogusa Tarō was, in the
story, incredibly filthy. Also might echo komendō
na, (‘small-face-fall’), ‘annoying,
troublesome’. The heading questions whether last night’s soiled
faced man is truly the person wearing such fresh hakama
and eboshi. A New Year’s greeting patterned after a
character’s self-introduction in a kyogen play (Buson zenshū).
The poor dirty man of last night, the yin-dark of the
old year, has turned to the yang-light, the fresh rich man, of
the new.
somo-somo: ‘well, then, to
begin with’
daredono: a guess,
perhaps similar to tare-sore,
‘Mr. So-and-so’, ‘such and such a person.’
mukogane:
according to an old online dictionary, =muko, ‘son-in-law’. But muko also means ‘husband,
groom,’ which makes more sense here.
gyo suru: ‘ride,
drive (a cart), rule, reign, govern, manage, manipulate, handle,
control.’ Again, a guess.
sōrō:
classical verb ending,
=masu
-zo:
male emphatic, usually indicates command
makari-deru:
‘present oneself, appear before, leave, withdraw’
mono:
unspecified by characters, could mean ‘person’ or
‘thing’
Monogusa Tarō: Lazy
Tarō, the hero of a folk tale. He lives under a tatami mat and
some poles, and is too lazy to ever get up. Someone gives him
some rice balls, and when one of them roles into the road, he
waits for several days for someone to ride by and hand it to
him. The local lord does ride by, and ignores the request for
the rice ball, but becomes interested in Tarō. Once he fails to
convince Tarō to support himself, he commands the people to feed
him. Finally, the local farmers decide that in return, Tarō must
go to the city with the lord to do the service required of the
district. They convince him to go by telling him that he’s sure
to find a wife there. He does his service, and wins a wife by
besting her in a long round of riddles and puns, even though he
is filthy and unappealing. Now married, he is a rich man (Skord 1991, 187-198).
The story is available in full here
.
Buson zenshū #1002, An-ei 1 (1772). Tarō
being an auspicious name for the first born son, it became a
nickname (one of many) for the first month. Another alternate,
Taisō, reflects the idea that as the old year ends and new year
begins, yang ascends once more over yin, tai having the same
character as ta in
Tarō (Sasaki 2002,
45). Buson also used the haiku as an inscription to one of his
own pictures; there the head note reads mizunoe tatsu Saitan, ‘yang
water dragon year-end dawn’ (Buson zenshū 2:206, 1.1,
see notes on calendar).
The haiku evokes the self-introduction of a character in a
farcical kyōgen
play. Tarō-kaja is a stock servant character in kyōgen.
NEW YEAR 2: NEW YEAR DECORATIONS. This is not an
official theme in haiku tradition, although these haiku would
probably all fall under the general category of “observances.”
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notes translations
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New Year
2a. brief
notes translations
This morning’s sun: from the sardine’s head it flashes
日の光今朝や鰯のかしらより
hi
no hikari/
kesa
ya// iwashi
no/ kashira yori
sun ’s brightness/
this-morning ://
sardine ’s/
head from
hi: ‘sun, day’
hikari: ‘light,
flashing, brightness, luster, glimmer, radiance’
Buson zenshū #1006,
Meiwa 9 (1772). In the posthumous works, iwashi is written as a
picture. In another version, kashira
is kajira. The
implied season word is risshun,
the first day of spring: the sardine’s head exerts an
influence on the beginning of spring, although it belongs to the
last day of the year before. The simple radiance of the sun, as
spring begins, reflects off the sardine to shine on everything.
Sardine’s heads
and holly were hung at the front gate on the last day of
the year to drive away demons ( the smoked fish smell offended
their noses and holly pricked their eyes (the smoked fish smell
offended their noses and holly pricked their eyes—see Sakanishi
1935, passim). This haiku is set on the morning of New Year’s
Day, and the first day’s first light shines from the ritual that
ended the old year, in fine Taoist understanding of how positive
yang is generated from the negative void of yin. Setsubun, the
dark yin end day of the year, is susceptible to demons, and
another traditional
rite is performed to ward them off. Someone, usually the
head of the household, dons a demon mask, and the other members
throw soybeans at him.
Blyth dealt with this haiku twice. His first version of
it:
The light of day,—
from the head of the ___ it came
this morning. (Blyth 1992, 1:96)
He gives it as one of two examples where Buson played
with the rebus. Where the blank is he inserts a printer’s
dingbat of a fish, complete with eye, gill, fins. His footnote
is wonderful: “A pilchard. This illustration is too good.”
Buson’s version was a few brush strokes, the kind that one would
use at the beginnings of writing—picture for word. However,
Buson wrote out and published poems multiple times, and he wrote
versions of the poem without the rebus. They instead employ the
regular character for iwashi:
a lovely constellation of the radicals meaning fish,
sword, frail.
A day of light
begins to shine
from the heads of the pilchards. (Blyth 1992, 2:355)
“This verse, the one exception to Buson’s rule of inserting a
season word in each poem, has been included by some under
Setsubun, the last day of winter, but the spirit of it belongs
rather to the New Year. The pilchards are hanging from the
eaves. This verse is conventional and has no specially deep
meaning, other than the real waking of light and life, but
illustrates the tendency to bring down the spiritual and
majestic into the material rather than glorifying the
insignificant” (ibid, 356).
Although Blyth mentions Setsubun, he seems to be unaware of the
meaning of the dried fish, and so I think undervalues the haiku.
Notice his switch to plural–pilchards, rather than pilchard.
Japanese nouns do not usually specify singular or plural, so
without some contextual clue, both meanings are possible. I tend
to favor the singular: Henderson
says that haiku describe “a particular event” (1992, 14), and
the singular tends to be more particular than the plural. But in
many of these haiku, either is possible.
New Year
2b. brief notes
translations
Meiwa era, yang water dragon spring
Returning in the morning mist: a god wind stirs the straw
twisted rope
明和 壬辰春
神風や霞に帰るかざり藁
Heading: Mei-wa
mizunoe tatsu
haru Enlightened
Peace yang-water dragon
spring
Haiku: kami- kaze
ya// kasumi
ni
kaeru/ kazari-
wara
god wind
://
mist
in returning/
decoration straw
kamikaze, shimpu: ‘providential
wind’
Buson zenshū #1004,
An-ei 1 (1772). Season word: kazariwara: sacred
Shinto straw rope—a rope of twisted straw, often hung with
lightning bolt-like strips of white paper, used to mark sacred
sites: the entrance to a shrine, a sacred tree, etc., especially
for festivals like the New Year. The sight of the wind faintly
swaying the rope at the gate as one returns home in the clearing
mist from one’s first, early morning shrine visit creates a mood
of awe. The alliteration of k sounds rhythmically drives the
poem.
Kasumi, ‘mist’,
is also a season word for spring, and it is significant to see
this sign of spring on the day that the season officially
changes.
New Year 2c.
brief notes
translations
Spring again, they meet together at the gate pine and
bamboo
Again in spring, greener than green they come out together pine
and bamboo
又春にあいより出て松と竹
mata
haru
ni/ ai
yori idete//
matsu to
take
again spring
in/ indigo
from coming-out//
pine and
bamboo
Buson zenshū #2579.
No date. Season word: haru, ‘spring’.
Refers to
kadomatsu, New Year’s decorations of pine and
bamboo at the front gate. Pivots around ai (joint,
associate), ai yori (gathering
together, approaching each other), and the proverb
ao wa ai yori idete ai yori aoshi (blue is
bluer than the indigo it comes from), a saying to encourage
learning (the student surpasses the teacher) by Chinese
philosopher Hsün Tsu. We welcome the return of spring with
rounds of visits and greetings, and so bamboo and pine meet
again at the gate, their fresh greens coming together in
harmonious relation, a good omen for the new year.
There is a special vividness to the hue of the first
green things of the year.
New Year
2d. brief notes
translations
At my own gate: the pines are two on these three dawns.
我門や松はふた木を三の朝
(癸卯正月朔応ニ百池儒ー)
Heading: omitted
waga mon
ya// matsu
wa futa- ki
wo/ mitsu
no asa
my
gate ://
pines as-for
two trees
(acc.)/ three
’s morning
Buson zenshū #2348,
Temmei 3 (1783). Season word: mitsu no asa,
‘three mornings’. New Year’s morning is three dawns, of the day,
the month, and the year. (One version is written on folding fan
paper as an inscription for his own picture, appended: ‘On the
first day of the first month of the year of the younger brother
of wood, at the request of Hyaku-ike.’)
Kadomatsu is ‘gate pine’, paired arrangements of pine
and diagonally cut bamboo, one on each side of the gate, to
welcome in the new year (see previous note). ‘Doubtless this is
Buson on the triple morning seeing in the two pines at his gate
the dreamed of sight of Michinoku’s wondrous twin pine, grown
from the old root.’
Sources:
Tachibana no Suemichi, from Goshūishū (Later
Gleanings Anthology) #104:
Takekuma no
The Takekuma
matsu wa futaki
wo
pine has two trunks;
miyakobito
should a person from the city
ask,
ikaga to towaba
‘How was it?’,
miki
to kotaen
I’d reply, ‘I’ve seen it.’ (Arii 2000, 32)
Miki is a pun on ‘three trees,’ which Buson echoes in mitsu, suggesting seeing.
And Matsuo Bashō, from
Narrow Road to the Deep North:
Takekuma no
The Takekuma Pine:
matsu misemōse
show it to him,
osozakura
late blooming cherries
Kyohaku gave me this hokku as a
farewell gift, so I wrote,
sakura yori
Since the cherries bloomed,
matsu wa
futaki wo
I’ve longed to see this pine: two
trunks
mitsukigoshi
after three months’ passage (Bashō 2004, 92)
The Takekuma pine of Iwanuma, in Michinoku province, grew
back several times. Nōin has a
waka about the pine being cut down. But supposedly it always
grew back with a divided trunk. The spot where it grew is now
uncertain. Basho also puns on
matsu, ‘pine’
and ‘pine for’.
Alternatively:
At my gate
the longed for double
pines
seen on
this triple dawn
New Year
2e. brief notes
translations
In the An-ei Era, year of
the yin water snake
A courting stick left by a man of undivided heart the pine at
the gate
安永癸巳
錦木のまことの男門の松
Heading: An-ei
mizunoto
mi Peaceful
Eternity yin
water snake
Haiku: nishiki-
gi
no/ makoto
no otoko// kado
no matsu
brocade tree
’s/ sincerity
’s man//
gate ’s pine
nishikigi: as
a declaration of intention a man would stand a piece of wood,
painted with the five colors, at the gate of the woman he wanted
to court
makoto: ‘sincerity,
true/single heart, faithfulness, fidelity, constancy, devotion’
Buson zenshū #1025,
An-ei 2 (1773). Season word: kado no matsu, ‘gate
pine’, paired arrangements of pine and diagonally cut bamboo,
one on each side of the gate, to welcome in the new year (see
notes to 2c, this section). One
version is as an inscription on his own picture: the head note
is An-ei mizunoto mi Saitan: ‘An-ei
yin water snake dawn of the year’. The haiku suggests that the
plain pine would have been a better display of manliness than
the foppishly colorful brocade wood (Buson zenshū note).
A man traditionally left a courting stick at the gate of
a woman he wanted to marry. I have read two different
descriptions: a single stick painted many colors, or a bundle of
twigs from different trees. In the background of several of
Buson’s haiku is the anecdote of Mōotsu,
quoted in Essays in Idleness, who
said: “when I see white threads I weep, because they can be made
yellow or black” (Blyth
1992, 4:1024). Our fall into the world is a fall into many
divided wants; the pure white of the thread, or the single green
of the pine, is the innocence of undivided desire.
New Year
2f. brief notes
translations
In the newly trimmed gate pine wind: Fukurokuju
剃立て門松風やふくろくじゆ
sori-
tate- te/
kado- matsu
kaze ya// Fuku-
roku- ju
shaven fresh
and/ gate
pine wind
://
Happiness Wealth Longevity
soritate, suritate: ‘clean
shaven, freshly shaven’; so(ru), su(ru): ‘shave’
Fukurokuju:
one of the seven lucky gods, the god of longevity and
wisdom.
Buson zenshū #2582.
No date. The season word is kadomatsu,
‘gate pine’, a New Year’s decoration, here with its
needles freshly trimmed (see notes to 2c,
this section). An inscription for haiga on folding fan paper.
The phrase pivots on matsu,
‘pine’ and ‘wait for’, and joins the
expressions ‘gate pine’ and ‘pine wind’; fuku in Fukurokuju also
puns with ‘blow’. Fukurokuju is often
depicted in folk painting with Daikoku
on a ladder, shaving his tall head. For Fukurokuju, with fresh
shaven head and waiting at the gate for spring’s visit, the wind
would indeed be refreshing.
Since Fukurokuju is the god of longevity, which the pine
tree also symbolizes, ‘newly trimmed’ could apply to the god or
the tree.
New Year 2g. brief notes
translations
Catching a sea bream with a grain of rice—spring
welcoming pine
飯粒で鯛をつる亀松の春
meshi- tsubu
de/ tai
wo tsuru
kane// matsu
no haru
rice
grain with/
sea-bream (acc.)
catch tortoise//
pine
’s spring
Buson zenshū #2299,
Temmei 2, 10th month (November 1782). The season word is matsu
no haru, ‘pine spring’. This haiku exists as
an inscription on a picture at Nishiyama Guesthouse; it has with
the artist’s signature ‘Gekkei’s picture of Leech Child’.
Gekkei wrote Temmei mizunoe tora: ‘Temmei era, year of the tiger,
younger brother of wood’, and signed his name. Gekkei was
Matsumura Goshun, 1752-1811, one of Buson’s followers, and the
chief inheritor of his knowledge of painting. Leech Child
is Hiruko, the leech child of legend, who at the age of three
grew legs and eventually became Ebisu, one
of the seven gods associated with good fortune and the New Year.
Ebisu is the god of fishing and good luck and holds a fishing
pole and sea bream. He is often paired with Daikokuten,
the god of wealth, with his bales or sack of rice.
“Catch a sea bream with a grain of
rice” is a proverb meaning ‘use small funds to make a huge
profit’. The Kokin wakashū #287
(1985) has the saying “catching a bluefish with a grain of
rice,” which McCullough says is probably the equivalent of the
modern ebi de tai, ‘use
a shrimp to catch a sea bream’, i.e., something for nothing. Tai
wo tsuru kane hinges on tsuru
for ‘angle, catch with fishing pole’ and tsuru
kane, ‘crane and tortoise,’ long lived
animals that often accompany the god Fukurokuju
(happiness, wealth, longevity). Tsurukane even means
‘congratulations’.
Tsurukane and kadomatsu
(gate-pine) are both decorations to celebrate the early
spring (see notes to 2c, this
section) .
New Year
2h. brief notes
translations
An-ei Era, yin wood year of
the sheep, the new year dawns
Hōrai Mountain festival: old age’s spring
安永乙未歳旦
ほらいの山まつりせむ老の春
Heading: An-ei
kinoto hitsuji Sai-
tan Peaceful Eternity,
yin-wood sheep Old-year Dawns
Haiku: Hō-
rai
no/ yama-
matsuri se-
mu// oi
no haru
Mugwort Goosefoot
’s/ mountain
festival
do will//
old-age ’s
spring
Hōrai:
the mythical Taoist mountain of the immortals. According
to Ueda, it is represented on trays of Japanese New Year
decorations by a pile of uncooked rice.
Buson zenshū #1220,
An-ei 4 1/10 (February 9th, 1775). Season word: oi
no haru, ‘an old man’s spring’. One version
includes the head note. Mt. Hōrai, represented in New Year’s
decorations by a pile of rice or rice cakes, is a legendary
mountain in China inhabited by Taoist hermit-wizards. Yama-matsuri:
a festival celebrating the god of a mountain. One greets
the spring with another year added to one’s age [everyone is
considered a year older at New Year’s], but by making a festival
of the Mt. Horai decoration, one celebrates one’s old age.
‘Mountain’ is a hinge or pivot word joining the two
compounds ‘Hōrai Mountain’ and ‘mountain festival.’
NEW YEAR 3: THE SEVEN LUCKY GODS. Images of these
seven deities are associated with the new year. They are often
depicted sailing together on a treasure
boat. brief notes
translations
season page
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Fukurokuju,
the god of longevity and wisdom. Short with a very high
forehead, a staff with a sacred book tied to it (perhaps with
everyone’s span of life inside), often accompanied by a crane
and/or a turtle and/or a black deer (symbols of longevity–a deer
is said to turn black when it reaches a thousand years in age).
His tall head is bald and at times phallic (in which case it is
often covered with a cloth) and his whiskers are very long. His
head is often shown being shaved by Daikoku
on a ladder.
Ebisu
, the god of fishing and good luck. Holds a fishing pole and sea
bream. He is often paired with Daikoku.
Daikoku
, the god of wealth, with his bales or sack of rice and magic
mallet.
The four others not mentioned here are Hotei, the fat laughing
god of health and plenty with his sack; Benten, the only
goddess, of beauty, knowledge and music; Bishamon, god of war
and punishment, and Jurōjin, almost indistinguishable from
Fukurokuju.
New Year 3a. brief notes
translations
I’ll hold a festival for the Mountain of the Immortals, an old
man’s spring
See New Year 2h.
New Year 3b. brief notes
translations
From the magic hammer all this, the ten thousand things, breed
forth.
New Year’s Day: from the lucky mallet, newly unsealed,
the gems of spring
槌は土也。万物皆是より生ず
元日 や小槌のこぐち玉の春
Heading:
tsuchi
wa
tsuch nari bam-
butsu mina
kore yori shōzu
mallet as-for
earth
is
ten-thousand things
all
this from creates
Haiku: Gan-
jitsu ya// ko-
zuchi no ko-
guchi/ tama
no haru
Beginning Day
:// small
mallet ’s
small mouth/
jewel ’s spring
bambutsu: ‘all
things, all creation’
Buson zenshū #2578.
No date. The season word is Ganjitsu, ‘New Year’s Day’. Kozuchi:
Daitoku’s lucky mallet from which wealth is shaken out. Koguchi:
kiriguchi
(‘mouth cutting’)–ceremony for the new tea, when the seal
is cut and the jar of the year’s tea leaves is opened for the
first time. Just as from the earth the ten thousand things are
generated, from the round unsealed mouth of the hollow lucky
mallet jewels and treasure fly out. As for the new year, it is
born from the bitter past year as from the mouth of the mallet.
Indeed spring is a felicitous new jewel.
New Year
3c. brief notes
translations
Fresh shaved and waiting for the wind to blow through the gate
pine Fukurokuju
See New Year 2f.
New Year 3d. brief notes
translations
As the year begins: Fukurokuju appears flowers in the grass
元日や艸の中なる福禄寿
Gan-
jitsu ya//
kusa no
naka
naru/
Fuku-
roku-
ju
Origin Day
:// grass
’s midst
become/ wealth
happiness longevity
Buson zenshū #2577,
no date. An inscription on Buson’s own picture. Season word: Ganjitsu, ‘New Year’. In the
spirit of the season, fukujusō
(New Year anemone, see New Year
section 5) blooms in a clump of grass. The name and shape
of the flower mean that Fukurokuju is
here.
New Year
3e. brief notes
translations
Crane, tortoise, and a grain of rice to catch a sea bream;
spring awaiting pine
see New Year 2g.
NEW YEAR 4: FIRST THINGS. The first instance of many
actions of the New Year is supposed to be significant—first
dream, first writing, first drawing of water.
brief
notes translations
season page
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New Year
4a. brief notes
translations
The year’s first drawn water: a thousand years comes
through the bamboo pipe...
若水の千代をへて来ル 筧かな
waka-
mizu no/ chi
-yo
wo hete
kuru// kakehi
kana
young water
’s/ thousand
years (acc.)
passing-thru comes//
pipe ...
wakamizu: ‘year’s
first drawn water’
chiyo, sendai: ‘a
thousand years, a very long period’
he(ru): ‘pass
through, pass, elapse, expire’
kakehi: ‘water
pipe, conduit, flume’, usually of bamboo
Buson zenshū #2581,
no date. Season word: wakamizu, ‘first
water’, drawn in the hour of
the tiger (4-6 a.m.) (Sasaki 2002, 5). It is
drawn by a man, either the man of the house or a man born under
the animal of the coming year, the first male activity. Women
should stay away from the well. The bucket is often decorated
with auspicious things, shinto rope and lightning paper, etc.
The water is supposed to give those who drink it health, well
being and youthfulness. One might invite guests to drink tea
from the water, or use it to make zōni (New Year’s
soup). (Buson zenshū notes
+ Greve 2005).
New Year 4b. brief notes
translations
Spring of the year of the boar, younger brother of greenwood,
again to green childhood you return. The wind blowing in the
thousand-year pines conveys your long life, the enduring
auspiciousness of your dwelling. Yamato by its alphabet is the
honorable instrument conveying to Mr. Karai congratulations on
his reaching the end of sixty years. From the letter i
we borrow the meaning,
i, ino, inoshishi, inoji, boar for the boar’s child.
In Japanese style, a child’s letter A: first writing of the year
つちのとの亥の春、又みとり子にこまがへり、老行さきの千代の松風吹つたへて、
つきせぬ宿のめでたさを、大和の国なる何来のぬしが本卦の賀に申侍る。一字借音
大和仮名いの字を児の筆はじめ
Heading:
tsuchinoto no
i
no haru,
mata midori-
go
ni koma- gaeri,
yin wood
’s boar
’s spring,
again green
child to
youth returning,
oi
yukusaki
no
chi-
yo
no matsu-
kaze
fuki
tsutaete,
old-age destination
’s thousand
years ’
pine
wind blowing conveying
tsukisenu
yado
no
medetasa
wo
Yamato
no
kuni naru
enduring dwelling
’s
auspiciousness (acc) Great
Peace ’s
country becoming
Ka-
rai
no nushi
ga hon- ke
no
gai
ni
What Coming
’s master
(sub.) base
divination-sign ’s joy
of the season in
mōshi-
haberu. Ichi-
ji
kari-
oto
having the honor to
serve. One
character borrowed
sound
Haiku:
Yamato-
ga-
na/
‘i’ no ji
wo chigo
no/
fude
hajime
Great Peace informal
name/ i
’s character
(acc) child
’s/ writing-brush
first
midorigo (‘baby’)
echoes matsu no midori (‘pine’s green’). As in English, ‘green’
is a synonym for ‘young’.
matsukaze, shōfū: ‘wind
in the pines’
Yamato: old
name for Japan
Karai: may be
the Edo poet Karai Hachiemon,
pen name Senryū, who gave his name to the comic haiku form.
honke: ‘second
[childhood]’
Yamato-gana:
‘hiragana’. Writing in the syllabic alphabet is
associated with Japan. Yamato: an old name for Japan. Kana, gana: ‘Japanese
syllabary’
ji: ‘handwriting,
letter, word, character’
Buson zenshū #2034,
An-ei 8 (1779). Season word: fude hajime, ‘first
writing’. Appears in the anthology Old Man Buson with almost the same script
(however, i no haru is
i wo hajimetoshi, ‘beginning
the year of the boar’; mata is
mata mo ya matsu no (‘again
also: pine’s’); chiyo no
matsukaze is chiji no
harukaze (‘thousand years’ spring wind’), sensen no shumpū (‘a
thousand thousand spring breezes’) in the head note. In a letter
addressed to Kitō, he includes this haiku and adds that jokes
and witticisms are appropriate for season’s greetings, so one
should employ tricks whenever skill and opportunity allow.
The iroha is a
poem that teaches children the syllabic alphabet, as children
learn the alphabet song in English. Mr. Karai is beginning his
writing with the syllable i,
as a child does learning the iroha, because he is
celebrating his 61st year, his honke gaeri or
‘return to childhood’. Having gone through the complete sixty
year cycle of the zodiac (see note on dates), he is traditionally
supposed to be returning to childhood and starting over. This
haiku is a prayer for his health and longevity. There is also a
pun on i no ji, ino,
inoshishi, the boar, the animal belonging to this year
and the sign under which Karai was born.
The Iroha (Ryuichi Abe’s translation):
Although its
scent still lingers on
the form of a flower has scattered away
For whom will the glory
of this world remain unchanged?
Arriving today at the
yonder side
of the deep mountains of evanescent existence
We shall never allow
ourselves to drift away
intoxicated, in the world of shallow dreams.
New Year
4c. brief notes
translations
Sixth year of the era of
Eternal Peace, year of the yin fire rooster
Just as Japanese musicians playing at the Gion Festival do
without the rhythm of “The Autumn Wind”, better to shun the
tenderness and elegant simplicity of the Bashō School on the
occasion of a spring entertainment, in order to imitate the
haiku style of today’s youthful poets of the eastern
provinces.
New Year dawning triumph on the face of the haiku master
祇園会のはやしものは不協二秋風、音律一、蕉門のさび・しをりは可レ避二春興、
盛席 抑席一、さればこの日の俳諧は、わかわかしき
x吾妻の人の口質にな
らはんとて
歳旦をしたり皃なる俳諧師
Heading:
Gi-
on-
e
no haya-
shi- mono
wa
fure kana
peaceful garden
meeting ’s play
[music] child
thing as-for
without cooperation
[wa] “Aki-
kaze [no]
on-
ritsu” [ni],
Shō- mon
no sabi,
as-for Autumn
Wind [’s]
sound rhythm”
with, Banana
Gate ’s
elegant-simplicity,
shiori
wa
yoshi[re]
yo[ku] “shūn
-kō
[no]
jō-
seki”
[wo]
tenderness as-for
had-better
avoid
“spring pleasure
[’s] prosper-
occasion [acc.]
sareba kono
hi no
hai- kai
wa
wakawakashiki A- zuma
no hito
then
this day
’s haiku
harmony as-for
young
My Wife
’s people
no
kō-
shitsu ni
narawa-
n
tote
’s speech
quality to
follow
(intention) by-way-of
Alternate heading: An-
ei
roku, hinoto
tori toshi
Peace Eternal
six, yin-fire
rooster year
Haiku: Sai-
tan
o/ shitari-
gao
naru/
hai-
kai- shi
year’s dawn
(acc)/ triumphant
face becoming/
play actor master
Gion-e: A
week-long festival at Yasaka Shrine, beginning on the 7th day of
the sixth month, in Gion, the pleasure district of Kyoto.
hayashimono: Japanese orchestra with
gong, flute and drum, such as would play on a parade float
Akikaze: an
example of a composition of classical court music
Shōmon: the
Bashō school, that is, Bashō’s students and their followers who
tried to maintain Bashō’s aesthetic principles in their haiku.
sabi, shiori: key
qualities in haiku according to the Bashō School. Hisamatsu defines sabi
as the general atmosphere of “loneliness in the midst of
brilliant beauty or...grandeur”, and shiori as
the style that produces that atmosphere (1963, 60).
shunkō no jōseki: a
brilliant, showy haiku gathering at the beginning of spring
Azuma: an old
name for the eastern regions of Kantō and Tōhoku.
Saitan: ‘the
New Year’
shitarigao: ‘triumphant
expression, self-satisfied look.’ Shitaru: interjection: ‘Good Heavens! God
bless me!’
haikaishi: ‘writer
of haikai poems’
Buson zenshū #1488,
An-ei 6, perhaps 1/10 (Feb. 17th, 1777). The inserted words in
the heading are because it was composed in Chinese with kambun, Japanese particles
added so that the text could be read as Japanese. The season
word is Saitan, ‘New
Year’–the term could refer to the New Year or to the haiku
celebrating it, written for the New Year haiku gathering or saitan-biraki.
This was the first verse of a kasen,
or 36 stanza linked poem, written at just such a
gathering. This kind of old-fashioned word play woven skillfully
into a New Year’s poem evokes the lightness of Basho’s school at
its height, turning the haiku inside out to make Buson’s
self-portrait. What the haiku master has to feel triumphant
about is presumably his first poem of the year, as other
translations of the poem make more clear.‘The Azuma poets’
refers to followers of Hayano Hajin,
by then deceased, Buson’s haiku teacher in Edo.
Ueda writes:
“The Lunar New Year started on February 8th, 1777. As usual,
Buson and his group gathered together to produce a kasen, but this time the
result was a sequence of verses markedly different from an
ordinary renku of the Buson school. Called ‘His New Year’s
Verse,’ the kasen was flamboyant in its language, daring in its
imagery, and often self-mocking in its implications...It seems
he was aware of his own lapse later on, for he wrote a brief
apology and made it a preface to the kasen. ‘It seemed that the sabi and shiori taught in the Bashō
school had better be avoided at a party celebrating the arrival
of spring,’ he said. ‘Our haikai of that day, therefore, tried
to emulate the youthful language of poets in the eastern
provinces...’”
looking proud
of his New Year’s verse
this haiku master (Ueda 1998,
99)
Other translations:
The First Day of the
Year;
A haikai master
With a complacent air. (Blyth 1984,
1:287)
The year’s first poem done
with smug self-confidence—
a haiku poet. (Sawa and Shiffert 1978,
52)
New Year
4d. brief notes
translations
From out of the dark of the year’s last night
I too have deciphered the writing on the feather first
crow
歳旦
みそかのやみのくらきより
己が羽の文字もよめたり初烏
Heading: misoka
no
yami
no kuraki yori
last-day-of-month
’s darkness
’s
dark from
Alternate heading: Sai-
tan
Old-year Dawns
Haiku: ono
ga
ha
no/ mo-
ji
mo yome
tari// hatsu karasu
myself (sub.)
feather ’s/
ideo- gram
also read
have// first
crow
ono: ‘oneself,
myself’
Buson zenshū #1979,
An-ei 7 (1778–yang earth dog). The season word is hatsu
karasu, ‘first crow’. An alternate heading is
Saitan, ‘Old Year Dawns’. Buson included the haiku in a letter
to Korekoma, where he says: ‘As for this, in the old times from
the land of China they sent a message on a crow’s feather to
measure Japan’s wisdom, but as the days passed no one could
decipher it. However, a certain O Shinni was told, a wise man,
and he steamed the feather in a basket over rice, then pressed
it to paper, which took the imprint of the characters, as it
says in accounts of ancient history.’ From of the dark of each
day’s night, the crow cries out, foretelling the return of the
yang principle and refreshing us as it vanishes. A song of
praise, rejoicing that in the strange wisdom of the dragon king,
in light of the new year, the writing on the feather of the self
can be read and unraveled
(Buson zenshū note).
The crow is therefore seen in terms of the Taoist balance
of yin and yang. Yin is dark, night, endings, winter; yang is
light, day, beginnings, spring; the crow is at the edge between
the two. The story of the crow’s feather, presented in the Nihon
shoki, is set in the court of the Emperor Tenno.
The crow’s feather was actually from Kōrai (an ancient kingdom
on the Korean Penninsula), and Ō Shinni had come from there. The
ink of the message was invisible on the black feather, but the
steam liquified it and O Shinni was able to transfer it to the
paper. The haiku might also evoke the mythic Yatagarasu, the Eight-Span
Crow, who appeared to guide the Emperor Jimmu.
New Year
4e. brief notes
translations
Poem for the first day of the first month: The last light of
the old year shines in the lamps of Mt. Ibuki; the sound of
the Kamo River flowing foretells that spring is nearly here
The striking of the shuttlecock is the year’s first
bird song before the pillars of Utsu no Miya
正朔吟
いぶき山の御燈に古年の光をのこし、かも川の水音にやゝ春を告たり
鶏は羽にはつねをうつの宮柱
Headings: Sei- saku-
gin
Origin First-Day-of-Month
song
Ibuki- yama
no
go-
tō
ni furu-
toshi no
hikari
wo nokoshi,
Ibuki Mountain
’s honorable
lamps in
old
year ’s
light (acc)
remaining,
Kamo- gawa
no mizu
oto
ni yaya
haru
wo
tsuge tari
Kamo River
’s water
sound in
nearly spring
(acc.) foretold has
Haiku: tori
wa
ha
ni/ hatsu-
ne
wo Utsu
no/ Miya- bashira
chicken as-for
feather by/
first
sound (acc.)
strike ’s/
shrine pillar
Buson zenshū #14.
Enkyō 1 (1744). Season word: hatsune, ‘first
song’, as for example uguisu
no hatsune, ‘the first song of the bush warbler’. Seisaku is ‘New Year’s Day’.
The heading has several errors: Ibukiyama is a pillow word for a small hill now
in Tochigi City, mistaken for Usu peak at Utsu no Miya’s
Daimyōjin (also in Tochigi Prefecture). Kamogawa is a mistake for
Kamagawa (Kettle River), which flows through Utsu no Miya city.
Utsu no Miya is the
large impressive Futarasan
Shrine (Daimyōjin), where the poem is set. The haiku
pivots on hane wo utsu (striking
the shuttlecock), Utsu no Miya (House Capital Shrine), and miya bashira, shrine
pillars.
An early poem, using his teacher’s suggestion that he
write a New Year’s haiku using the shrine of Utsu no Miya and
the season word hatsune,
‘first song’. Buson jokingly substitutes for the
bird’s song the sound of the shuttlecock being struck. Hanetsuki,
a type of net-less badminton played with special ornate
paddles, is a popular New Year’s game.
New Year 4f. brief notes
translations
Setting off from a lone house this year’s lucky direction may
take me all the way to China
一つ家はもろこしかけて恵宝道
hitotsu-
ya
wa/ Morokoshi-
kakete/
e-
hō-
michi
one
house as-for/
China
beginning/ lucky
direction path
Morokoshi: ‘China,
Cathay’
kakete: ‘starting,
beginning, betting, wagering’
Buson zenshū #2580,
no date. Season word: ehōmichi: ‘the
path to go visit a Shinto shrine in that year’s auspicious
direction’. Astrology dictated that certain directions were
lucky or unlucky at certain times. In The Tale of Genji, characters
are often stranded for a short time, unable to travel in the
direction they need to go because the day has made it
inauspicious (although they seem to be somewhat selective about
when they worry about this). As the new year begins, one tries
to take the auspicious direction to make the important first
shrine visit, but from an isolated house, in a sparsely
inhabited area, a given direction may not reach a shrine any
time soon.
New Year
4g. brief notes
translations
Especially it shrouds the foreigner’s mansion first mist
ことさらに唐人屋敷初霞
kotosara ni/ Tō-
jin
ya- shiki//
hatsu
kasumi
especial- ly/
foreign- er
house
site//
first mist
Tō: ‘T’ang
Dynasty, China, foreign countries’
yashiki: ‘mansion’
Buson zenshū #400,
Meiwa 6 (1769). ‘Mist’ and ‘New Year’s Day’, kasumi
and Ganjitsu, were the
two chosen topics at a gathering on 1/10 (Feb. 16th). Season
word: hatsugasumi,
‘first mist’, a spring kigo. The Chinese quarter was set up in
Nagasaki, and few Japanese people were allowed to enter, except
for prostitutes. So the mist especially covers the foreigner’s
mysterious mansion–a new year’s scene of romantic longing.
Another version has the error tōjin
zashiki, ‘foreigner’s apartment’.
NEW YEAR 5: FUKUJUSŌ,
NEW YEAR ANEMONE. This is Adonis amurensis, also called ‘pheasant’s
eye.’ The god Fukurokuju’s name, ‘Happiness-wealth- longevity,”
elides with fukujusō,
‘happiness longevity grass,’ a flower of the anemone
family associated with the new year because it blooms so early.
Often cultivated in small pots, the flowers range from cream to
orange, and look like light itself.
brief notes
translations
season page
home
New Year
5a. brief notes
translations
Celebrating our three companions’ fortieth birthdays gives us
three ways to read the poem’s three beginnings
Year, month, day: the three perfumes of the New Year
anemone
天明三癸卯春正月
三たりが初老を賀するに、三面の文字を立字を立入、三始の吟を以す
歳月日三つのかほりや福寿草
Heading:
mi-
tari
ga sho-
ro
wo gasuru
ni, sam-
men no
three people (obs.)
(sub.) beginning old-age
(acc.) celebrating,
three faces ’
mon-ji
wo
tachi-ire,
san-
shi(?)
no
gin
wo motte su.
writing (acc.)
beginning to enter,
three beginnings
’ poem
(acc.) doing
Haiku:
toshi
tsuki
hi/
mitsu no
kaori
ya// fuku-
ju-
sō
year month
day/ three
’s fragrances
:// wealth
longevity grass
shoro: forty
years, the official beginning of old age
Buson zenshū #2349.
Temmei 3 (1783). One version has heading ‘Temmei Era year 3, yin water
rabbit spring New Year. People considered themselves a
year older when the year changed, rather than celebrating the
day of their birth. Here three friends have reached this
auspicious mark together. Likewise, New Year’s morning marks
three beginnings, of the day, month and year.
New Year 5b.
brief notes
translations
On the year’s first day: happiness-wealth-long life flowering in
the grass
See New Year 3d.
New Year
5c. brief notes
translations
Morning sun shafts in the bow maker’s shop: pheasant’s eye
flowers
朝日さす弓師が見せや福寿艸
asa-
hi sasu/
yumi-
shi
ga mise
ya// fuku-
ju-
sō
morning sun
pierces/
bow master
’s shop
:/// fortune
longevity grass
sasu: unspecified
by character, could mean ‘pierce, thrust, stab, prick’, or
‘shine into, stream into, pour into, fill’, etc.
yumishi=yumitsukuri, ‘bowyer,
bow maker’ (Buson zenshū note)
Buson zenshū #2178,
Temmei 1 (1781). Due to the use of nibe (a glue made of bboiled
fish bladders and deer skin), the archery bow shop needs to be
in a sunny place [for the glue to dry?]. The flowers are set in
the alcove, and the sun enters, purifying the shop, and touching
the flowers in a composition of auspicious, harmonious beauty.
NEW YEAR 6: FIRST MIST. The mist is a season word
for spring, a sign that the new year and the new season truly
are beginning together.
brief notes
translations
season page
home
New Year
6a. brief notes
translations
Heaviest over the foreign quarter the year’s first mist
See New Year 4g.
New Year 6b.
brief notes
translations
First day of the year, then the next mist gathers in the nooks
and corners of Kyoto
元日二日京のすみずみ霞けり
Gan-
jitsu futsu-
ka/ kyō
no sumi-
zumi// kasumi-
keri
Origin
Day second
day/ capital
’s corner
corner//
misted has
An example of ji-amari, use of excessive syllables:
7/7/5.
kyō: this
character, ‘capital,’ is in the names of both Tokyo and Kyoto.
In Buson’s time, the capital was still officially Kyoto.
sumizumi: ‘every
nook and corner’
Buson zenshū #2352,
probably Temmei 3 (1783). Season word: Ganjitsu futsuka.
Kasumi, ‘mist,
haze,’ is a general season word for spring (as opposed to oboro, mist of a spring
night, or kiri, autumn
mist). Refers to the western quarter of Kyoto
Although spring begins officially on New Year’s Day, the
weather can remain wintery for some time, so it is reassuring to
see the first mists of spring appear with the new year.
New Year
6c. brief notes
translations
Meiwa era, yang water dragon spring
Returning home in the morning mist: a sacred wind sways
the straw rope
See New Year 2b.
NEW YEAR 7: WILLOW. The willow is a spring kigo,
but both of these haiku employ it to emphasize the beginning of
spring with the new year.
brief notes
translations
season page
home
New Year 7a. brief notes
translations
At the Forbidden Palace, spring colors in the pale blue dawn
The blue-green willow: our sovereign lord’s tree? grass?
禁城春色暁蒼々
青柳や我大君の艸か木か
Heading: kin-
jō
shun-
shoku akatsuki
sō-
sō
prohibition castle
spring colors
dawn
pale pale
Haiku: ao-
yagi
ya// waga
ō- kimi
no/ kusa
ka ki ka
green willow
://
our great
lord ’s/
grass ?
tree ?
kinjō: the
emperor’s palace
sō: ‘blue,
pale’
ao: ‘blue,
green’
kimi: ‘sovereign,
the emperor’
Buson zenshū #1012,
probably An-ei 1(1772). Blyth
1992, 1:121:
The green willow,
A tree or grass
Of our great emperor.
“This appears simple and devoid of any poetical
meaning, but some study of it will bring out unsuspected values.
It has a postscript...which is the second line of an eight-line
poem by Kashi [Chia Chih], 718-722. The poem is entitled ‘Going
Early to the Taimei Palace, and Presenting It to Colleagues of
Both Offices.’ The first four lines are
In the dawn, while the
silver tapers are yet alight, the road in the capital is long;
In the Palace, the spring
scenery of early morning is bright and clear.
A thousand drooping
branches of the willows hang over the green inscriptions on the
wall;
A hundred voices of
nightingales are heard around the Kenshō Palace.
Buson was familiar with the poem from the
popular Edo period collection of Tang era poetry, the Tōshisen.
Another source of allusion is found in the Japanese historical
annals of the Taiheiki:
[I]n the reign of the
Emperor Tenchi, there was a man named Fujiwara Chikata, who
employed four kinds of demons...Because of these creatures,
ordinary people being unable to withstand them, in the provinces
of Iga and Isa, there was no one who obeyed the Imperial Rule. A
man named Ki no Tomotake receiving an Imperial order, went to
these provinces, and composing a waka, sent it among the demons:
Even
trees and grasses
Are the kingdom of Our Lord;
Where
can there be dwellings
For demons?
The four kinds of demons, reading
this verse...dispersed in every direction, and disappeared,
losing their power everywhere, at last
overcome by Tomotake” (ibid.,121-122).
The haiku is therefore a little bit of a joke, setting out to
harmonize allusions from classical sources and ending in
confusion. New Year’s haiku often have the lightness of
occasional verse.
New Year
7b. brief notes
translations
Unmarred by even one dead branch—willow tree...
一筋も弃たる枝なき柳かな
hito- suji
mo/ sutaru
eda
naki//
yanagi kana
one line
even/ dead
branch without//
willow ...
Buson zenshū #76,
Meiwa 4 (1767). Sutaru:
‘something ruined by withering or corruption’. Ueda (1998, 50): the
haiku was written while staying in Shikoku to contribute to an
acquaintance’s New Year haiku album. Buson zenshū notes: in the Shunkei-biki, Spring
Congratulations Album, it has Buzen’s head note,
‘Poetic composition for Nankai’s collection’. Nankai might be
Gion Nankai, an Edo scholar, 1677 to 1757, a pioneer of Nanga. Buzen might be Mochizuki Buzen.
NEW YEAR 8: THE
SEVENTH DAY. Several customs converge on this
day. In the Chinese tradition, each day of the first week of the
year was named after an animal, sacred to that day and not to be
harmed on it. On the seventh day, “Human Being Day,” no criminal
could be executed.
This day is also the “Gathering of the Seven Young Herbs”, some
variant of the following:
water dropwort
or parsley (seri)
shepherd’s purse,
water chestnut, caltrop
(nazuna)
cudweed or
cottonweed (gogyō)
chickweed (hakobera)
nipplewort or
henbit (hotokenoza)
turnip (suzuna)
radish (suzushiro)
The young greens are chopped up in a rice porridge to
ensure health for the following year (now the plants are sold in
supermarkets, wrapped in plastic).
And finally, it is also the day for gathering pine seedlings to
ensure longevity, since pine trees are said to live a thousand
years.
Confusingly, the pine seedlings and herbs were traditionally
gathered on the year’s first day of the rat, which is the rat of
the regular zodiac, not the seven animals celebrated in the
first seven days.
brief notes
translations
season page
home
New Year
8a. brief notes
translations
On the seventh day of the new year
Setting out to gather the seven herbs: hakama tied in a
half knot
人日
七くさやはかまの紐の片結び
Heading:
Jin-
jitsu:
Person Day
Haiku: nana-
kusa
ya//
hakama
no himo
no/ kata-
musubi
seven
grasses
://
trouser-skirts ’
cord ’s/
half knot
hakama: pleated
trouser skirts, worn over kimono by either men or women, tied at
the waist.
katamusubi: a
light knot for tying hakama or obi, resembling a half bow with
one loop and one loose end showing.
Buson zenshū #1339,
An-ei 5, 1st month (February 1776). Some versions lack heading.
Early in the morning, the ‘bean scatterer’ (see notes, New Year 2a) dons ceremonial
clothing to pick the greens. Those garments are usually worn
according to strict custom, but here the cord is tied with
artless simplicity.
New Year 8b.
brief notes
translations
Jinjitsu
Old soldier daikon how he despises the young herbs
人日
老武者と大根あなどる若菜哉
Heading:
Jin-
jitsu
Person Day
Haiku:
oi-
mu- sha
to/ dai- ko anadoru/
waka- na
kana
old-man military
man/
big root
despises/ young
greens ...
anadoru: ‘despise,
contemn, slight, hold [a person] in contempt, have contempt for,
look on [a person] with scorn, hold [a person] cheap, underrate,
make light/little of, look down upon, turn up one’s note at’
Buson zenshū #29,
Hōreki 2 (1752). While wakana,
‘young greens’ (which include daikon greens) is a season
word for spring, daiko
(an old pronunciation for daikon) referring to the root
rather than the leaves, belongs to winter. Old soldier daikon:
an allusion to Tsurezure-gusa.
“There was in Tsukushi [an old name for Kyushu–n.] a
certain man, a constable of the peace it would seem, who for
many years had eaten two broiled radishes each
morning under the impression that radishes
were the sovereign remedy for all ailments. Once some enemy
forces attacked and surrounded his constabulary, choosing a
moment when the place was deserted. Just
then, two soldiers rushed out of the building, and engaged the
enemy, fighting with no thought for their lives until they drove
away all the troops. The constable, greatly
astonished, asked the soldiers, “You have fought most gallantly,
gentlemen, considering I have never seen you here// before.
Might I ask who you are?” “We are the
radishes you have eaten so faithfully every morning for so many
years,” they answered, and with these words they disappeared.
So deep was his faith in radishes that even
such a miracle could occur” (Kenkō 1998, 61-62).
The haiku in Winter section 4
also allude to this episode.
New Year 8c. brief notes
translations
A happy thing—the seven herbs, their roots showing white
めでたさよ七草の根の白く見ゆ
medetasa
yo/ nana-
kusa
no
ne
no/ shiro- ku
miyu
congratulations
!/ seven
grasses ’
roots ’/
white ly appear
Buson zenshū #2584, no
date. According to the theory of five elements, the color
blue/green is aligned with spring and the element of wood, while
white is aligned with autumn and metal. The young plants show
white roots that balance the opposite green of the leaves, an
auspicious thing.
New Year
8d. brief notes
translations
Celebrating hopes for his long life on Mr. Karai’s sixtieth
birthday
This boar’s year on the first day of the rat seedlings of
the millennial pine
何来子が六十一の寿を賀して
年是亥子の日にさゝぐ千々の松
Heading:
Ka-
rai-
shi
ga roku
ju ichi no
kotobuki
wo gashite
What Comes Child
(sub.) six ten
one ’s
congratulating (acc.) celebrating
Haiku:
toshi kore
i/
ne no
hi ni sasagu//
chi-
ji
no matsu
year this
boar/ rat
’s day
on offering//
thousand thousands
’ pines
sasagu: ‘to
lift up, give, offer, consecrate, devote, sacrifice, dedicate’
chiji, sensen: ‘thousands,
a great many’
Buson zenshū #2035.
An-ei 8 (1779). Included in a letter addressed to Kitō. Buson overlays the festival
for gathering pine seedlings with the congratulatory
celebrations for Karai-shi, now beginning his 61st year and
beginning the zodiac cycle again, a rebirth into a new youth,
traditionally accompanied by wishes for a long life. See New Year 4b, which is written for
the same occasion.
Buson’s pupil Goshun (1752-1811) made a similar haiga:
gojū kara
Because you’re fifty
kazoe yo
chiyo no count the
New Year’s pine branches
matsukazari
of a thousand ages (Addiss 1995, 50-51)
NEW YEAR 9: FIRST DRAWING OF THE BOW. This is an
archery ritual at the beginning of the year. In the Edo
Shogonate, it was held on the 11th day of the first month.
brief notes
translations
season page
home
New Year
9a. brief notes
translations
The old year dawns into the new yang water dragon year.
Not yet having seen Yoshino’s blossoms, therefore all the more
I resolve this spring, without fail, to set eyes on them for
myself—
The answering clouds take on the faint look of cherry
blossoms: the year’s first arrow
壬辰歳旦
我いまだよしのゝ花を見ず候ほどに、この春はぜひおもひたゝばやと存候
手ごたへの雲に花あり弓はじめ
Heading:
mizunoe tatsu
Sai-
tan
yang-water dragon
year dawn
ware imada
Yoshi-
no
no
hana
wo
mi- zu-
sōrō hodo ni,
I
yet
Good-luck Field
’s blossoms
(acc.) see
not -masu, all-the-more
kono haru
wa
zehi
omoi- tata-
ba ya
to
zonji- sōrō
this
spring as-for
without-fail think
stand as
such-things knowing -masu
Haiku:
te-
gotae
no/ kumo
ni
hana
ari//
yumi hajime
hand answer
’s/ clouds
in blossoms
there-are// bow
first
-sōrō: a
classical verb ending, equivalent of -masu
omoitatsu: ‘plan,
project, take into one’s head, think of (doing), have (a thing)
in contemplation, resolve, make up one’s mind, set one’s mind
upon’
Buson zenshū #1003,
An-ei 1 (1772). The Yoshino Hills
are west of Kyoto, famous for their abundance of cherry trees.
With its old-fashioned diction, the heading opening mimics the
self-introduction of a noh character, explaining the journey
that will set the action of the play into motion. Concentrating
on this desire as he releases the arrow, he sees in the distant
clouds the fleeting image of blossoms. The faintness of the
manifestation reflects some uncertainty about the intention’s
strength. In fact Buson did not manage to go to Yoshino to see
the cherry blossoms until near the end of his life, and when he
got there, a stormy wind was in the process of demolishing
them.
SPRING 1: PARSLEY
. Japanese parsley is also called dropwort or Chinese celery (Oenanthe
javanica). On the seventh day of the first month, it is
one of the seven herbs that are gathered in the Festival of the
Seven Herbs. But while those references describe hunting with
difficulty for the earliest shoots, the spring parsley is more
abundant.
brief notes
translations
season page
home
Spring 1a.
brief
notes translations
Today along an old road happening on some root parsley, leaving
it behind...
古道にけふは見て置く根芹哉
furu michi
ni/
kyō
wa
mi-
te
oku//
ne-
zeri
kana
old
road on/
today as-for
seeing and
leaving-behind// root
parsley ...
nezeri: same
as seri, ‘parsley’,
called so because the roots are also edible.
Buson zenshū #420,
Meiwa 6 (1769). Perhaps written on 1/27 (March 5th), when at
Tafuku-tei the chosen topic was
Gyoki, the memorial service for Honen, a late spring
kigo. See Buson zenshū #418:
Naniwa me ya
Women of Naniwa:
kyō wo samugaru
on pilgrimage to the capital
gyoki mōde
complaining of the cold
On an aimless walk, diverted from one’s way, happening on
a yearned-for old road and seeing root parsley—a landscape of
memory. Picking it would be pitiful, so for today, it will only
be seen and left alone (Buson
zenshū note). However, if the editor is right that the
memorial pilgrimage for Honen was the inspiration for this
haiku, then the walk would not be aimless or nostalgic, but a
religious observance, not the kind of walk on which one stops
and picks herbs.
Spring 1b.
brief
notes translations
In “the Village of the Meadow Parsley” amid the parsley a
blue-green willow
青柳や芹生の里の芹の中
ao-
yagi
ya// Seri-
yo
no
sato
no/
seri
no naka
blue willow
://
parsley grassy-place
’s village
’s/ parsley
’s amid
Buson zenshū #1497,
probably An-ei 6, 1st month (February 1777). The season word is
actually aoyagi, ‘green
willow’, for late spring.
Seryō, ‘Parsley
Meadow’, is an old name for the western part of Ōhara, north of
Kyoto, the neighborhood of Jakko-in nunnery. A pillow word. The
haiku is meant to contrast with the bleakness of Saigyō’s
Ōhara wa
On the snowy path
Seryō
wo yuki no
of Ohara’s Parsley
Meadow
michi ni akete
as dawn breaks:
yo mo ni wa hito mo
not a
single person
kayowazari keri
has passed by
Spring 1c. brief
notes translations
All the path there is—it trails off into the parsley
これきりに小道つきたり芹の中
kore kiri
ni/ komichi tsuki-
tari//
seri
no naka
this- end
at/
path
run-out has//
parsley ’s amid
tsukiru: ‘become
exhausted, be consumed, spend, end’, etc.
Buson zenshū #421,
Meiwa 6 (1769); Perhaps written on the same occasion as Spring 4a. One version has the error kōri (ice) for tsuki. The disappearing
path evokes the memory of youth, and the scent of one’s
hometown.
Spring 1d. brief
notes translations
Old temple: a thrown-away clay pot amid the parsley
古寺やほうろく捨る芹の中
furu-
dera
ya// hō-
roku
sutsuru/
seri
no naka
old
temple ://
roast burn
discard/ parsley
’s amid
hōroku: ‘a simple unglazed earthenware pan for
roasting or parching’
Buson zenshū #1996,
probably An-ei 7 (1778). The broken pieces of a simple clay pot
are thrown away behind an old temple. The picture suggests human
bones, the broken receptacle of the human body discarded, in
contrast to the lush green life of the vegetation.
SPRING 2: BURNING THE
FIELDS. This agricultural practice, done in early spring,
killed harmful vermin and caused new grass to sprout (Buson
zenshū #440).
brief
notes translations
season
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Spring 2a.
brief
notes translations
A field of bracken: come, let’s set ablaze these withered
azaleas
わらび野やいざもの焚む枯つゝじ
warabi
no
ya// izamono taka-
mu/
kare-
tsutsuji
bracken field
://
come
burn let’s/
withered azalea
taku: ‘burn, kindle, build (a fire), boil,
cook’, = yaku: ‘set
fire to, burn, bake, roast’
Buson zenshū #441,
Meiwa 6 (1769). Written on same theme (and perhaps on same
occasion) as Spring 2d. Season
word: while it initially appears to be warabi, ‘bracken’,
a spring season word, the deeper term is no wo yaku,
‘burning the fields’. Every year people go out to the fields to
pick and gather bracken shoots to eat. The presence of the
withered azaleas are a source of good fortune: the tone is one
of anticipation that next year, in the burned traces, much more
bracken will sprout up.
Spring 2b. brief
notes translations
Reading the Ten Foot Square Hut
Blazing things from the beggar’s fire to the burning
fields...
方丈記を読む
物焚た乞食の火より焼野哉
Heading: Hō-
jō- ki
wo
yomu
Direction 10-feet
Narrative (acc.)
reading
Haiku: mono
taita/
ko- jiki
no hi
yori//
yake
no kana
things burned/
ask food
’s fire
from// burning field
...
Buson zenshū #442, Meiwa 6 (1769). One version has
heading. Written on same theme (and perhaps on the same
occasion) as Spring 2d. Invokes an
event from The Ten Square Hut,
the fire that begins from the beggar’s or dancer’s shack (or inn
where dancers were staying) and devastates the capital. But
Buson’s fires, in contrast, are beneficent.
“The fire was said to have been started at the narrow
street name Higuchitomi-no-kōji, in a rough house specially made
to put up a group of dancers for a short time. The fire went on
stretching this way and that before the angry wind, getting
wider and wider in the form of an unfolded fan. Houses in the
distance were thickly covered with smoke and the earth nearby
was a sea of violent flames. The sky was bright and red with
heated powder sent up into the air, and gave back the light of
the angry fire under it, while the cruel wind got the fire
separate into numbers of flames, which went on running over the
earth, burning houses even one or two hundred meters off. The
persons with such flames all around them seemed unconscious of
themselves while living. Some went down to the earth almost
unable to take breath because of the thick smoke, and others
went to their deaths in a minute, coated over with flames. Some
were able to get out of the fire almost after giving up hope,
taking with them nothing of their property. All the jewels and
things of great value were completely burned” (Kamo 1990,
6-8).
Reminiscent of this haiku from the same year (Buson
zenshū #594):
mono taite
Burning
things:
hanabi ni tōki
the
distant fireworks,
kakaribune
a boat’s fishing torch
Spring 2c. brief
notes translations
The field and Jizō’s anise branches burning together...
野とゝもに焼る地蔵の樒哉
no
to tomo
ni/
yakuru
Ji-
zō
no// shikimi
kana
field and
alike/
being-burned Earth
Treasury ’s//
anise ...
Jizō:
A Bodhisattva, the guardian of children
shikimi: ‘Japanese
anise’. Branches of it are used as offerings to Buddha,
and the fragrant bark can be an ingredient in incense.
Buson zenshū #443,
Meiwa 6 (1769). Written on same theme (and perhaps on same
occasion) as Spring 2d. Shikimi/anise is a
member of the magnolia family, a tall evergreen tree, the
branches of which are offered before the Buddha. As the sparks
fly from the burning field, the anise branches burn before the
roadside statue of Jizō. Jizō smiles gently at the barrier of
self. See also:
fuyu no yo ya
A winter night:
furuki hotoke o
let’s start with
the old Buddha
mazu takan (Buson
zenshū #2161)
for firewood
Spring 2d. brief
notes translations
As the eastern sky lightens, small rain begins to fall on the
burned field...
しのゝめに小雨ふり出すやけ野哉
shinonome
ni/ ko-
same furi-
dasu//
yake-
no kana
east-cloud
at/ small
rain
fall
beginning// burned
field ...
shinonome: ‘daybreak,
dawn, aurora’
yake-no: Lanoue often translates
this as ‘burning field’ in Issa’s haiku
Buson zenshū #440;
Meiwa 6 (1769). The rain deepens the burned black as well as the
new green. As the eastern sky lightens, and night turns to dawn
over the burned field, the small rain falls silently. In the
dawn light, the deep black field recovers the bright color of
life.
Spring 2e. brief
notes translations
Daybreak and rain: the blackened tips of a field of
silvergrass...
暁の雨やすぐろの薄原
akatsuki no/
ame ya// su-
guro
no/ susuki
hara
daybreak ’s/
rain ://
tip- blackened
’s/ silver-grass
field
susuki: ‘eulalia’
or ‘silvergrass’,
often translated as ‘pampas grass’ for its visual resemblance,
although the two plants are not closely related.
Buson zenshū #1354,
probably An-ei 5 (1776). Season word: suguro
no susuki. The silvergrass is singed from the
old way of burning back vegetation in the spring mountains. A
rain at dawn comes falling, washing the deep black of the
charred grass, and changing yesterday’s burned field completely.
Sasaki: “After the
burning of a field (no-yama
ayaku), the tips (sue,
su) of grasses are scorched black (kuro, guro). That field is su-guro-no. There is su-guro of eulalia too...
It is raining at dawn across the
expanse of black burned eulalia” (2002, 104-105).
SPRING 3: MUGWORT
, wormwod, sagebrush, Artemisia vulgaris, a general spring kigo.
brief
notes translations
season
page home
Spring 3a. brief
notes translations
Just out the temple’s back gate, encountering new sprouted sage
裏門の寺に逢着す蓬かな
ura- mon no/
tera
ni hō-
chaku su//
yomogi kana
rear gate
’s/ temple
at meeting
arrive-at doing//
mugwort ...
Syllable count: 5/8/5
hōchaku suru: ‘face, encounter’
Buson zenshū #2375,
probably Temmei 3 (1783). Notice the first character for hōchaku plus the radical
for grass creates the character for yomogi. Hōchaku is an allusion to Chang
Chi ( 768-830), his poem “Meeting Chia Tao” from Poems
in Three Hands: ‘At the priest’s temple
quarters, encountering butterbur flowers’ (that is giant
butterbur, Ligularia
kaempferi). (Chia Tao was Chang Chi’s contemporary,
author of the famous poem “Note Left for an Absent Recluse”.)
Buson exchanges silverleaf for mugwort, found while looking at
the ground, foraging for plants in the area behind the temple.
SPRING 4: TREE GRAFTING. A
mid-spring kigo.
brief
notes translations
season
page home
Spring 4a. brief
notes translations
As they work, they talk of things across the hedge—tree
grafting...
垣越にものうちかたる接木哉
kaki- goshi ni/
hanashi
shi
nagara// tsugi-
ki kana
hedge across/
talk
doing
while//
splice tree ...
kaki: ‘hedge, fence, wall’
Buson zenshū #2194,
probably Temmei 1 (1781). Alternative version to: kakigoshi
ni/ mono uchi kataru/ tsugiki kana. Mono-uchi:
‘thing within’, could also mean ‘blade’; in kendo, it refers
to the third of the sword blade farthest from the handle. There
could be some playfulness in the use of sword terminology in
relation to the grafter’s knife–“Across the hedge, discussing
the fineness of the blade–tree grafting.” The note says: ‘while
the neighbors chat at ease, across the living hedge, their hands
take no note of their talk. A tranquil tree grafting landscape.’
other translation:
Over a hedge
Exchanging stories—
Tree-grafting. (Saito and Nelson 2006,
38)
Spring 4b. brief
notes translations
Beside the field of yellow flowers the tree grafter has left his
pipe behind...
菜畠にきせるわするゝ接木哉
na-
batake ni/
kiseru wasururu//
tsugi-
ki kana
mustard
field in/
pipe
forgotten// splice
tree ...
Buson zenshū #2195,
probably Temmei 1 (1781). Buson zenshū note: the
peaceful scene evoked, of the grafter smoking while looking at
the flowers, contrasts with the toil of the season that he is
probably now engaged in.
other translation:
on the field of mustards
a tobacco pipe is left
by a tree grafter (Ueda 1998, 133)
SPRING 5: BRACKEN
. Pteridium aquilinum var. latiusculum, ‘bracken, fern,
adder-spit’, a late spring season word.
brief
notes translations
season
page home
Spring 5a. brief
notes translations
See Spring 2a.
Spring 5b. brief
notes translations
Bracken fronds left broken and wilting in the slow dusk
折もてるわらび凋れて暮遅し
ori-
moteru/
warabi
shiore-
te/ kure
ososhi
breaking enduring/
bracken drooping
and/ darkening slowly
Buson zenshū #2118,
An-ei 9, 3/20 (April 24th, 1780). Kure ososhi: ‘dusk
comes slowly,’ is also a general spring season word. The
returning traveler picked ferns along the way to carry home, but
they tightened and wilted as the day darkened.
SPRING 6: PINE FLOWERS, late
spring, actually referring to the pine tree’s pollen.
brief
notes translations
season
page home
Spring 6a. brief
notes translations
Joss stick’s ash; a pine tree sheds its pollen
線香の灰やこぼれて松の花
sen- kō
no/ hai
ya// koborete/
matsu no hana
line scent
’s/ ash :
//
spilling/
pine ’s
flower
senkō: ‘incense stick’
koboreru: ‘fall, drop, spill, be spilt, overflow,
be scattered,’ etc.
Buson zenshū #77, Meiwa
4 (1767). Heading omitted. The new sprouting of the lavender
female flowers causes the light brown male flowers to take
shape; the pollen is compared to ashes spilling from the incense
stick offered before the grave. Written as part of a collection
on the occasion for the Buddhist memorial service on the first
anniversary of Sōoku’s death
(edited by Buzen). Sōoku
passed away on Meiwa 3, 3/12 (April 20, 1766).
“Master Sōoku always had on his wall my painting of a man
seating in a relaxed posture under a pine tree. It was his
favorite painting. Despite our difference in age, we were close
friends. Unfortunately I could not be with him during his last
days as I was out of town for a certain reason. That had
bothered me all this time, until another spring came round. Now
in front of his grave, I wish to express my regrets and hope
that he will still recognize me as someone dearer than a mere
stranger.”
is that the ash
from my incense sticks?
pollen from the pine (Ueda 1998, 42-43)
SPRING 7: SPRING GRASS.
brief
notes translations
season
page home
Spring 7a. brief notes
translations
Through spring grass the path divides in three: one is a
shortcut inviting me home
春艸路三叉中に捷径 あり我を迎ふ
shun-
sō
michi san-
sa
naka ni
sō- kei
ari
ware
wo mukau
spring grass
path three
forks in-
to fast
path there-is
me (acc.)
greeting
(24 syllables)
Buson zenshū appendix
3. Stanza 10 of Buson’s long Japanese/Chinese poem, “Spring Wind
on the Riverbank of Kema,” “Shumpu
batei kyoku”, first published in the spring
of An-ei 6 (1777). It is a tribute to Chinese literature, the
spring grass evoking nostalgia and homesickness.
Spring 7b. brief
notes translations
Coming home—how many paths through the spring grass!
我帰る路いく筋ぞ春の艸
(Heading omitted)
waga kaeru/
michi
iku-
suji zo//
haru no
kusa
my
return/ path
how-many lines
!// spring
’s grass
Buson zenshū #1990,
also in v. 4, 177. An-ei 7, 3/15 (April 12th, 1778). Haibun
inscribed on his own picture. Alludes to several sources, one
from the Ch’u tz’u, or
Songs of the South:
A prince went wandering
And did not return.
In spring the grass grows
Lush and green (probably Liu An, 179-122 BCE,
Hawkes 1985, 244)
Another is Wang Wei (700-761):
Among the mountains we bid each other
farewell;
The sun is setting as I close my bramble
gate.
Spring grass every year is green;
But will the young prince ever return? (Metropolitan Museum of Art,
2000-2013)
Wandering, longing for the old days are fitting material for
poetry. Wandering with companions, traveling on the spring
plain, longing for the old days until the sad dusk, while
wishing for a return path, how many lines diverge far into the
spring grass and disappear? Thoughts of keen nostalgia
accumulate for the person mourning the loss of his home...(note)
This quote from Li Yu (937-978
CE) also seems relevant:
This pain of separation is like the spring
grass—
The farther away I journey, the ranker it
grows. (Watson 1984,
362)
Ueda includes the
prefatory prose of the haibun:
“‘We had a verse-writing party at Rinshō Temple in Cape
Wada. Of the topics given out at the party, mine happened
to be ‘spring grass’. That kindled an irresistible emotion
within me and led me into a series of pensive reflections. What
remote land does the prince continue to roam? For whom does he
think spring returns to his native village? One should not
emulate his roaming habit. Nor should one learn from his
hardened heart...’
The haiga was a gift from Buson to [Imada] Tairo. Through the
haibun, therefore, Buson is speaking to Tairo and comparing him
to a romantic hero expelled from his homeland and leading a life
of exile. The prince referred to is a stock character who
appeared in Chinese poetry starting with Ch’u Yuan in Elegies of Ch’u.
Noble in character as well as in birth, he has to wander far
from his homeland for reasons beyond his control. Thoughts
of his old home are always tormenting him, yet there is no way
for him to return there. In Buson’s mind, Tairo is such a
prince” (1998, 121).
Cape Wada is a pillow word for the middle of Kobe Harbor.
Spring 7c. brief
notes translations
In new sprouted grass the willow tree its roots forgotten
若艸に根をわすれたる柳かな
waka- kusa
ni/ ne
wo
wasure-
taru// yanagi
kana
young grass
in/ root (acc)
forgotten have//
willow ...
Buson zenshū #2232,
probably Temmei 2 (1782). The season word here is really yanagi,
‘willow’, for late spring. Ne is shōne, ‘nature,
disposition, spirit, mind, natural skills’. As young grass
sprouts at the roots of the willow, the willow’s spirit forgets
itself and rises up, even though its early buds still shake in
the cold wind.
SPRING 8: KERRIA, yamabuki,
Kerria
japonica, ‘breath of the mountain’, a wild yellow
thornless rose, often associated with waterside banks, a season
word of late spring.
brief
notes translations
season
page home
Spring 8a. brief
notes translations
Kakuya Tachihaki no Osa was an unparalleled aesthete. While
remembering how he and the monk of Kosobe pursued elegance,
upon their first meeting, by drawing their treasures from
their brocade pouches, and as I am spurred on ceaselessly by
the beauty of spring:
Mountain roses: on the waters of the Ide are flowing shavings
from the carpenter’s plane
加久夜長帯刀はさうなき数寄もの也けり、古曽部の入道じめてのげざんに、引出
物見すべきとて、錦の小帋をさがしもとめける風流などをもひ出つゝ、すゞろ春色に堪
えず侍れば
山吹や井手を流るゝ鉋屑
Heading: Ka-
ku-
ya
Tachi- haki no Osa
wa sōnaki
Increase Old-story
Night Belt
Sword
Long as-for unrivaled
su-
ki- mono
nari-
keri, Ko-
so-
be
no nyū-
dō
strength gather
thing become
had, Old
Former Section
’s entering way
hajimete
no
gezan
ni,
hiki- de-
mono
misu-
beki tote,
first-meeting ’s
interview upon,
pull out
thing showing
had-to even
nishiki no
ko-
bukuro
o
sagashi-motome- keru
fū- ryū
nado
brocade ’s
small
bag
(acc.)
sought-to
had pine
flow et cetera
omoi-ide- tsutsu,
suzuro
shun- shoku
ni
taezu
habere- ba
remember while,
made-restless spring
nature by
always attending as
Haiku: yama-
buki
ya// I-
de
o
nagaruru/ kanna- kuzu
mountain breath
:// spring
hand (accusative)
flowing/
plane scraps
nyūdo: a lay monk
fūryū: ‘elegance, taste, refinement’
“Ide, a village in the hills of Yamashiro, is a poetic
toponym associated with yamabuki, fresh water, and song frogs”
in waka (Cranston 2006,
451)
Buson zenshū #2345,
Temmei 3 (1783);Temmei 2, 12th month (February 1783)
Heading: Kamens traces the allusions in this haiku, beginning
with this anecdote of the first meeting of Kakuya no Osa
Tachihaki Toshinobu and Nōin
(988–1051?), the monk of Kosobe in Fukuro zōshi:
“Toshinobu, the head of the crown prince’s archers, was a great
connoisseur (sukimono nari). When he met Nōin for
the first time, both men were deeply impressed by one another.
‘I have something I would like to show you,’ Nōin said, ‘to
commemorate your gracious visit,’ and he withdrew from within
his robes a brocaded pouch. Inside it was a single piece of wood
shaving. Showing this to Toshinobu, Nōin said, ‘This is my
greatest treasure. It is a shaving made at the time of the
construction of the Nagara bridge.’
Toshinobu was thrilled, and then he also took an object wrapped
in paper from within the folds of his own robe. He unwrapped it
and showed that inside lay the body of a dried frog. ‘This is a
frog from Ide,’ he explained. Both men were extremely pleased.
Then each returned his treasure to its place of safe-keeping,
and the two parted company. People of the present would no doubt
call them foolish.”
In his manuscript New Florilogem, Buson dismisses this
habit of collecting objects connected to the history of poetry,
saying “If someone of the present day were to say that he owns
one of the pillars from the Nagara Bridge, or the preserved body
of a frog from Ide, I’m sure that most people would think that
person an utter fool, and would refuse to believe his claim...”
However:
“Buson, it is clear, had read his Fukuro zōshi, and remembers,
in particular, the Nōin and Toshinobu episode. He remembered it
a few years later, as well, and, in letters to disciples written
in the winter of 1782 and again in the following autumn, he
wrote an abridged version of their story as a kotobagaki
for one of his own hokku:
‘Kakuya no Osa Tashihaki Toshinobu was a sukimono
without equal. Remembering how, at his first encounter with the
Kosobe monk [Nōin], the two men felt the need to show one
another their treasures, and how Nōin proved his elegant
connoisseurship by displaying the contents of a brocade bag—and,
deeply stirred by the sights of spring, I wrote— [the hokku]...
Kerria roses!
And, flowing down Ide’s
stream, wood shavings.’”
Furthermore, in one of these letters, Buson adds these comments
on his composition:
“I wrote the poem you see here with this amusing old story../.in
mind. But on the surface it will appear that I have simply
described a pleasing scene, with gentle spring sunlight and a
suggestion that the wood shavings are drifting down from some
place upstream on the Ide River, where peasants are building a
cottage. It is frequently the case that the reading of a Chinese
poem can be explained in two ways; the same holds true for
haikai” (Kamens 1997,
160-165).
SPRING 9: SWEETFISH .
Ayu, a kind of freshwater trout, is often translated as
‘sweetfish’. They are a kigo for late spring, when the young
fish (waka aya, about two inches long) swim up mountain
streams. They are prized for their delicate flavor (Buson zenshū).
brief
notes translations
season
page home
Spring
9a. brief
notes translations
A young sweetfish swim upstream, a blade of bamboo grass from
the valley floating by
若鮎や谷の小笹も一葉行
waka
ayu ya//
tani
no o-
zasa
mo/ hito-
ha yuku
young trout
:// valley
’s small
bamboo-grass also/
one leaf goes
ozasa: ‘bamboo grass, dwarf bamboo’
Buson zenshū #978,
Meiwa period (1764-1771). One leaf of dwarf bamboo falling from
the shaded valley has the same size and shape as the fish, but
it floats down the rapids and they swim in the opposite
direction. The leaf reveals the energy and power of the fish.
(“An ayu trout, when it grows to about two inches,
leaves the sea in early spring and swims up the stream where it
was born. Between a swimming trout and a fallen bamboo leaf,
there is a similarity in shape and size, as well as contrast in
the direction each is going”–Ueda
1998, 158n).
Spring 9b. brief
notes translations
Scooping up sweetfish all day, all day the crags alive with
wings
鮎汲の終日岩に翼かな
ayu
kumi
no/ hine-
mosu iwa
ni// tsubasa kana
sweetfish scooping
’s/ finish
day crags
on// wings ...
Buson zenshū #2620, no
date. Season word: ayu kumi, ‘ladling up small
sweetfish with a fan-net’. The haiku compares the sight of the
round fan nets to wings—or perhaps doesn’t distinguish between
the birds and the fishermen. The fisherman stand on the
crags above brandishing the nets all day like birds unfurling
their wings.
SPRING 10: SPRING DEEPENS. A
late season kigo.
brief
notes translations
season
page home
Spring 10a. brief
notes translations
Where iris leaves rise up is that a pond? spring grown five feet
deep
菖生ふ池歟五尺の春深し
ayame
ou/
ike ka//
go- shaku
no/ haru
fukashi
iris
growing/ pond
?// five
feet
’s/ spring deep
shaku: an old Japanese unit of measure, close to a
foot in length. Goshaku: one of several allusions
Buson makes to Bashō’s haiku, from Shikō’s haiku treatise The Pine Forest of Kuzu:
hototogisu
A
cuckoo
naku ya go shaku no
sings: atop five feet
ayame-gusa
of iris leaf (Buson zenshū note)
Buson zenshū
#2590, date unknown. ‘Iris flowers’ are a summer season word,
but this haiku refers to the leaves; the flowers have not yet
appeared.
SPRING 11: PEAR BLOSSOMS, a
late spring kigo. Some important sources for this image in
Japanese poetry are the Chinese poem “Song of Unending Sorrow”
and Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book.
brief
notes translations
season
page home
The poet Po Chü-i wrote his
famous “Song
of Unending Sorrow” about the relationship between T’ang
Emperor Hsuan Tsung and his notorious concubine, Yang Kuei-fei.
His favoring of her unimportant family led to a rebellion,
during which she was forced to hang herself, and the T’ang
dynasty fell soon after. But the poem allows the emperor a final
meeting with her on a magic island—
Her face, delicate as jade, is desolate
beneath the heavy tears,
Like a spray of pear blossom in spring,
veiled in drops of rain.
This poem was read in Japan with great
appreciation. In the Pillow
Book, Sei
Shōnagon says
“The pear blossom can be compared to the face of a plain woman;
for its coloring lacks all charm. Or so, at least, I used to
think. Knowing that the Chinese admired the pear blossom greatly
and praise it in their poems, I wondered what they could see in
it and made a point of examining the flower. Then I was
surprised to find that its petals were prettily edged with a
pink tinge, so faint that I could not be sure whether it was
there or not. It was to the pear blossoms, I recalled, that the
poet likened to the face of Yang Kuei-fei when she came forth in
tears to meet the emperor’s messenger—‘a spray of pear blossom
in spring, covered with drops of rain’—and I realized that this
was no idle figure of speech and that it really was a
magnificent flower” (1979, 63).
Translator Ivan Morris points out in his notes that Yang
Kuei-fei’s beauty was famously compared to jade, and only her
paleness here to the pear flowers, thus bringing into question
Sei Shonagon’s real knowledge of Chinese literature (ibid.,
291). It may be that Sei Shonagon cemented the comparison in
Japan, however. In the 13th century song “Blossoms,” a catalog
of blossoms appearing in poems, “the countenance of Yang
Kuei-fei” is “a branch of blossoms wrapped in rain” (Brazell 1980, 254).
Spring 11a. brief
notes translations
The whole long day whitely blooming pear blossoms
長き日にましろに咲ぬなしの花
nagaki hi
ni/ mashiro
ni
saki-
nu// nashi
no hana
long day
in/
white
in bloomed
has// pear
’s blossoms
Buson zenshū #452,
Meiwa 6 (1769). The season word is nagaki hi,
‘long day’, a general spring kigo. Written on same theme (and
perhaps same occasion?) as #451:
kure kururu
The setting sun
hi ya yama tori no
lingers: the copper pheasant
otoshizashi
dangles his tail
In the long days of spring, the pure white pear blossoms begin
to bloom. That whiteness adds a shadow of melancholy to the
tranquil spring scene.
Spring 11b. brief
notes translations
Someone lingers under the trees of the pear garden, the hazy
moon
梨の園に人彳めりおぼろ月
nashi no
sono ni/
hito
tatazumeri// oboro- zuki
pear ’s
garden in/
person
loitering//
hazy moon
Syllable count: 6/7/5.
Buson zenshū #503,
Meiwa 6. Although it contains the spring season word oborozuki
or ‘hazy moon’, the concept is derived from Shōha’s
haiku gathering on the chosen autumn theme meigetsu, ‘famous
moon’, ‘harvest moon’, on 8/2, Meiwa 5 (September 12th, 1768).
There is something charming, fascinating, coquettish, in the
behavior of the mysterious figure. Compare to Buson zenshū
#173:
nashi no sono ni
Someone lingers
hito tatazu-meri
under the trees of
the pear garden,
yoi no tsuki
this evening’s moon
The pear orchard evokes Chinese opera (in which Yang Kuai-fei
was a favorite character–see section heading). Ming Huang
(712-756), an emperor of the Tang era, established the first
academy for music and performance in his pear garden at the
palace in the capital of Changan. It was therefore called the
Pear Garden, and actors came to be known as “children of the
Pear Garden.”
Spring 11c. brief
notes translations
Under the blossoming pear there is a woman reading a letter by
moonlight
梨の花月に書ミよむ女あり
nashi no
hana/
tsuki ni
fumu
yomu/
onna ari
pear ’s
blossoms/ moon
in letter
reading/ woman there-is
Buson zenshū #504,
Meiwa 6 (1769). Pear blossoms again are associated with China
and the figure of a Chinese beauty in opera or drama,
particularly Yuan Kuai Fei (see previous note). The haiku makes
a harmonious picture because the blossoms, the letter, and the
moonlight are all white. The letter must be a love letter for
the woman to have been driven out of doors to read it (Blyth 1992, 2:592;
3:765).
Spring 11d. brief
notes translations
A cloud just beginning to form on Mt. Tortoise Shell: pear
blossoms
甲斐がねに雲こそかゝれ梨の花
Kai-
gane
ni/ kumo
koso
kakare//
nashi no hana
Tortoise-shell Patterned
on/ cloud
just beginning//
pear ’s
blossoms
Buson zenshū #1366.
An-ei 5, 3/10 (April 27th, 1776). Kaigane: a pillow
word, a tall range of three mountains in the Kaigane region in
Yamanashi prefecture. Yamanashi is a pear producing region, so
the whole side of the mountain would be covered with the
suspended white cloud of pear trees blooming. Nōin also joins Mt. Kaigane and
pear blossoms in a waka from the Mandaishū (10,000
Ages Collection).
The compound kaigane means ‘effect, result, fruit,
success, benefit, advantage’, probably originating from the
augury method of reading burnt tortoise shells.
SUMMER 1: LILY, LILY FLOWER.
Covers several species, a late summer kigo, but the first of
these haiku especially suggest early summer.
brief notes
translations
season page
home
Summer 1a. brief notes
translations
Bending with dew toward the red ink stone—lily flower
朱硯に露かたぶけよ百合花
shu-
suzuri
ni/ tsuyu
katabuke yo//
yuri no hana
red
inkstone to/
dew
tipping
!//
lily ’s flower
Buson zenshū #989,
Meiwa era (1764-1771)—a copy in Buson’s handwriting comes from
the end of this period.
red: Chinese tradition aligns the four seasons with
colors, directions, animals, elements, and other categories.
Winter:
water
black
tortoise
north
Autumn:
Heaven:
Spring:
metal
air
wood
white
yellow or gold
green/blue
tiger
associated with the
emperor dragon
west
center
east
Summer:
fire
red
phoenix
south
The lily is bending toward red, which is the color of summer.
Red refers to the color of India ink used in the ink stone, not
the ink stone itself. The dew on the flower will spill onto the
ink stone and become ink. In the dyeing of the white dew there
is another iteration of an idea Buson returned to many times.
White in Buson’s haiku often signifies whole hearted being,
undivided by contradictory desires, and color therefore
represents a kind of fall from innocence See notes to New Year
2e, also:
kiku no tsuyu
Dew on the chrysanthemum:
ukete suzuri no
the ink stone receives
inochi kana (Buson zenshū
#613)
its life...
Summer 1b. brief notes
translations
For a moment, the early lily kept alive in the monk’s cell at
the valley temple
かりそめに早百合生ケたり谷の坊
karisome ni/
sa-
yuri
ike-
tari//
tani no
bō
brief-
ly/ early
hundred-meet kept alive
has-been// valley
’s temple
ikeru: ‘keep alive, arrange flowers (in a vase)’
(ikebana uses this character)
bō: ‘monk, monk’s house or cell, house, room,
small (Buddhist) temple’
Buson zenshū #1724,
An-ei 6 (1777).
SUMMER 2: POPPY.
Papaver somniferum, usually white or red, a season word
of early summer.
brief notes
translations
season
page home
Summer 2a. brief notes
translations
A poppy blooming—would the woven fence were not there...
けしの花 籬 すべくもあらぬ 哉
keshi no
hana/ magaki
subeku mo//
ara- nu kana
poppy ’s
blossom/ hedge-fence
should also//
be not ...
Buson zenshū #1125,
probably An-ei 3, 4th month (May 1774). Magaki
alludes to Tsurezuregusa:
“About the tenth month I had the occasion to visit a village
beyond the place called Kurusono. I made my way far down a
moss-covered path until I reached a lonely looking hut. Not a
sound could be heard, except for the dripping of a water pipe
buried in fallen leaves. Sprays of chrysanthemum and red maple
leaves had been carelessly arranged on the holy water shelf.
Evidently somebody was living here. Moved, I was thinking, ‘One
can live even in such a place,’ when I noticed in the garden
beyond a great tangerine tree, its branches bent with fruit,
that had been enclosed by a forbidding fence. Rather
disillusioned, I thought now, ‘If only the tree had not been
there!’” (Kenkō 1998,
11)
Buson zenshū: poppies fall easily, so the master has
protected them with this fence. If not, the speaker could pluck
them at his leisure, free from care. Or, both the owner and the
person wanting to pick them could have a more free, careless
attitude. [I also thought the fence was a disappointment because
it was an unfitting foil for the poppies. In any case, it seems
a more straightforward regret then Kenkō’s, which I don’t quite
understand. Does the place seem less beautifully solitary and
melancholy because of the tree? Is the tree the problem because
it created the need for the fence?]
Buson referred to the same passage from Kenkō in Buson
zenshū #1261:
takenoko ya
Hunting bamboo shoots:
kōji wo oshimu
I
resent the tree full of tangerines
kaki no soto
from outside the
fence
Summer 2b. brief notes
translations
For them also the monk strikes the vesper bell: poppy flowers
They enter each other: temple bell at evening, poppy flowers
入相 を撞くも法師や芥子花
iri- ai
wo/ tsuku
mo hō-
shi
ya//
ke-
shi
no hana
enter each-other
(acc)/ strike
also law
master ://
rubbish child
’s flower
iriai: ‘sunset’
tsuku: ‘strike a bell, strike against, attack,
thrust, pierce, stap, gore, prick, push, poke’
Buson zenshū #87.
Perhaps written on Meiwa 5, 5/6 (June 20th, 1768), when keshi
hana was the chosen topic at Tessō’s Dairaidō on this day
(according to Natsu yori). Certainly it existed by
Meiwa 8 (1771).
The 11th century poet Nōin
wrote the waka yama sato no haru yūgure kite mireba iriai no
kane ni hana zo chirikeru, “Visiting a mountain temple on
a spring evening, when the evening bell tolls, the blossoms
fall”, Shinkokinshū
#116 (Klein 1991, 318).
The haiku makes a substitution in the waka convention of kane
ni rakka, bell sounding amid falling cherry blossoms.
Lanoue, “Winter Quilt”
(1991-2010): Shinji Ogawa explains that iriai (sunset)
is, in this context, “a short form for iriai no kane
(sunset bell). This bell is struck six times at thirty minutes
after sunset, three times in short intervals as the prelude,
then six times in longer intervals.”
The ambiguity of the term iriai suggests the
alternative translation.
Summer 2c. brief notes
translations
Leaving Mount Shumi...
poppy flower
須弥を出
る
けしの花
Shu- mi
wo
deru//
keshi no hana
Ought All-the-more
(acc) go-out//
poppy ’s flower
Syllable count: 5//0/5.
Buson zenshū #2502,
An-ei 7-Temmei 3 (1778-1783). The middle line is left blank, an
unprecedented break with form in Buson. Shumi
is the high mountain at the center of existence, according to
Buddhism, here compared to the tiny speck of the poppy.
SUMMER 3: MANDARIN ORANGE FLOWER, Citrus nobilis,
a season word of the 4th month (early summer). It was also the
surname of an important noble family in the Heian period, and so
has a certain atmosphere of a lost aristocratic past.
brief
notes translations
season
page home
Summer 3a. brief notes
translations
Scent of orange blossom: long ago, a high ranking general was
lord of this manor
橘や むかしやかたの弓矢取
tachibana
ya// mukashi
yakata
no/ yumi-
ya tori
mandarin-orange
:// old-times
mansion ’s/
bow arrow having
yumiyatori, ‘soldier’; yumitori: ‘archer’
Buson zenshū #1560,
An-ei 6, 4/20 (May 26th, 1777). From New Flower Picking.
Alludes to:
satsuki matsu
When I
breathe the fragrance
hana tachibana no
of the mandarin
orange
kao kageba
blossoms that await
mukashi no hito no
the Fifth
Month it brings back the
sode no ka zosuru
scented sleeves of
one I loved
(Kokinshū 2004, 885; also in Tales of Ise, dan
60)
In the Muromachi period, yakata (‘mansion, hall,
residence’) was a title bestowed upon higher levels of military
commanders. The orange blossom evokes the memory of the
illustrious lineage of the high ranking warrior who was this
mansion’s lord in former times.
This later haiku (Buson zenshū #2067) uses a pun on tachibana
no ka, ‘the scent of orange blossom’ (tachibana no
kagoto, “orange blossom’s excuse”) to evoke the above waka
and the link between scent and memory:
Having pulled out the wadding from a lined
kimono, I attach this note to send it back to the elderly lady
known to me that it originally belonged to
It provides an excuse
for the orange blossom crest:
lined
kimono...
Summer 3b. brief notes
translations
Orange blossoms’ perfume: in the dawn twilight, a ruined mansion
たちばなのかはたれ時や古館
tachibana
no/ kawataretoki
ya// furu- yakata
mandarin-orange ’s/
dawn
://
old mansion
kawataretoki: ‘dawn’, but has archaic meaning of
‘dusk’ as well.
yakata: ‘mansion, palace, large building, hall,
temporary residence’
Buson zenshū #1139,
probably An-ei 3, 6/8 (July 16th, 1774). In fragmentary
documents, kawatare toki ya is amended kawatare toki
no. Pivots on tachibana no ka, ‘scent of orange
blossoms’, as does Buson zenshū #2067 in the previous
note.
In the dim light of dawn, we glimpse what the ruined mansion
must have looked like in its prime. The floating scent of orange
blossom stirs recollections of old waka and deepens the longing
for the past.
I find the haike also evocative of Ueda
Akinari’s ghost stories, like “A Serpent’s Lust,” in which
a young man spends the night seduced by a rich beautiful widow
in her mansion, only to find out that the house is a burned ruin
and the woman is a demon snake in disguise.
SUMMER 4: FLOWERING
THORN, WILD ROSE . Rosa multiflora, early
summer. In Buson, closely associated with nostalgia for
childhood.
brief
notes translations
season
page home
Summer 4a. brief notes
translations
After the breath-of-the-mountain, after the rabbit flower: briar
rose
山吹のうの花の後や花いばら
yama- buki
no/
u
no hana
no ato
ya// hana ibara
mountain breath
’s/ rabbit
’s flower
’s after
:// flower
thorn
5/8/5 syllable count.
yamabuki: ‘kerria, a small wild yellow rose’, a
season word of late spring (see Spring 8).
u
no hana: Deutzia scabra, a shrub that bears
small white flowers in May and June, and so a season word of
early summer.
Buson zenshū #1255,
An-ei 4, 4/12 (May 11th, 1775). Blyth sees the haiku as a
succession of colors—yellow, then white, then red (1992, 3:850
). Buson zenshū says the pale wild rose is tinged with
pink, and it is as if a succession of characters appeared on the
scene of a play.
Summer 4b. brief notes
translations
Lost in sad thought while climbing the hill: wild roses
愁ひつゝ岡にのぼれば花いばら
urei-
tsutsu/ oka
ni
nobore-
ba/
hana ibara
lamenting while/
hill up
climbing while/
flower thorn
urei: from ureu, ‘grieve, lament, be anxious’
oka: ‘hill, knoll, rising ground’
Buson zenshū #1129,
probably like #1128, written in An-ei 3, 4th month (May–June
1774). In the embrace of melancholy while climbing a nearby
hill, seeing the white flowering briars blooming thickly here
and there, and feeling the melancholy deepen all the more for
the contrast with Tao Yüan-ming (see notes to next haiku). Keene
also says that the haiku is heavily indebted to Li Po for its elements (1996, 347).
Other translation:
I have brought the melancholy of my heart
up the hill
to the wild roses in flower (Merwin and Lento 2013,
89)
Summer 4c. brief notes
translations
Climbing that eastern slope:
Briar roses blooming on the path just as they did in the village
of my childhood
かの東皐にのぼれば
花茨故郷の路に似たるかな
Heading: kano
tō-
kō
ni
nobore- ba
that east
shore up
ascending as
Haiku: hana
ibara/
ko- kyō
no michi
ni//
nitaru
kana
flower thorn/
cause native-place
’s path
to// resembling ...
kokyō: also kokyaku, ‘one’s (old, ancestral) home,
one’s native place (land, province, town, village), the country
of one’s origin, one’s birthplace, homeland, hometown’
Buson zenshū #1128,
An-ei 3, 4th month (May–June, 1774). The roadside is crowded
with wild blooming roses. This color, this scent, is just as it
was running around the paths and roads of one’s very young days.
The white color and purity of the perfume awaken sweet,
beautiful memories of childhood. One version has the note kano
tōkō, ‘that eastern slope,’ referring to the closing of Tao Yüan-ming’s “The Return,”
from book 1 of the 17th century anthology Kobun kōshū;
however, he is describing the actual return to his home, while
Buson returns home only in memory.
And climbing the mountains of the east
To the accompaniment of a liquid stream,
Chanting a few songs,
Till the time comes when I shall be summoned
away,
Having accomplished my destiny, with no cares
in the world (Payne 1960,
145).
Summer 4d. brief notes
translations
As the path dies out the scent of flowering thorn closes in...
路絶て香にせまり咲茨かな
michi tae-
te/
ka
ni semari
saku//
ibara kana
path ends
and/ scent
with closes-in
blooming// thorn ...
taete: from taeru, ‘become extinct, cease
to exist, go out of existence, be annihilated/extinguished, die
out, cease, discontinue, end, come to an end, fail, peter out’
semari: from semaru, ‘press, urge, push,
force, compel, approach, draw near, gain on, be near/close at
hand, be upon one, close’
Buson zenshū #1254,
An-ei 4, 4/12 (May 11th, 1775). Same occasion as Summer 4a, at
Buson’s Midnight Pavilion, on which hana ibara was the
chosen topic. The path and air are consumed together; the scent
and the memory of childhood are connected together. In Buson’s
conception, the path to his birthplace is continually being
disappearing, unfollowable.
SUMMER 5: GARDENIA
, also called ‘cape jasmine’. A midsummer kigo. The characters
mean ‘mouthless’.
brief
notes translations
season
page home
Summer 5a. brief notes
translations
The way cape jasmine blooms in hiding, a stranger to the sun
口なしの花さくかたや日にうとき
kuchi- nashi
no/ hana
saku
kata ya//
hi
ni utoki
mouth without
’s/ flowers
blooming way
:// sun
from far
Buson zenshū #1582,
An-ei 6, 4/14 (May 20th, 1777). From New Flower Picking.
Jasmine has small flowers but a beautiful smell, stronger in the
evening. The smell makes the eye look for the flowers, but the
hidden flowers are hard to find.
SUMMER 6: CITRON FLOWERS.
A midsummer kigo. ‘Citron’ is yuzu, an Asian citrus
plant that produces bitter aromatic fruit used as a flavoring in
cooking. The flowers are small, white, and fragrant.
brief
notes translations
season
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Summer 6a. brief notes
translations
The scent of citron flowers: how mysterious the manor’s corner
shrine
柚の花やゆかしき母屋の乾隅
yu
no
hana
ya// yukashiki
mo-
ya
no/ inui-
sumi
citron ’s
flowers
://
lovely
mother house
’s/ estate corner
yukashii: ‘mysterious, lovely, sweet, charming,
alluring’
moya: ‘main house, main building (of a noble’s
home)’
Buson zenshū #1558,
An-ei 6, 4/12 (May 18th, 1777). From New Flower Picking.
Inuisumi: estate’s northwest corner, a quiet
place where the ancestors and estate gods are enshrined and
auspicious trees are planted. The scent of citron flowers comes
floating from somewhere...perhaps the tree was planted to draw
the heart in the direction of the shrine.
Summer 6b. brief notes
translations
Scent of citron flowers: a fine sake is hidden behind these
walls
柚の花や能酒蔵す屏の内
yu
no
hana
ya// yoki
sake kakusu/
hei no
uchi
citron ’s
flowers ://
good sake
kept/
wall ’s within
kakusu: ‘hide, conceal, cover, veil, cloak,
screen, obstruct’. The character
means ‘hide, accumulate, have, own, keep, cherish’
Buson zenshū #1577,
An-ei 6, 4/14 (May 20th, 1777, from New Flower Picking). Yu
no hana was changed from kiri no hana, ‘paulownia
flowers’, in New Flower
Picking. The place within is famous for superior
sake brewing, and the mingled scents of citron flower and good
sake float over the wall.
SUMMER 7: PERSIMMON
FLOWERS . Midsummer. The new leaves of the persimmon
tree are a kigo for early summer, the small pale yellow flowers
for mid summer, and the green fruit for late summer. In autumn,
the bright orange fruits are a much more flamboyant marker,
remaining on the bare branches after the leaves have fallen.
brief
notes translations
season
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Summer 7a. brief notes
translations
It has become “The Village of Falling Sour Persimmon Flowers”
渋柿の花ちる里と成にけり
shibu
kaki
no/ hana
chiru sato to/
nari
ni keri
astringent persimmon
’s/ flowers
fall
village/ turned
into has
shibu kaki: ‘a tree whose sap is used to treat
wood and paper clothes to protect them from insects; also refers
to unripened persimmons’
Buson zenshū #1553,
An-ei 6, 4/11 (May 17th, 1777). From New Flower Picking.
Hana chiru sato is the title of chapter 11 of The Tale of Genji. Genji
is visiting the Reikeiden Consort and talking over the past when
they hear a cuckoo. Genji composes the waka “Many fond yearnings
for an orange tree’s sweet scent draw the cuckoo on/ to come to
find the village where such fragrant flowers fall.” He in turn
is alluding to the Kokinshū,
#139: “The perfume of orange blossoms awaiting the fifth month
recalls the sleeves of someone long ago” and the Man’yōshū, #1477: “The
cuckoo in the village where the orange blossoms fall sings and
sings on many and many a day” (Murasaki 2003, 224
and 224n). The chapter is full of melancholy nostalgia, tinged
by the consort’s isolation, and here the modest, sober persimmon
flowers evoke that mood of being forgotten by the world.
Summer 7b. brief notes
translations
Insect eaten falling persimmon flowers
虫のために害はれ落ツ柿の花
mushi no
tame
ni/ sokonaware
otsu/
kaki
no hana
worms ’
account on/
damaging
falling/ persimmon
’s flowers
Syllable count: 6/7/5.
mushi in recent times has come to refer more
specifically to insects, but older generations still use it
indiscriminately for small creeping things: bugs, larvae, worms,
spiders, salamanders, etc. (see Laurent 1995, passim).
sokonau: ‘injure, harm, mar, spoil, damage’
Buson zenshū #2693,
date unknown. This fall’s persimmon crop will be poor—a
different kind of disappointment from falling cherry blossoms,
which are sad for their own sake .
Summer 7c. brief notes
translations
Under the tree persimmon flowers falling evening...
木の下柿の花ちる夕かな
ki no
shita ni/
kaki
no
hana
chiru//
yūbe kana
tree ’s
under/
persimmon ’s
flowers
fall//
evening ...
Buson zenshū #986,
Meiwa Period, possibly Meiwa 6 (1769). The blossoms are pale in
the twilight. Neither blossoms nor the small green fruit are
prominent on the tree, so one doesn’t notice them until they
fall, an invitation to think on the passing of the season.
Summer 7d. brief notes
translations
Persimmon flowers the ones that fell yesterday look yellowed
柿の花きのふ散しは黄バみ見ゆ
kaki
no
hana//
kinō
chirishi
wa/
kibami
miyu
persimmon ’s
flower// before day
falling as-for/
yellow-tint appear
Buson zenshū #1581,
An-ei 6, 4/10 (May 16th, 1777). New Flower Picking.
Today’s flowers are white; the contrast between the white and
wilted yellow flowers is a measure of the erosion of time (Buson
zenshū note).
SUMMER 8: SPATTERDOCK.
Spatterdock, cow lily, or candock (Nuphar japonicum) is
a mid-summer season word. The Japanese characters mean ‘river
bones’, because that is what the roots look like. “The kōhone
...lives in the shallow water of marshes and swamps. The leaves
look like the stalks; in summer a plum-like, yellow,
five-petalled flower blooms” (Blyth 1984, 1:269). It
has bowl-shaped flowers that bloom upward, a perennial from the
lotus family.
brief
notes translations
season
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Summer 8a. brief notes
translations
Spatterdock, two clumps blooming in the rain
河ほねの二もと咲や雨の中
kō- hone
no/ futa- moto
saku
ya// ame
no naka
river bone
’s/ two
roots blooming
:// rain
’s amid
Buson zenshū #767,
Meiwa 7 (1770). Alludes to haiku by Sodō, 1741-1716, a member of
Basho’s circle:
kōhone no
The paired spatterdocks
tsui ni hirakamu
will open
hanazakari,
into full bloom
Since Japanese doesn’t require the use of singular or plural,
there is an air of deliberation in the specifying of two clumps
of flowers.
SUMMER 9: CHINQUAPIN
FLOWER , pasania flower, Castanopsis
cuspidata. The Japanese is shii no hana; shii is
‘oak’ (to which the chinquapin is closely related); the
character is also read as tsuchi, ‘mallet’. A
mid-summer kigo. The flowers bloom in the sixth month and emit a
strong smell.
brief
notes translations
season
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Summer 9a. brief notes
translations
Personal grievance
No one comes to praise the chinquapin’s blossoms, that
fragrance...
述懐 (夏述懐)
椎の花人もすさめぬ匂かな
Heading: shutsu- kuwai
speaking heart-feeling
Haiku: shii no hana/
hito
mo susame-
nu/
nioi
kana
oak ’s
flowers/ person
even
praise
not/ perfume ...
shutsu-kuwai: more commonly read jukkai.
In Chinese and Japanese poetry, following in the steps of Ch’u
Yuan’s ‘Li sao’, a plaint, an
expression of the heart’s discontent, especially from being
ignored or ill-used by those in authority (Buson zenshū
note).
hana hito: evokes the compound hanabito, ‘blossom
viewer’, i.e., a person making an outing to view the cherry
blossoms, an ironic term to use in conjunction with these
little-noticed flowers.
Buson zenshū #1392,
An-ei 5, 4/15 (June 1st, 1776). Susamenu: ‘don’t
praise/applaud/value/admire/ prize’. -Nu
is a negative verb ending, the rentaikei version of -zu. The
first two lines are therefore an adjective phrase modifying nioi;
a more accurate translation would be ‘That fragrance, praised by
no pasania blossom viewer...’ Alternative heading: Natsu
shutsu-kuwai, ‘Summer Grievance’. An allusion to the Kokinshū (2004, 63):
yamazakura
oh mountain cherries
waga mi ni kureba
when I come to visit
you
harugasumi
the spring mist rises
mine ni mo o ni mo
rolling across both peaks
and
tachikakushitsutsu
foothills concealing your beauty
One wants an existence in which the world does not look back at
one, just as nobody looks back at the strong smelling chinquapin
flowers.
SUMMER 10: FLOWERING
BINDWEED . Calystegia japonica, a
lavender-pink flower sometimes called ‘wild morning glory’, is a
season word for midsummer. Hirugao means ‘noon faces’,
reflecting the close similarity between these flowers and asagao,
‘morning faces’ (morning glories) and yūgao, ‘evening
faces’ (moon flowers).
brief
notes translations
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Summer 10a. brief notes
translations
Flowering bindweed after the violet, just as dear
昼がほやすみれの後のゆかしさよ
hiru- gao
ya// sumire
no ato
no/ yukashisa yo
noon faces
://
violet ’s
after ’s/
dearness !
Buson zenshū #2142,
probably Anei 9 (1780). From a tanzaku, small vertical
poem card. An allusion to Bashō:
yamaji kite
along the mountain road
naniyara yukashi
somehow it tugs at my heart—
sumire gusa
a wild violet
Buson has another haiku that alludes to the same Basho poem (Ueda 1992, 127).
kotsu hirou
The one gathering bones
hito ni shitashiki
intimate
sumire kana
with violets (translation
mine)
In spring the modest, humble violet was blooming on the mountain
path; now the bindweed is blooming, equally humble and beloved.
Summer 10b. brief notes
translations
Noon faces: a garland for the head of the heatsick cow
昼がほや煩ふ牛のまくらもと
hiru- gao
ya// wazurau
ushi no/ makura
moto
noon faces
://
ill
cow ’s/
pillow base
wazurau: ‘be ill, afflicted, in pain, troubled;
worry’
makura moto: ‘bedside, by one’s pillow, near where
one sleeps’
Buson zenshū #1720,
An-ei 6 (1777). The cow is stretched out with heatstroke beside
the bindweed in full bloom. A witticism based on the alternative
name for morning glory, ‘cowherd flower’. The bindweed is deep
summer’s version of the cowherd flower.
Summer 10c. brief notes
translations
Noon faces: thirty leagues of this road in the Chinese measure
昼がほや此道唐の三十里
hiru- gao
ya// kono
michi
Tō
no/ san-
jū ri
noon faces
://
this road
China ’s/
three tens leagues
ri: ‘A Japanese league, 2.44 miles’
Buson zenshū #63.
Probably written on same occasion as 10d, that is, Meiwa 3, 6/2
(July 8th, 1766). In the Japanese system, 6 cho make one
ri; in the Chinese system, one ri is 36 cho.
The bindweed flowers in hot weather, and the pain and difficulty
of walking under the blazing sun makes the Chinese number more
emotionally accurate.
Summer 10d. brief notes
translations
Bindweed flowers: as the posts marking the miles to town become
the town
ひるがほや町に成行杭の数
hiru- gao
ya// machi
ni
nari-
yuku/ kui
no kazu
noon face
://
town into
becoming goes/
stake ’s number
kui: ‘stake, post, picket, piling’
Buson zenshū #62, Meiwa
3, 6/2 (July 8th, 1766). Hirugao was the chosen poetic
topic at a haiku meeting at Tessō’s Dairaidō on that date, the
first meeting of the Sanka group (Ueda 1998, 44). Ueda: the
stakes mark sites for new houses on a farm field that is
“becoming part of the town”.
flowering bindweed
round the stakes on a lot
becoming part of the town –Ueda
ibid.
My translation reflects the interpretation suggested by the
notes in Buson zenshū. The posts, overgrown with vines,
are mile markers telling the traveler how far away the town is.
As the traveler advances, finally the markers foretelling the
town turn into the town itself.
SUMMER 11: CRAPE
MYRTLE . Hyakujitsukō or sarusuberi
(Lagerstroemia indica), famed for its long period of
blooming.
brief
notes translations
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Summer 11a. brief notes
translations
So gradually the crape myrtle’s red flowers fall: Komachi Temple
百日紅やゝちりがての小町寺
hyaku- jitsu-
kō//
yaya
chirigate no/ ko-
machi- dera
hundred days
red// a-little
falling
’s/ small
town temple
Syllable count: 6/7/5.
Buson zenshū #1694, Ani
6 (1777). Komachidera is a popular name for the temple
Fudarakuji in the north of Kyoto. The slow, long continuous
bloom of the flowers and the temple’s name evoke the way the
beauty of Ono no Komachi,
the medieval poetess, lingered in the mind.
SUMMER 12: SILK
TREE FLOWERS . A late summer kigo, the Persian silk
tree is called the ‘sleeping tree’ in waka because at night
while the tree is blooming, the leaves fold together like hands,
the hands of a person asleep. It can be read as a metaphor for
the sexual union of men and women. Resembles a mimosa.
brief
notes translations
season
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Summer 12a. brief notes
translations
They will by the graceful silk tree’s undershadows be netted up
心憎き合歓の下影網入ん
kokoro- nikuki/
nemu
no shita- kage
[yami]/ ami
ire- n
heart
hating/ meet
sight ’s
under shade
[dark]/ net
enter will
Syllable count: 6/7/5.
kokoronikui: ‘detestable, refined, graceful,
excellent, reticent’
kage: ‘light, shadow, silhouette, phantom,
reflection, figure, trace’
Buson zenshū #1702,
An-ei 6 (1777). 6/7/5. While on the surface, the season word
seems to be nebu, ‘silk tree’, the implied season word
is kawagari, ‘river fishing’, also indicating summer.
The silk trees are growing thick on the riverside, creating dark
shade. At night as the leaves come together to sleep it is said
the silk tree casts a net. Perhaps the fish sleep with their
children in the undershade as a family under a mosquito net, but
the net also foretells their fate from the fishermen.
Written on same topic, and perhaps same occasion, as #1701:
ami wo more
Leaking
through the nets,
ami wo moretsutsu mizu
leaking through the nets:
mizu no tsuki
moon on
the water (Buson zenshū note)
Summer 12b. brief notes
translations
The serpent’s snoring also heard under the silk tree’s leaf
shade...
蝮の鼾も合観の葉陰哉
uwabami no/
ibiki
mo nebu
no/ ha- kage
kana
viper
’s/ snoring
also meet sight
’s/ leaf
shade ...
uwabami: ‘anaconda, boa constrictor,
python’;
FUKU, mamushi: ‘viper, adder, asp’
Buson zenshū #1413,
probably An-ei 5 (1776). Nebu no hakage functions
as a pivot word, suggesting the kigo gokan/nemu /nebu [no
hana], silk tree blossoms. Uwabami: archaic
for ‘giant or monster snake’, also a metaphor for someone who is
drinking heavily. In the evening, under the tender leaf shade of
the silk tree, not only is there the lovers’ talk, but now the
snakes’ snoring also comes into hearing. Perhaps it suggests
passed out drunkards. A joking reversal of the waka tradition.
Summer 12c. brief notes
translations
In grief for Torao, so early vanished from the world
Day of rain: in the early falling evening silk flowers bloom
虎雄子が世を早うせしをいたむ
雨の日やまだきにくれてねむの花
Heading: Tora- o
shi
ga
yo
wo
haya
useshi
wo itamu
Tiger Hero
child [sub.]
world [acc.]
early vanishing
[acc.] grieve
Haiku: ame no
hi ya//
madaki ni
kure-
te/ nemu
no hana
rain ’s
day ://
early
darkening and/
sleep ’s flowers
Buson zenshū #1408,
An-ei 5 (1776). A mourning haiku for haiku poet Torao of
the Ashikage company, who died on the 21st day of the 5th month.
Because of the rain, the flowers are blooming late in the day,
but the leaves are already folding up for the night, a beautiful
sentiment for Torao, blooming in accomplishment only as he nears
death.
AUTUMN 1: OTOKOESHI. Patrinia,
or Patrinia villosa, Patrinia scabiosaefolia. The tall
thin stalks bear umbels of small white flowers. By its
appearance and name, which in Japanese means ‘man flower’, it is
paired with the more often referenced ominaeshi, ‘maiden
flower’ (the Japanese means something more like ‘courtesan
flower’).
brief notes
season page
translations
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Autumn 1a. brief notes
translations
All the more unsteady in the dew-laden air: man flower
ひよろひよろxとなをつゆけしやをとこへし
hyoro- hyoro
to/
nao
tsuyu- keshi
ya// otokoeshi
stagger- stagger
-ingly/ all-the-more
dew
what-with:// man flower
hyorohyoro: ‘staggering, swaying, frail, slim and
lanky’
“Tsuyukeshi is a variant of tsuyukesa, an
old word for the kind of damp air that produces autumn dew; Kogo
dai jiten (Shogakukan 1983) 1107” (Lanoue 1991-2010,
“Humidity”).
Buson zenshū #2762,
unknown date. Inscribed on a portrait of Kitō, who was tall and
thin. Changes the terms of a haiku by Basho:
hyorohyoro na
trembling,
teetering,
nao tsuyu keshi ya
now even more dew-like–
ominaeshi
lady-flowers (Bashō 2004, #235)
Bashō was referring to a tradition in waka, in which ominaeshi
are the epitome of feminine fragility, their tendency to bend in
the dew making them like women of easy virtue:
aki kureba
Now
that autumn comes
nobe ni tawaruru
They tangle on the grassy fields,
ominaeshi
These lady flowers:
izure no hito ka
Where is the man who can see them
tsumade mirubeki
And not pinch a bloom or two? (Cranston 2006, 180)
The joke in applying this tradition to Kitō is clear.
AUTUMN 2: MORNING GLORIES. In
the lunar calendar, autumn was in the seventh, eighth, and ninth
months, corresponding roughly to August, September and October.
Morning glories are an early autumn kigo. They were introduced
from China during the T’ang dynasty and have been a favorite for
cultivation ever since. They are sometimes included in the seven
grasses of autumn, along with bush clover, pampas grass, arrow
root, pink, maiden flower, boneset, and bell flower.
brief notes
season page
translations
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Autumn 2a. brief notes
translations
The valley stream pools into indigo
Morning glory: deep in each corolla, color of the abyss
澗水湛如藍
朝がほや一輪深き淵の色
Heading: kan- sui
tataete ai
no gotoshi
valley water
pooling like indigo
Haiku: asa-
gao ya//
ichi- rin
fukaki/ fuchi
no iro
morning glory
://
one flower
deep/
pool ’s color
tataeru: ‘fill’
gotoshi: ‘seem to be like’
rin: counter for flowers, circles, wheels, rings
Buson zenshū #134,
Meiwa 5, probably 7/4 (August 15th, 1768). On that day, morning
glory was the chosen topic at Dairaisō, according to Natsu
yori. In one version, the middle line has fukashi
for fukaki. Another has kuki (stem) instead of
ai (indigo) in the heading, probably an error. The tiny
flower contains an abyss, showing a witty grasp of Zen paradox.
The heading quotes the Chinese Zen koan collection Blue Cliff Records:
“A monk said to Tairyū, ‘The Body of Form suffers annihilation;
how about this Eternal Body of the Law?’ Tairyū replied, ‘The
mountain flowers opening are like brocade; the valley water
accumulating is like indigo.’”
Blyth offers this translation, going on to say:
“The monk speaks of the relative and asks concerning the
absolute, but Tairyū’s reply is not in either realm...What is
this world out of time that nevertheless is in time; that is
spaceless, and yet in this very room? Buson answers, ‘Look at
this fleeting flower: it is the color of eternity.’ But it is
not an eternal color” (1992,
4:1089).
Tairyū’s reply is quoted in the noh drama “Cherry Blossom River,” one
of several allusions Buson makes to this play.
Other translation:
A single
flower
Of the morning glory:
The color of
a deep tarn. (ibid.)
Autumn 2b. brief notes
translations
Morning glory: the indigo border of the hand towel now so
disappointing
朝がほや手拭のはしの藍をかこつ
asa
gao ya//
te- nogui
no hashi
no/
ai
o
kakotsu
morning face
:// hand
wipe ’s
border ’s/
indigo (acc.) spill
Syllable count 5/8/6.
tenogui, ‘towel, hand towel,’ can also be
pronounced tefuku.
kakotsu: a play on words, it means ‘spill, slip,
drop, pour out’, and also ‘complain of, grumble at.’
Buson zenshū #1854,
An-ei 6, 7th-8th month (August-September, 1777). Another version
has as the middle line tenogui no sama no, ‘the towel’s
indigo appearance, state, manner’. Kakotsu:
‘something said under the pretext of grumbling, of foolishness’.
When washing one’s face in the morning, one has occasion to
compare the color of the dew-wet morning glory with the towel
border’s indigo dye...(Buson zenshū note)...another
possible interpretation is:
Morning glory:
the hand towel border’s
indigo
spilled
over
Other translations:
Morning glories—
the indigo color of the towel’s edge
no longer satisfies me. (Sawa and Shiffert 1978,
123)
The morning glory
is not at ease
with the towel’s indigo border (Merwin and Lento 2013,
134)
Autumn 2c. brief notes
translations
“Hey, Koremitsu!” A snore amid the morning glories...
朝顔にやよ維光が鼾かな
asa-
gao ni/
yayo Kore-
mitsu
ga//
ibiki kana
morning faces
in/ “Hey
Rope Radiant”
(sub.)// snoring ...
Buson zenshū #2564,
1778-1783. In Genji monogatari,
Koremitsu is Genji’s “milk brother,” as his mother was Genji’s
wet nurse. He is a trusted servant and accomplice. He is
associated especially with the Yugao story: as his lord is
passing the night with Yugao, Koremitsu returns to the oxcart.
Genji comes to Yugao in the evening when the summer evening
faces are blooming; now it is morning and the autumn morning
glories are open. From amid the morning glories, Koremitsu
entertains the two with a loud snore. It would be more elegant
and discrete to have him ready to draw up the cart; instead,
they must call to wake him first, so this a humorous take on the
chapter. Yayo Koremitsu is how Genji would call him with a
forced, bitter smile.
Koremitsu also acts as the go between with the kidnapping of
Murasaki, and accompanies Genji to his exile in Suma.
Autumn 2d. brief notes
translations
Morning glories: also going to fruit, morning by morning, one by
one
朝皃ヤ実モ朝々ひとつづゝ
asa-
gao ya//
mi
mo asa-asa
ni/
hitotsu-zutsu
morning face
:// fruit
also morning by morning/
one-by-one
Buson zenshū #1420,
An-ei 5, 7/20 (Sept. 2nd, 1776). Asagao was the subject selected
at Buson’s Midnight Pavilion on that date. The flowers bloom
reliably each morning. And, the haiku observes, they wither just
as reliably in the morning sun.
AUTUMN 3: ROSE
OF SHARON, althea, a deciduous shrub of the
hollyhock family, Hibiscus syriacus, early autumn . Hibiscus
mutabilis, the cotton rose, is grouped with it. Each
flower blooms in the morning and wilts in the evening.
brief notes
season page
translations
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Autumn 3a. brief notes
translations
In slight acquaintance with the morning glory: rose of Sharon...
朝皃にうすきゆかりの木槿哉
asa-
gao
ni/
usuki yukari
no//
mukuge
kana
morning face
with/ weak
relation ’s//
tree-hibiscus ...
yukari: ‘acquaintance, relation, affinity’
Buson zenshū #2763, no
date. It is said “The rose of Sharon has one day of glory.”
Because of the shape and form of the flowers, and because of
their transience, it has some slight affinity with the morning
glory. Their blooming would also slightly overlap. Similar in
concept to Buson zenshū #2122:
kashiwagi no
Looking upon
hiro-ha mi suru o
the oak tree’s broad leaves:
osozakura
late blooming
cherry
Autumn 3b. brief notes
translations
The paulownia tree’s leaves fall away and become rose mallow
blooming
桐の葉は落つくすなるを木芙蓉
kiri
no ha
wa/
ochi- tsukusu
naru
o/
moku fu-
yō
paulownia ’s
leaf as-for/
falling used-up
becoming (acc.)/
tree lotus lotus
Syllable count: 5/8/5. See 3e, this
section.
tsukusu: ‘exhaust, use up, run out of, come to the
end of, exert oneself, endeavor, discharge [one’s duty]’
Buson zenshū #1860,
An-ei 6, 7th-8th month (Aug.–Sept. 1777). Kiri: Paulownia
tomentosa. Kiri hitoha, ‘one paulownia
leaf’, is an early autumn season word, referring to the sound of
one of the large leaves falling (UVA: brief entries: autumn:
plants). Buson zenshū: The paulownia loses its leaves
completely halfway through autumn, but then, a leaf of the same
form remains on the beautifully blooming rose of Sharon. A quiet
evocation of the profound theme of prosperity and decline, the
vicissitudes of fortune.
The haiku is similar in concept to Buson’s more famous
hana chirite
Blossoms fallen,
ko no ma no tera to
the spaces between branches
nari ni keri (Buson zenshū #455)
have become a temple
Autumn 3c. brief notes
translations
At the Office of Repairs in rain the twilight falls:
rose-of-Sharon...
修理寮の雨にくれゆく木槿哉
shuri-
ryō
no/ ame
ni
kure
yuku//
mukuge
kana
governing justice
’s/ rain
in nightfall
goes// rose-of-Sharon ...
Buson zenshū #1419,
An-ei 5 7/20 (September 2nd, 1776). This was the chosen topic on
that day at Buson’s Yahantei, the Midnight Pavilion. Shuriryō:
the repair office, an appointed government office
responsible for the upkeep of the imperial court and so on.
Since it formerly fell under the jurisdiction of the Mokkōryo,
the Timber Construction Department, responsible for repairing
all palace buildings, perhaps it is being confused for that
office?
In the rainy dusk, all the officials have withdrawn, so the rose
of Sharon flower in the hedge around the office fades away
alone. Its lonely elegance is appropriate to the situation.
Autumn 3d. brief notes
translations
Court lady
Cotton rose resentfully it withers with the waning sun
官女
日を帯て芙蓉かたぶく恨哉
Heading: kan- jo
government woman
Haiku: hi
wo obite/
fu-
yō katabuku//
urami kana
sun (acc.)
tinged-with/ lotus
lotus
waning//
regret ...
kanjo: ‘court lady’; kannyo: ‘woman workers in the
palace of the shogun or emperor’
obiru: ‘wear (at the belt), carry, be
armed/entrusted with, assume, take on (the character of), be
tinged with, gird up (one’s loins)’
katabuku: ‘incline toward, tilt, slant, slop,
lurch, heel over, be disposed to, trend toward, be prone to, go
down (sun), wane, sink, decline’
urami: ‘regret, grudge, hateful, malice’
Buson zenshū #2761, no
date. Since the cotton rose withers in a day, it receives the
evening sun with regret. It resembles a court lady of waning
beauty under the lord’s favor, but not for much longer.
Autumn 3e. brief notes
translations
This evening no one there to see how the althea uses up its last
few flowers...
人しらじ木槿落つくすゆふべ哉
hito
shira- ji/
mukuge
ochi- tsukusu//
yuube kana
person views
would-not/ tree hibiscus
falling exhausting//
evening ...
Syllable count: 5/8/5. See 3b,
autumn section: ochitsukusu seems to lend itself to an extended
line.
-ji: =nai darou, ‘would not’
tsu(kusu): ‘use up, exhaust, run out of, serve,
befriend, work for, endeavor, do (one’s duty)’
yuube: ‘an evening’; 昨夜: ‘ last/yesterday
night/evening’
Buson zenshū #1841,
An-ei 6, 7th-8th month (August-September 1777). The rose of
Sharon bush loses its flowers one by one until all are used up.
It is said “the rose of Sharon has one day of glory”, and
quickly the flowers that bloomed yesterday utterly fall away; no
one is there to see this loneliness of late autumn.
AUTUMN 4: COCKSCOMB
. Celosia cristata, also amaranthus, velvet flower. A
general autumn kigo.
brief notes
season page
translations
home
Autumn 4a. brief notes
translations
Cockscomb flower red with shame permanently
鶏頭の花のはぢするいつまでも
kei-
tō
no/ hana
no haji
suru/ itsumademo
chicken head
’s/ flower
’s shame
doing/ indefinitely
haji: ‘shame, dishonor, disgrace, humiliation,
insult, infamy, ignominy’
itsumademo: ‘as long as one likes, for any length
of time, indefinitely, forever, for good, permanently,
eternally, to the end of the chapter’
Buson zenshū #2847,
uncertain provenance. Cockscomb doesn’t lose its color, wither
or fall, but stays bright red. The head note is here omitted,
but it refers to dan 152 of Tsurezuregusa, in
which someone praises the priest Jōnen for his venerable
appearance. An observer points out that the priest is merely
old, then brings the speaker an old grizzled dog as a gift,
saying, isn’t he dignified? Perhaps the connection to is the
speaker’s embarrassment.
Autumn 4b. brief notes
translations
A broom leaning harmoniously against a stalk of cockscomb...
鶏頭の根にむつまじき箒哉
kei-
tō
no/ ne
ni
mutsumajiki//
hōki kana
chicken head
’s/ root
at harmoniously/ /
broom ...
Buson zenshū #993,
Meiwa period, probably year 5 or 6 (1768 or 1769). In a corner
of a garden, a broom is kept propped against the base of the
sturdy cockscomb stalks. The relationship is harmonious because
a variety of cockscomb is called hōkeitō, ‘broom
cockscomb’ (others are fan, spear, tassel, bantam rooster,
rope). The broom might be quite short, of a height with the
flowers.
Autumn 4c. brief notes
translations
After the brocade tree’s been brought down by the autumn wind
cockscomb flower
錦木は吹倒されてけいとう花
nishiki- gi
wa/
fuki-
tao-
sare- te/
kei-
tō ka
brocade tree
as-for/ blown
down being
and/ chicken
head flower
fukitaosu: ‘blow down’
Buson zenshū #2565,
around An-ei 7? (1778). Nishikigi, the red leaves
of the spindle tree, Euonymus
alatus , is also a late autumn kigo. Both share the
brilliant colors of autumn vegetation, but once the autumn
tempest (nowaki) blows down the tall spindle tree (or
perhaps only its leaves), only the modest annual cockscomb
remains to boast of its bewitching color.
Autumn 4d. brief notes
translations
What the autumn wind left behind: cockscomb flowers
秋風の吹のこしてや鶏頭花
aki-
kaze no/
fuki- nokoshite
ya//
kei-
tō ka
autumn wind
’s/ blowing
leaving-behind
://
chicken head flower
nokosu: ‘leave behind, keep back, leave undone,
reserve, save, amass, bequeath’
Buson zenshū #2566,
An-ei 7–Temmei 3 (1778-1783). Akikaze, ‘autumn
wind’, is also a general autumn kigo. The autumn wind has left
so little behind; amid the fallen yellow leaves of the other
vegetation, he hunts the brilliantly colored figure of the
cockscomb flower. See Basho:
samidare no
did the seasonal rains
tonari nokoshite ya
come and go, leaving out
Hikari-dō
this Shining Hall? (Ueda 1992, 244)
Autumn 4e. brief notes
translations
Imagine! how I’ll scatter the cockscomb’s seeds...
けいとうの種こぼれよとおもふかな
kei-
tō
no/ tane
kobore yo
to// omou
kana
chicken head
’s/ seed
scattering
!//
thinking-about ...
omou: ‘think, consider, plan, believe, think (of
doing), imagine, suppose, expect, look forward to, feel, desire,
want, recall, remember’
Buson zenshū #1843,
An-ei 6, 7th-8th month (August-September, 1777). The cockscomb
blooms deep red. The speaker is looking carefully at the small
flowers on the plants he is preparing to gather. This expresses
the wish and hope that scattering these seeds will lead to
beautiful flowers next year also.
Perhaps the chicken in the name evokes scattering seeds. Another
possible translation is ‘Remembering how I scattered the
cockscomb’s seeds’, probably while looking at the resulting
flowers.
AUTUMN 5: REEDS. Can refer to
the common reed, Miscanthus
sacchariflorus. This category is a little confusing as it
involves several plants and several names for the same plant.
According to Shunzei, for example, the plant called hama-ogi
(beach reed) at Kamikaze in Ise is ashi (rush) at Naniwa
ferry crossing, and yoshi (a reed) in the eastern
provinces (Kerkham, 2006,
156n).
brief notes
season page
translations
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Autumn 5a. brief notes
translations
Wind through the reeds noisy as a careless man...
荻の風いとさうざうxしき男かな
ogi no kaze/
ito sōzōshiki//
otoko kana
reed ’s
wind/ very
noisy//
man ...
5/8/5 syllable count
sōzōshii: ‘noisy, boisterous, clamorous,
uproarious, vociferous, blusterous, turbulent’
Buson zenshū #1774,
An-ei 6, 7/20 (August 22nd, 1777). Season word: ogi no
kaze, ‘wind in the reeds’, early autumn. In waka,
the advent of wind in the reeds announces the coming of autumn,
also ogi no koe, ogi no uekaze, ‘voice of the reeds,
wind over the reeds’. Sōzōshi is also
‘unsatisfying/missing something, desolate’. The term appears in
this passage from Essays
in Idleness: “A man may excel at everything else,
but if he has no taste for lovemaking, one feels something
terribly inadequate about him, as if he were a valuable wine cup
without a bottom. What a charming figure is the lover, his
clothes drenched with dew or frost, wandering aimlessly, so
fearful of his parents’ reproach or people’s gossip that he has
not a moment’s peace of mind, frantically resorting to one
unsuccessful stratagem after another; and for all that, most
often sleeping alone, though never soundly” (Kenkō 1998, 5). Although
the sound of the wind in the reeds, the announcement of autumn,
is the perfect culmination of loneliness, here that destitute
event is like what Kenkō calls the “terribly inadequate” man.
The reed-blowing wind is an unsusceptible person, reversing the
waka tradition.
Autumn 5b. brief notes
translations
Gathering beach reeds: waves for a desk edge
浜荻によせては浪の筆がへし
hama- ogi
ni/
yosete
wa
nami no/
fude- gaeshi
beach reeds
up/ gathering
as-for waves
’/ brush return
Buson zenshū #2256,
Temmei 2 (1782). One version has the head note ‘With the
inscription Futami-kata bundai, Futami-no-ura
writing desk; this vessel is in the old founder’s taste,
especially in keeping with the thousand thousand surrounding fudegaeshi-waves’
(very uncertain translation).
The ‘old founder’ is Saigyō,
an early source of the haiku spirit if not the form. There is a
tradition of seeing features of the landscape as Saigyō’s
possessions, used again by Buson in
Takao:
Takao:
Saigyō no
Saigyō’s quilt
ya gu mo dete aru
already laid out:
momiji kana (Buson zenshū
#2408)
red maple leaves
Bundai is a special writing desk, often very
ornate, used for poetry gatherings. Saigyō spent some time in
retreat in Futami-kata (now Futami-no-ura
or Futami-ga-ura, on the coast near Ise in Mie prefecture), and
refers to it several times in his work, for example this waka
from the Manyōshū
4:503 or Shinkokinshū
10:911
kamikaze ya
Breaking off the reeds
Ise no hama-ogi
That grow along the beach at Ise
orishikite
Of the
divine wind
tabine ya suran
Does he spread them for his
traveler’s bed
araki hamabe ni
There on the rough sea strand? (Brower 1985,
407)
According to legend, while there he made a writing desk by
spreading a folding fan on a rock. Fudegaeshi
is the upward beveled edge of a desk or shelf in the Chinese
style that keeps things from rolling off. If the rock is the
writing desk, the waves are its up-curving edge, rolling back
the brush just as Ise’s waves return the gathered beach reeds.
Buson is probably adding to Bashō’s reference to the same
legend:
Futami
Futami
suzuri to
Saigyo’s inkstone?
hirou ya kuboki
I pick it up—dew
ishi no tsuyu
on the
concave rock (Basho 2004,
453)
Buson uses the desk metaphor again in a haiku from the same
year:
haru kaze ya
Spring wind:
nani wo Futami no
the waves are Futami’s
fudegaeshi (Buson zenshū
#2255)
desk edge
Autumn 5c. brief notes
translations
Rites for the dead
Around the emerging crests of reeds, miscanthus, halos of light
追薦
荻芒穂に顕はるゝ後光哉
Heading: tsui- sen
drive-away encourage
Haiku: ogi susuki/
ho
ni arawaruru//
go- kō
kana
reed pampas/
beards at
appearing//
after light ...
tsuisen: ‘Buddhist memorial service’
ho: ‘ear, head (of grain), crest (of wave)’
arawareru: ‘appear, emerge, come in sight’
gokō: ‘halo, corona, glory, aurora’
Buson zenshū #1074,
An-ei 2 (1773). Written for Sawamura Chōshirō’s memorial
anthology in the ninth month of that year. Sawamura Chōshirō was
an actor, father of Hatsushiro Kunitarō. Susuki,
‘miscanthus’,
is also an autumn kigo. At the height of autumn, the heads of
reeds and miscanthus emerge, trembling in the light, just as the
meritorious deeds of Chōshirō, becoming a Buddha, emit a halo to
the world.
Autumn 5d. brief notes
translations
Reed flowers; from the old fisherman’s hut smoke flies up
芦の花漁翁が宿の煙飛
ashi no hana/
gyo-
ō
ga yado
no/ keburi tobu
reed ’s
flower/ fisher
old-man ’s
house ’s/
smoke flies
Buson zenshū #1861,
An-ei 6, 7th–8th month (Aug.–Sept. 1777). The season word is ashi
no hana, ‘reed flowers, flowering rushes’. In Buson
zenshū this is grouped with susuki grass rather
than ogi. In autumn, the head of the reed stalk opens in
an ear of white flowers, shaped like a head of grain. An autumn
evening, and the old fisherman’s reed hut disperses white smoke
just as the reeds at the water’s edge disperse cottony white
flowers. A landscape in the style of a Nanga painting. From the
Tōshisen, see Chang
Yuan (?uncertain), “Nightfall Landscape from the Southern
Slope”: ‘the shallows disgorge white rush flowers’. The
character for ‘disgorge’, 吐, also means ‘emit, breathe out,’
thus suggesting the smoke.
AUTUMN 6: RED
SPIDER LILY, hurricane lily, Lycoris
radiata. The characters for manjusage or manjushage
mean ‘beautiful gem sand flower.’ The word can also refer to
clustered belladonna or amaryllis. It is a mid-autumn season
word.
According to the World Kigo Database, the flower is planted as a
border to rice fields, as a deterrent to mice and as an
emergency crop if the rice fails (the stems are edible). Since
it blooms around the autumn equinox, and since it is associated
with the Lotus Sutra, it is planted in graveyards to correspond
with equinoctial visits to the family grave. It has more than a
hundred names, including:
manjushage: “from a line in the
Buddhist Lotus sutra, referring to a red flower in Sanskrit
pronunciation”
higan-bana: ‘autumn equinox flower’
doku-ban: ‘poisonous flower’
kitsunebana: ‘fox flower’
shibito-bana: ‘flower of the dead’
sanmaibana: ‘samadhi flower’
sutegobana: ‘abandoned child flower’
yuurei-bana: ‘ghost flower, phantom
flower’
tengai-bana: ‘flower in the form of a
ceiling decoration of a Buddhist inner sanctuary’
yome no kanzashi: ‘bridal hairpin
flower’ (slightly emended from Greve 2006)
brief notes
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Autumn 6a. brief notes
translations
From among the orchid-like spider lilies a fox barks
まんじゆさげ蘭に類ひて狐啼
manjusage/
ran
ni
taguite/
kitsune naku
red-spider-lily/ orchid
with accompanying/
fox cries
Buson zenshū #1865,
An-ei 6, 7th–8th month (Aug.–Sept. 1777.). The poem is a little
ghost story, with the magical fox barking under the graveyard
flowers. Orchids and foxes have a traditional association in
haiku, according to the haikai handbook Accompanying Boat
(Ruisenshū). One
source for the juxtaposition comes from Po Chü-i’s couplet
The owl hoots in the branches of pine and
cassia,
The fox hides in clumps of orchids and
chrysanthemums (Buson zenshū note, Hare 1996, 204)
AUTUMN 7: ORCHID. A mid-autumn
kigo.
brief notes
season page
translations
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Autumn 7a. brief notes
translations
Orchid evening: I’ll burn aloeswood as an offering to the foxes
蘭夕狐のくれし奇南を焚む
ran
yūbe/ kitsune
no kureshi/ kyara
o
taka- mu
orchid evening/
fox
’s giving/
strange camphor-tree (acc.)
burn will
Syllable count: 5/7/6
kyara: ‘Aloes-wood, aloes-wood perfume’ (Buson
zenshū). The best quality aloes-wood, an ingredient in
fine incense
Buson zenshū #1270,
probably An-ei 4, 7/22 (August 17th, 1775). Ran, kitsune:
foxes and orchids are associated due to lines by Po Chu-i, see
previous note to 6a. Since orchids are present, poetic tradition
dictates that foxes must be present as well (life dictated by
art, rather than the other way round). Buson used similar logic
in the haiku
susuki mitsu
Now the silvergrass shows itself:
hagi ya nakaramu
shouldn’t there be bush clover
kono hotori (Buson zenshū #1075)
somewhere nearby...
Foxes are messengers of the god Inari, and therefore incense
offerings are appropriate. I have read also that people might
burn incense when it seems a fox spirit is haunting their house,
to placate its mischievous nature.
Other translations:
“Orchid in the evening
I will burn the fragrant twig
a fox gave me
...a hermit will burn an aromatic twig, a gift from a
fox...it has a pure and noble aroma...because the aromatic tree
itself gives such an impression, but also because it is a gift
from a fox” (Merwin and
Lento, quoting Shimizu, 2013, 135). Shimizu is editor and
annotator of Yosa Buson shu, The Collected Writings of Yosa
Buson. Shincho Nihon Koten Shusei, v. 32 (Tokyo:
Shinchosha, 1979)
Autumn 7b. brief notes
translations
This orchid was blooming in Gosuke’s garden just yesterday
此蘭や五助が庭にきのふまで
kono
ran
ya// Go-
suke ga
niwa
ni/
kinō
made
this orchid
:// Five
Help ’s
garden in/ past
day until
Buson zenshū #1269,
An-ei 4, 7/22 (Aug. 17th, 1775). Alternative middle line has the
name Mosaku or Shigesaku, with first character meaning ‘growing
luxuriantly, thickly’. This haiku and the next were made on the
same drawn topic at Buson’s Midnight Pavilion. Gosuke is a
typical petty farmer’s name.
Autumn 7c. brief notes
translations
Night orchid in perfume hiding its flower’s white
夜の蘭香にかくれてや花白し
yoru no
ran/
ka
ni kakure-
te ya/
hana shiroshi
night ’s
orchid/ scent
in hiding
and :/
flower white
Buson zenshū #1784,
An-ei 6, 7/20 (August 22nd, 1777).
The orchid’s scent wafts here and there, misleading to one
looking for the small white flowers in the dark.
Autumn 7d. brief notes
translations
Scent of an orchid: from the shadows of the thicket of
chrysanthemums
蘭の香や菊よりくらき辺りより
ran
no
ka
ya//
kiku
yori
kuraki/
hotori yori
orchid ’s
scent ://
chrysanthemums gathered
dark/
vicinity from
Buson zenshū #1271,
probably An-ei 4, 7/22 (Aug. 17th, 1775). Chrysanthemums are the
recluse of flowers (see notes to Autumn 11a). Both
chrysanthemums and orchids were beloved by eremitic
scholar-poets (bunjin), who were praised as ‘orchids
and chrysanthemums growing together’. The orchid’s scent is all
the more deeply elegant ascending from the chrysanthemums, from
the dark secret yin of the soil, just as the elegance of the bunjin’s
life is deepened by his solitude.
Buson zenshū notes cite two passages from the orchid
section of the Chinese poetics encyclopedia Enki kappō: ‘The
orchid inhabits the yin of earth’ and ‘a dense growth of orchids
and chrysanthemums’—the later perhaps from the aforementioned Po
Chü-i quote in the notes to Autumn 6a:
The owl hoots in the branches of pine and
cassia,
The fox hides in clumps of orchids and
chrysanthemums (Buson zenshū note, Hare 1996, 204)
AUTUMN 8: CHINESE
BELLFLOWER . Platicodon grandiflorus, a general
season word for autumn.
brief notes
season page
translations
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Autumn 8a. brief notes
translations
Bellflowers seen in the flower shop, the household shrine
きちかうも見ゆる花屋が持仏堂
kichikō
mo/
miyuru
hana-
ya
ga/ ji-
butsu- dō
bell-flower also/
seen-can-be flower
shop and/ have
Buddha hall
kichikō=an old word for kikyō,
‘bellflower’ (see Buson zenshū #1817).
jibutsdō: “Small, private buildings or rooms used
by noblemen to enshrine their own Buddhist images, butsuzō,
and for their own personal spiritual edification. According
to the Nihonshoki, an imperial edict of 686 stated that
every domicile throughout Japan must create a hall or space
wherein Buddhist statues and sutras were to be kept, honored and
worshiped. Appropriate memorial services were to be held to
honor them” (Parent 2001,
“jibutsudou”).
Buson zenshū #1818,
An-ei 6, 7th-8th month (Aug.-Sept. 1777). One version has as
first line kichikō ya. The bellflowers are part of the
show of diversely colored autumn flowers in the store front, but
are also a fitting offering for the quiet, private display in
the interior of the Buddhist household altar.
Autumn 8b. brief notes
translations
Along the ascetic’s narrow path: beloved bell flowers...
修行者にめづる桔梗かな
su-
gyō- za
no/ komichi
ni mezuru/
kikyō
kana
asceticism
go person
’s/
path
on beloved/
bell-flower ...
komichi: The character is usually read michi,
‘path, method.’ The reading komichi suggests 小道, ‘narrow
path, lane, alley’.
mezuru: ‘love, hold dear, admire, appreciate’
Buson zenshū #1817,
An-ei 6, 7th– 8th month (August–September, 1777). Sugyōza:
also pronounced shugyōsha, ‘person engaged in
training, ascetic discipline, Buddhist austerities, or the
pursuit of knowledge’. The monk follows the ascetic practice of
a walking tour through each province. He happens to see Chinese
bellflowers beside his path and stops for a short while, lost in
admiration. The narrow road of the traveling ascetic monks comes
from the 9th dan of The Tales of
Ise: “The road they thought to enter was quite dark
and narrow, grown over with ivy and maples...their minds were
wandering aimlessly in such an uneasy surrounding when they met
a traveling ascetic priest” (1972,
45-47).
See also Buson zenshū #807:
sugyōza no
The pilgrim monk
shigure wo hazusu
in the winter rain loses
komichi kana
his path...
AUTUMN 9: GENTIAN
, Gentiana scabra. The characters, not used here, mean
‘dragon’s gall bladder’.
brief notes
season page
translations
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Autumn 9a. brief notes
translations
Gentians: the spaces between the dead leaves have become purple
blooming
りんだうや枯葉がちなる花咲ぬ
rindō
ya// ko-
yō-
gachi
naru/
hana
saki- nu
gentian
:// dead
leaves between
become/ flowers
bloomed having
Buson zenshū #1762,
1777. Among the withered leaves the spaces between the weeds
under the trees become the vivid clear purple of flowers that
have bloomed.
For haiku by Buson that similarly use the concept of spaces
becoming flowers, see Autumn 3b.
AUTUMN 10: IVY
, Parthenocissus tricuspidata, a general autumn kigo.
brief notes
season page
translations
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Autumn 10a. brief notes
translations
Dust devil eddies through: every ivy leaf shows its pale back...
天狗風のこらず蔦の葉裏哉
ten-
gu kaze/
nokorazu tsuta
no/ ha-
ura
kana
heaven dog
wind/
entirely
ivy
’s/ leaf
underside ...
Buson zenshū #1791,
An-ei 6, 7/20 (Aug. 22nd, 1777). Tengu kaze:
‘suddenly blowing whirlwind, eddy wind, tornado’ (a tengu
is a supernatural bird man, demonic or at least mischievous, so
the Japanese term is very similar to the English). See Kakei, The
New Monkey’s Raincoat:
tsuta no ha ya
Leaves of ivy
nokorazu ugoku
Everyone astir
aki no kaze
The
autumn wind (Bowers 1996)
Reminiscent also of the husband’s promise in Ueda Akinari’s
“Reed-Choked House”, from his collection of ghost stories, Tales of Moonlight and Rain,
published the previous year: “I shall return this autumn, when
the arrowroot leaf turns over in the wind. Be confident and wait
for me” (2007, 94). He
does not return, and the wife dies waiting. Buson and Ueda
Akinari were friends, united in their love of good ghost
stories.
AUTUMN 11: TATTERED LOTUS.
Lotus flowers are a late summer season word; the torn, battered
leaves mark late autumn.
brief notes
season page
translations
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Autumn 11a. brief notes
translations
In this case indeed being a gentleman does not save him—tattered
lotus
さればこそ賢者は富ず敗荷
sareba koso/
ken-
ja
wa
toma-
zu/
yare
hachisu
if-so
indeed/ wise
man as-for
be-wealthy not/
defeated shoulder-burden
sareba: ‘then, if so, in that case, if
that is the case’
koso: ‘the very, just, indeed’
Buson zenshū #1785,
An-ei 6, 7/20 (August 22nd, 1777). There is a pun here between
the way the characters for yare hachisu are sounded out,
which suggests this late autumn season word, and the meaning of
the characters, which suggests a palanquin which has been set
down by its bearers. ‘The Gentleman of Flowers’ is the lotus,
because it remains pristine and untouched by the mud it grows
in, but this gentleman, far from wealth and honor, has settled
into the mire. One source cited in the Buson zenshū notes
is the famous “An Explication on Love of the Lotus” by Chou Tun-i, a Confucian
scholar of 11th century China.
“Thoughts on the Love of the Lotus Flower:
There are many lovable flowers of grasses and trees both upon
the water and on the land. In the Jin Dynasty, Tao Yuanming
loved only the chrysanthemum. Since the Tang Dynasty, people of
the world have loved the peony very much. I especially love the
lotus, which grows out of the dirty mud yet is clean, cleansed
by the pure waters but not seductive; its center is void, thus
the lotus has vacuity; it grows straight and has no creeping
vines and branches; its fragrance is milder in the distance, its
stem is erect, slim and clean; it is to be enjoyed from a
distance but not too intimately.
I say the chrysanthemum is like a recluse while the peony is
like a person of high position and wealth; whereas the lotus is
like a gentleman. Alas! The love of the chrysanthemum is seldom
heard of except for Tao Yuan-ming; where are the people who,
like me, love the lotus? As for those who love the peony, of
course there are many!” (2000)
Also relevant is this earlier example, from Si-ma Qian’s
biography of Ch’u Y üan from
The Songs of the South.
Qu Yuan, referred to several times by Buson, drowned himself
after his emperor exiled him, even though he served the emperor
honestly.
“Because his mind was pure, his subjects breathe a natural
sweetness. Because his actions were noble, he preferred death to
compliance. He withdrew himself from the muck and the mire. He
sloughed off the impurities of life to soar away out of reach of
the dust and turmoil. Refusing to accept the foulness of this
world, he emerged shining and unspotted from its mud” (Hawkes 1985, 56).
Other translations:
That’s the way it is
A wise man never rich
becomes—
Broken lotus leaves. (Saito and Nelson 2006,
167)
WINTER 1: ROCK
BUTTERBUR FLOWERS . Farfugium japonicum, an
edible plant that grows near water, a kigo for early
winter.
brief notes
translations
season
page home
Winter 1a. brief notes
translations
It blooms although all unlooked for, the rock butterbur flower
咲べくもおもはで有を石蕗の花
saku- beku
mo/ omowa
de
aru
wo/
tsuwa
no hana
bloom must
even/ thought not of
being (acc.) /
rock-butterbur ’s
flower
sakubeki mo/omowazu aru ni/—alternate
version
beshi: following shushikei, means ‘confident
conjecture, strong intention or resolve, potential, command,
appropriateness or obligation or duty or natural expectation’
Buson zenshū #1977,
An-ei 6 (1777). In a corner of the bleak, desolate garden is a
plant of deep green color, somewhat resembling fuki (butterbur)
but with round leaves. In winter, from that expanse of deep
green, long stems spring up and flowers open, resembling
chrysanthemums in their vivid yellow. The import of that green
is that the future will be redeemed with such unlooked-for
growth, taking root with stout life-energy and putting forth
bright flowers.
WINTER 2: TEA
FLOWERS . The tea plant (Thea sinensis) is
a tropical/subtropical plant that flowers in early winter. It
has a simple flower, a little more than an inch in diameter,
with seven or eight yellow-white petals.
brief notes
translations
season page
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Winter 2a. brief notes
translations
I choose a path that circles round a stone: tea flowers
茶の半や石をめぐりて路を取
cha no
hana
ya//
ishi
wo
meguri-
te/ michi
wo toru
tea ’s
flowers
://
stone (acc.)
turning and/
path (acc.) taking
michi: ‘path; route; road; distance’
Buson zenshū #2019,
An-ei 7, 10th month (Nov.–Dec. 1778). Different versions have
alternate characters for michi. A stroll in a
winter-withered garden. Taking a path around the large garden
stones, and at the turn around a stone, the modest white flowers
of the tea plant unexpectedly reveal themselves.
Winter 2b. brief notes
translations
Tea flowers: as I leave out the back gate, a tofu peddler’s cry
茶の花や裏門へ出る豆腐売
cha no
hana
ya// ura-
mon
e
deru/
tō-
fu uri
tea ’s
flowers
:// back
gate from
leaving/ bean
rot seller
Buson zenshū #1949,
An-ei 6 (1777). In the Edo period, many common products were
sold by wandering peddlers, and their songs announcing their
goods were a common street sound. (Even now, it is possible to
hear the plaintive song of the roasted yam peddler on winter
nights, although the seller’s voice had been replaced by a
recording on a loud speaker). I’m assuming it’s the call, rather
than the person himself, that the speaker encounters, although
it could be either. There is a harmonious parallel between the
curds of tofu and the modest white flowers of the tea plant.
Winter 2c. brief notes
translations
Along the road lined with tea flowers I’ll see you off as far as
Keage
見送らん茶の花道をけあげ迄
mi- oku-
ran/ cha
no hana
dō
wo/ Ke-
age made
see send
will/ tea
’s flower
road (acc)/
Kick Up until
Buson zenshū #371,
Meiwa 5 (1768). Keage: Kyoto’s east gate, east of
Awataguchi. Understood to refer to the anecdote of Ushiwaka-maru
and Sekihara, from the noh play ‘Sekihara Yoichi’.
Silently the tea flowers bloom along the road, the stage of
travel along the winter Tōkaidō Road up to the appearance of
Ushiwaka’s departure gate at Keage.
Ushiwaka-maru (a childhood name for Yoshitsune, or perhaps a
folk hero based on him) and Benkei fought Sekihara Yoichi at the
Keage pass. Sekihara’s men splashed mud on Ushiwaka crossing the
river, and when he asked for an apology, beat him instead.
Ushiwaka killed almost all of them and trapped Sekihara in a
water hole, humiliating him by beating him with the flat of his
sword.
Winter 2d. brief notes
translations
Tea flowers: can’t say if they’re white or yellow
茶の花や黄にも白にもおぼつかな
cha no
hana
ya// shiro ni
mo
ki
ni mo/ obotsukana
tea ’s
flowers
:// white
or
yellow
or/
doubtful
Buson zenshū #369,
Meiwa 5 (1768). Obotsukana is the stem of obotsukanashi,
‘uncertainty, doubt, dubiousness’, although of course kana
evokes the cutting word. They are idiomatically called kōhaku,
‘pale yellow’, literally ‘yellow-white’, which also means ‘gold
and silver’ or ‘corruption’, clearly at odds with the nature of
the quiet, inconspicuous flower.
Flowers of the tea-plant,
Are they white? Are they yellow?
Who can tell? (Blyth 1984, 1:275)
Winter 2e. brief notes
translations
The last sunlight kindles a faint yellow in the tea blossoms...
茶の花のわづかに黄なる夕かな
cha no
hana no/
wazuka ni
ki
naru/
yūbe kana
tea ’s
flowers ’/
faint-
ly yellow
becoming/ evening ...
wazuka ni: ‘only, merely, barely, just, slightly,
faintly, narrowly’
Buson zenshū #370,
Meiwa 5 (1768). Alternate first line: cha no hana ya. In
the dim sinking sun, the touch of yellow in the pistils and
stamens of the quiet blooming tea flowers is kindled to the
surface.
Winter 2f. brief notes
translations
Even to the tea flowers in the moonlight, indifferent—winter
seclusion
茶の花の月夜もしらず冬籠
cha no
hana no/
tsuki-
yo
no
shira-
zu/ fuyu-
gomori
tea ’s
flowers ’/
moon night
’s knowing
not/ winter confinement
Buson zenshū #2812, no
date. Fuyugomori, ‘winter seclusion or solitude
or confinement’, is a general winter kigo. Indifferent even to
the moon shining beautifully on the white flowers of the tea
plantation outside, warm under the kotatsu, one hides
onself in the earnest pretense of winter confinement.
WINTER 3: WINTER CHRYSANTHEMUMS.
Chrysanthemums are an autumn seasonal term. The chrysanthemums
of autumn are large and showy, the product of long and obsessive
cross breeding. However, kangiku (‘cold chrysanthemums’)
are a general kigo for winter. In comparison, they are small,
meager, and modest, living up to Chou Tun-i’s name for them,
“the recluse of flowers” (see notes to Autumn 11a). Most of the
haiku in this section emphasize that comparison.
brief notes
translations
season page
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Winter 3a. brief notes
translations
Winter chrysanthemums so intent on budding—when will they reach
full bloom?
寒菊やいつを盛のつぼみがち
kan-
giku
ya// itsu
wo
sakari
no/ tsubomi- gachi
cold chrysanthemum
:// when
(acc.) full-bloom
’s/
buds
tending-towards
itsu: ‘when, how soon, [at] what time’
-gachi: ‘apt to, liable to, easily’
Buson zenshū #319,
Meiwa 5 (1768). Perhaps written for same occasion as Winter 3d
below Expresses dissatisfaction towards the meager
characteristics of the winter chrysanthemum, putting out such
sparse flowers and so many buds.
Winter 3b. brief notes
translations
Deadheading the winter chrysanthemums—how easily they snap off
寒菊や手折やすさに作ける
kan-
giku
ya//
ta-
ori yasu-
sa
ni/ tsukuri
keru
cold chrysanthemum
:// hand
fold easi-
ness with/
cultivation it-is-said
tsukuru: ‘make, create, manufacture, prepare, draw
up, write, compose, build, coin, cultivate, organize, establish,
make up (a face), trim (a tree), prepare (food), fabricate,
commit (a sin)’. Tsukuri: ‘structure, construction,
make, physique, build, workmanship, (a woman’s) make-up,
cultivation, a mounting’.
Buson zenshū #318,
Meiwa 5 (1768). Perhaps written for same occasion as Winter 3d
below. Not the austere atmosphere of that haiku’s evocation Tao
Chien, but a light, cheerful, simple observation. The stems of
the weaker, smaller, more brittle flowers are easier to snap off
than autumn chrysanthemums.
Winter 3c. brief notes
translations
Winter chrysanthemums: the sun shines on a corner of a remote
country village
寒菊や日の照る村の片ほとり
kan-
giku
ya//
hi no
teru
mura
no/ kata- hotori
cold
chrysanthemum
://
sun ’s
shining village
on/ one
vicinity
katahotori: ‘corner; remote country place’
Buson zenshū
#320, Meiwa 5 (1768). Perhaps written for same occasion as
Winter 3d below (11/4; Dec. 12th). The winter sun shines
peacefully on one corner of the village, the pretty
chrysanthemums adding the warmth that the winter landscape
lacks. This is the peace of the slack season in the farming
village. In this way also, winter chrysanthemums differ from the
showy blossoms of autumn, well tended in the gardens of
important men.
Winter 3d. brief notes
translations
Winter chrysanthemums, how artlessly they bloom at the foot of
the hedge...
寒菊を愛すともなき垣根哉
kan-
giku
wo/ aisu
tomonaki/
kaki- ne
kana
cold chrysanthemum
(acc)/ love
friendless(?)/ hedge
root ...
kakine: ‘hedge, fence’
Buson zenshū #317,
Meiwa 5, 11/4 (Dec. 12th, 1768). Another version has the first
line as kangiku ya. This was the season word chosen on
this day’s gathering at Tafuku-tei. See Kokkei zatsudan
(Comic Miscellany, Amusing Stories, 1713):
“The flowers and leaves of the winter chrysanthemum become more
narrow than the ordinary flowers. They open in the tenth month
and may last as long as the twelfth. We have reason to admire
these flowers, which brave the elements to bloom in a time
without flowers. In the Kyoto cold, those leaves resist changing
with the fall colors.”
Aisu tomonaki is a ‘state of unconcern,
indifference, apathy, easiness, simplicity, artlessness’.
Winter’s chrysanthemums bloom carelessly under the hedge, in
contrast to the large flowers so earnestly cultivated in autumn.
Evokes the rustic solitude of T’ao Yüan-ming ( T’ao Chien)’s poem
“Chrysanthemums”:
I built my cottage among the habitations of
men,
And yet I hear neither horses nor carriages.
Would you know how these things come to pass?
A distant soul creates its own solitude.
I pluck chrysanthemums under the east hedge.
Easily the south mountain comes in sight.
So wonderful is the mountain air at sunset,
And the birds flying in flocks homeward.
In all these things are secret truths:
Though I try to explain it, words are of no
avail. (Payne 1960,
138).
WINTER 4: DAIKON or
giant white radish, Raphanus sativus var. longipinnatus.
A general winter kigo.
brief notes
translations
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Winter 4a. brief notes
translations
Grow a beard to show your warrior’s prowess—white radish
武者ぶりの髭つくりせよ土大根
musha-
buri
no/ hige
tsukuri
se yo//
tsuchi
oo- ne
warriorly prowess
’s/ mustache
cultivation do
!//
earth giant root
hige: ‘mustache, beard’
tsukuri: ‘cultivation, production, distillation,
creation’, etc.
Buson zenshū #2837, no
date. Tsuchi oone is another term for daikon. See
Tsurezuregusa dan 68 in the notes of the next poem for
reference. Perhaps the beard is a fringe of fine roots growing
from the daikon, or perhaps its crest of green leaves?
Winter 4b. brief notes
translations
The giant radishes of Tsukushi’s constable of the peace
transformed into warriors and fought back the enemy. Priest
Jōshin’s potato heads were likewise not without miraculous
properties.
Armed with giant radishes, he fights on—warrior priest
つくしの押領使の土おほねは兵に化して敵を追返しけるとぞ。盛親僧都のいもがし
らも、などかかゝる奇特のなくてやは
大根につゞく兵法師武者
Heading: Tsukushi
no
ō-
ryō-
shi
no tsuchi
oo-
ne wa,
Tsukushi
’s push
dominion envoy
’s earth
great root as-for
tsuwamono
ni
keshi-
te
kataki
wo
oi-
kaeshi keru to zo.
warriors
into transforming-into
and enemy
[acc.] driven
back have they
say.
Jō-
shin
Sō-
zu
no imo-
gashira mo, nadoka
kakaru
Prosper Parents
priest capital
’s potato
heads
also,
why
concerned-with
kidoku no
nakute
ya
wa
miracle ’s
without such-things as-for
Haiku: dai-
kon ni/ tsuzuku
tsuwamono/ hō- shi
mu- sha
great root
in/ continuing
warrior/
law master
military person
nadoka: ‘why’, in classical Japanese
tsukuku: ‘continue, go on, keep on, be continuous’
tsuwamono: ‘soldier, warrior’
hōshi: ‘Buddhist priest’
Buson zenshū #2860,
provenance uncertain. Season word: daikon (winter). See
#2837 for similar content. See dan 68 of Tsurezuregusa for
references:
“There was in Tsukushi [an old name for Kyushu–n.] a certain
man, a constable of the peace [approximation of the title
ōryōshi] it would seem, who for many years had eaten two broiled
radishes [tsuchiōne is a large variety of white radish] each
morning under the impression that radishes were the sovereign
remedy for all ailments. Once some enemy forces attacked and
surrounded his constabulary, choosing a moment when the place
was deserted. Just then, two soldiers rushed out of the
building, and engaged the enemy, fighting with no thought for
their lives until they drove away all the troops. The constable,
greatly astonished, asked the soldiers, ‘You have fought most
gallantly, gentlemen, considering I have never seen you here//
before. Might I ask who you are?’ ‘We are the radishes you have
eaten so faithfully every morning for so many years,’ they
answered, and with these words they disappeared. So deep was his
faith in radishes that even such a miracle could occur” (Kenkō 1998, 61-62).
“Jōshin, an abbot of the Shinjō-in, was a high-ranking
priest of great holiness. He was extremely fond of what are know
as ‘potato heads,’ [imogashira, apparently a kind of
taro] and devoured prodigious quantities of them. He kept a
large bowl heaped with these potatoes by his knee in his
scripture class, and would go on eating as he lectured on the
sacred books. If ever he fell ill he would shut himself up in
his room for a week or a fortnight, announcing that he was
taking a cure, and indulge himself with especially good
potatoes, eating more than ever. This was how he cured any and
all ailments. He never gave his potatoes to anyone else, but ate
them all himself.
“Jōshin had always been extremely poor, but his teacher on his
deathbed left Jōshin 200 kan of copper coins and a monks’
residence hall. Jōshin sold the building for 100 kan, making a
total of 30,000 hiki, all of which he decided to use for buying
potatoes. He deposited the money with a man in the capital and
had potatoes delivered to him in lots of 10 kan worth each. In
this way he was able to eat all the potatoes he could desire, so
many indeed that although he made no other use of the money, it
soon disappeared. People said, ‘A poor man who falls heir to 300
kan and then spends it in that way must be pious indeed.’
“Once, when this abbot saw a certain priest, he dubbed him the
Shiroururi. Someone asked what a shiroururi was. He replied, ‘I
have no idea, but if such a thing existed, I am sure it would
look like that priest’s face.’
“This abbot was handsome, robustly built, a great eater, and
better than anyone at calligraphy, Buddhist scholarship, and
rhetoric. He was highly regarded within his temple as a beacon
of the sect, but, being an eccentric who cared nothing for
society and acted exactly as he pleased in everything, he
refused ever to conform to the others. Even when he sat down to
a collation after performing a service, he would never wait
until the others were served, but began eating by himself as
soon as the food was put before him. Then, the moment he felt
like leaving he would stand up from the table and go off by
himself. He did not eat even collations in his temple at the
regular times with the others, but whenever he felt like eating,
whether in the middle of the night or at the break of day. When
he felt like sleeping, he shut himself in his room, even in
broad daylight, and refused to listen when//people addressed
him, no matter how urgent their business might be. Once he
awakened, he might then spend several nights without sleeping,
going about serenely, whistling as he went. His behavior was
unconventional, but people, far from disliking him, allowed him
everything. Might it have been because his virtue had attained
the highest degree?” (ibid 55-56)
I have quoted the selection on Jōshin so extensively because he
is a good example of the kind of enlightened eccentric that
Buson admired.
WINTER 5: WINTER WITHERING. A
general winter kigo. “Fuyuzare is the gruesome scene of all
things in the universe withering” (Sasaki 2002, 625).
brief notes
translations
season page
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Winter 5a. brief notes
translations
Winter withering: the crow is black, the heron white
冬がれや烏は黒く鷺白し
fuyu-
gare
ya// karasu
wa
kuroku/ saza
shiroshi
winter withering
://
crow
as-for
black/
heron white
Buson zenshū #1482,
An-ei 5 (1776). Appears in a letter addressed to Masana on 11/27
(Jan. 6th, 1777). Evokes the zen koan “The willow is green, the
flower is red”, but with the bleak colors of winter.
Winter 5b. brief notes
translations
Winter withering: a single bird takes shelter among the leeks
冬ざれや韮にかくるゝ鳥ひとつ
fuyu- gare
ya// nira
ni kakururu/
tori hitotsu
winter withering
://
leeks in
hiding/
bird one
kakureru: ‘hide, conceal oneself, take cover,
take shelter, pass away, disappear’
Buson zenshū #1889,
An-ei 6 (1777). Alternative first lines are fuyusare, fuyuzare,
‘withering in winter’, and mono arete, ‘things
withered’. Alternative writing for last line. In the fields of
withered vegetation and chilly wind, only the leeks kindle green
with life. Under those leaves a single bird hides, drawn near to
houses and people.
WINTER 6: LOQUAT
BLOSSOMS. Eriobotrya japonica. A
midwinter kigo. According to the notes of Buson zenshū
(#1315), the white flowers take on a cream yellow hue as they
release their sweet, heady fragrance.
brief notes
translations
season page
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Winter 6a. brief notes
translations
Loquat flowers: without even birds to attend to them as the sun
sets
琵琶の花鳥もすさめず日くれたり
bi-
wa no
hana/
tori
mo susame-
zu// hikure
tari (susamazu)
spoon rake
’s flowers/
birds even
admire not//
sunset has
susamaru: ‘grow in intensity (violence),
run to waste, go to ruin, fall into decline, addict onself to,
indulge in’. The notes in Buson zenshū define this
negative form as ‘fail to attach the heart’.
Buson zenshū #1315,
An-ei 4, 11/20 (Dec. 12th, 1775). Written at the Midnight
Pavilion, where loquat blossoms was the chosen topic. Evokes an
anonymous waka from the Kōkinshū:
Yamatakami
high in the mountains
hito mo susamenu
with no one to
admire you
sakura-bana
oh cherry blossoms–
itaku nawabiso
do not be melancholy
ware mihayasan
for I’ll delight in your charms
(Kōkinshū 2004, 63)
The subdued, sober loquat flowers are ignored by the birds and
soon the sun sets quietly and completely. One wants to be filled
with that quiet elegance.
Other translations:
Flowers of the loquat;
Even the birds cannot fly hither and thither;
The day is over. (Blyth 1992, 2:571)
The loquat blossoms,
even birds do not like them--
the day is ending. (Sawa and Shiffert 1978,
147)
WINTER 7: WINTER PEONY. Paeonia
suffruticosa .Tree peonies are usually a kigo for
early summer but some varieties of peonies have been cultivated
to bloom in the snow. brief notes
translations
season page
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Winter 7a. brief notes
translations
Not even a butterfly comes to buy its dream—winter peony
夢買ひに来る蝶もなし冬牡丹
(Heading omitted)
yume kai
ni/
kuru
chō
mo nashi/
fuyu botan
dream buy
to/ coming
butterfly even
not/ winter
peony
Buson zenshū #2836, no
date. Peonies and butterflies have a traditional association in
haiku, according to the 1676 haikai handbook Accompanying Boat. There
is also an evocation of the tradition of Chuang-tzu dreaming he was a
butterfly flirting with the flowers, waking up and unsure which
was the dream and which was reality (Buson’s source could have
been Sōshi seibutsuron, Public Criticism of Chuang Tzu.
Buson’s painting
of this anecdote shows how much he valued it.) The story of
buying a good dream comes from Gleanings from Uji. But
for the winter peony, no insects can carry tales. A version of
the story follows:
“The Bee and the Dream
Two merchants living in a certain place set out together to sell
things. While they rested along the way, the older fell asleep.
The younger man looked absently at the other's face and
saw a horsefly come out of his nose and fly off toward Sado. The
man woke up and said he had had a wonderful dream. It was about
a wealthy man on Sado who had a yard full of white blooming
camellias. A horsefly flew up from the root of a camellia and
told him to dig there and he found a jar full of gold. The
younger man asked him to sell him his dream. The older man
thought it strange, but he sold it for 300 coins. After their
journey was over and they had returned to their village, the
younger man secretly crossed over to Sado. He hunted out the
wealthy man and lived as yard sweeper for him until spring. When
the flowers bloomed, they were all red, not a single white one.
He waited another year, and this time there was one tree covered
with white flowers. He was delighted. He probed with fire tongs
at its roots secretly in the night and heard a click. A jar of
coins came out when he dug. He hid it where nobody could find
it, and after half a year had passed, he asked to go home. He
took the jar back to Echigo and he became a chōja. He
lived the rest of his life in ease” (Yanagita 1948).
Winter 7b. brief notes
translations
In Praise of Tōkōkei
Prime minister of the mountains, a peony in the snow...
陶弘景賛
山中の相雪中のぼたんかな
Heading: Tō- kō- kei
san
Porcelain Wide
View on
Haiku:
san-
chū no/
shō
set-
chū no/
botan kana
mountains amid
’s/ councilor
snow amid
’s/ peony ...
Buson zenshū #2023,
probably An-ei 7 (1778). Tōkōkei: This is the Chinese
Taoist immortal T’ao
Hung Ching, who lived during the Six Dynasties and left
his post in the government to become a recluse. While in
retirement on Mt. Mao, he gave advice to several emperors, and
was therefore called “the Minister from the Mountains” (Wong 2001, 68). Buson is
drawing his material from the chapter “Renowned Men” in the Enki kappō.
See the notes to Autumn 11a for the
peony as the plutocrat of flowers. An advisor suited for the
lavish setting of court taking up a hermit’s mountain residence
is akin to a peony blooming in the starkness of winter. The
metaphor is especially apt because gardeners protect winter
peonies with small straw roofs, like hermits in their own grass
huts.
Bashō wrote:
fuyu botan
A winter peony
chidori yo yuki no
the plover must be
hototogisu
a cuckoo in snow (2004, #212)
WINTER 8: WINTER CHERRY BLOSSOMS.
Prunus
subhirtella autumnalis. A few cultivars of cherry
blossoms bloom in the fall and then through the winter.
brief notes
translations
season page
home
Winter 8a. brief notes
translations
From a single branch flying petals, falling leaves: winter
blooming cherry
ひとつ枝に飛花落葉や冬ざくら
hitotsu
eda
ni/
hi-
ka-
raku- yō
ya// fuyu-
zakura
one
branch from/
flying blossoms
falling leaves
://
winter cherry
Syllable count: 6/7/5.
hikarakuyō: “blossoms fall and leaves scatter, the
evanescence of worldly things”
Buson zenshū #2409,
Temmei 3, 10/10 (Nov. 4th, 1783). An alternative final line is kaeribana,
‘returning flowers’, an early winter season word, the chosen
topic at the haiku gathering on this day.
WINTER 9: NARCISSUS
. Narcissus tazetta, a late winter kigo.
brief notes
translations
season page
home
Winter 9a. brief notes
translations
Narcissus: the shrike’s grass stems have blossomed
水仙や鵙の草ぐき花咲ぬ
sui-
sen
ya// mozu
no kusa-
guki/
hana
saki- nu
water hermit :/
/ shrike
’s grass
stem/ flower
bloomed has
kusa: grass, herbs, plants, pasture
Buson zenshū #1323,
probably An-ei 4 (1775). In deep autumn, the shrike captures
frogs, small birds and the like and impales them on tree thorns
and grass stems to store them for later. This is mozu no
hayanie, ‘the sacrifice of the shrike,’ also called mozu
no kusaguki. As the narcissus bud slowly develops and the
stem lengthens, it resembles the sacrifice of the shrike, lovely
in its way. See the related haiku of the same year:
kusaguki o
Missing
the grass stems
ushinau mozu no
the
butcher bird,
takane kana (Buson zenshū
#1322)
his shrill cry
Winter 9b. brief notes
translations
Godless Month: show to Munetō narcissus blooming
宗任に水仙見せよ神無月
Mune-
tō
ni/ sui-
sen
mise- yo//
Kan-
na-
zuki
Essence Duty
to/ water
hermit shows
!//
god without month
Buson zenshū
#258. Probably written for the same chosen general season term
(‘early winter’) as #252—10/8 (November 16th, 1768). One version
has the error misete for mise yo. The season
word is Kannazuki, the 10th month, “Godless Month,” the
month when all the gods are at Ise, where it is called
Kamiarizuki, “Gods-are-here month.” So it refers to the first
month of winter. Buson zenshū cites the episode below,
adding, are the narcissus, the only colorful element in the
winter landscape, a response to Abe Munetō’s tact in answering
the long ago question about the plum blossoms? Still, bred in
the north country as he was, Munetō would appreciate the
existence of these temperate flowers.
Abe Munetō’s politically troublesome family controlled the Mutsu
province in the twelfth century. The Minamoto defeated them and
took Munetō captive, and he eventually became Minamoto Yoshiie’s
companion. Buson zenshū cites an episode from the Tsurugi
maki or “Book of Swords” (a chapter included in some
versions of The Tale of the Heike)
in which courtiers approached the captive with some plum
blossoms and asked (“Hey, Munetō!” taunting as only medieval
Japanese courtiers could taunt) what they were. Munetō replied
that in his country they were called plum blossoms; no doubt
they had some fancier name for them at court. Merwin and Lento
say that since his reply scanned as court verse, it was
doubly withering (2013,
191).
See also Buson zenshū #2437:
uguisu wa
A bush warbler calls
yayo Munetō ga
“Hey, Munetō—”
hatsune kana
the year’s first song...
Winter 9c. brief notes
translations
Narcissus: a beautiful woman with her head bent in pain
水仙や美人かうべをいたむらし
sui-
sen
ya//
bi-
jin
kōbe
wo/
itamu-
rashi
water wizard
:// beauty
person head
(acc.)/ moaning [over] like
Buson zenshū #999,
probably Meiwa 6 (1769). In the cold, the cleanly blooming
narcissus inclines its head to a degree, suggesting a
resemblance to the posture of a beautiful woman bowed down by a
headache. Perhaps meant to evoke the Chinese beauties Hsi Shih
and Sun Shou from the Meng
Ch’iu: the first frowned and pounded her chest with
heartburn, the second affected the pained smile of someone
suffering a toothache, and both were made more beautiful (Li and Hsü 1979, 102).
Given these antecedents, I think Blyth’s less dramatic rendition
is more successful:
The narcissus flowers,—
A beautiful woman
With an aching head.
“The flower of the narcissus is heavy on its stem, and of a
pale, rather translucent whiteness” (Blyth 1984, 1:250).
This one of several examples of the permutations of the term bijin.
In classical Chinese literature the characters for
‘beautiful person’ referred to a virtuous person of unspecified
gender, but the Japanese seem to have read it as “a beauty,”
always female.
Winter 9d. brief notes
translations
An offering of narcissus at the flower shop’s family shrine
水仙や花やが宿の持仏堂
sui-
sen
ya// hana-
ya
ga
yado no/
ji-
butsu- dō
water hermit
:// flower
shop (sub.)
house ’s/
have Buddha hall
Buson zenshū #1945,
An-ei 6 (1777). Jibutsudō: family Buddhist shrine
in which the dead are remembered. The store is full of all kinds
of flowers, but the heart is drawn to the interior of the family
Buddhist shrine and its offering of pure, neat narcissus.
Winter 9e. brief notes
translations
In the chilly capital here and there narcissus blooming
水仙や寒き都のこゝかしこ
sui-
sen
ya// samuki
miyako no/ koko-
kashiko
water hermit
://
cold
capital ’s/
here there
kokokashiko: ‘here and there, all around, all
about, everywhere’
Buson zenshū #1946,
An-ei 6, 10th month (November 1777). At variance with the mix of
willow and cherry of spring’s capital, this version of Kyoto is
chilly, bleak. But here and there the touching blooming
narcissus colors Kyoto’s winter.
Winter 9f. brief notes
translations
Among the narcissus flowers foxes at play: a moonlit evening
水仙や狐あそぶや宵月夜
sui-
sen
ni/
kitsune asobu
ya// yoi-
zuki- yo
water wizard
amid/
fox
play
://
evening moon night
asobu: ‘play, amuse/enjoy/divert oneself, make a
holiday, make a trip/excursion/visit, make merry, have a spree,
take one’s pleasure, visit the gay quarters/red light district,
loaf, be idle, take one’s ease, do nothing’, etc.
Buson zenshū #1324,
probably An-ei 4 (1775). One version has furu oka, ‘old
hill’, as a heading [does it refer to Furuoka, the city? The
kanji doesn’t quite match]. Yoizukiyo: ‘a night
in which the moon only shows in the evening’. The notes describe
a fantastic scene, appropriate to the supernatural role of foxes in
Japanese legend: in the pale moonlight, the yellow foxes are
among the yellow cups of flowers, as if among the wine cups at a
banquet, an illusion the moonlight has engendered.
© 2014 Amy
England, rights reserved