三日月にひしひしと物の静まりぬ mikazuki ni hishihishi to mono no shizumarinu[1]
at the crescent moon
the feeling
of silence
—Chiyo-ni[2]
“Bamboos and the Crescent Moon” by Kotozuka Eiichi
Bashō taught that in order to write haiku, one had to clear their mind and become one with whatever they are writing about.
He put it this way:
Learn about the pine from the pine and the bamboo from the bamboo. The object and yourself must become one, and from that feeling of oneness issues your poetry.
Chiyo-ni embraced this idea. The vast majority of her haiku were about nature. She completely immersed herself in nature and told us what she saw.
In this haiku hishihishi is an onomatopoeia that means something like “an awareness”. Meditating—stopping the constant chatter of the mind—one grows aware of how quiet the surrounding world has become, especially at night, when the beauty of the moon is there to focus on.
The kigo here is mikazuki, by the way. Literally it is “third day moon”, but we can interpret that as crescent moon, as that is what is three nights from the new moon. Another kigo for the same thing is tsuki no mayu (月の眉), eyebrow moon, as this is also what it kind of looks like. Hmm… maybe an upside down eyebrow, but still…
In haiku, nearly all mentions of the moon are autumn kigo. This is the time when moon viewing parties became the main social events. Next to cherry blossoms, the moon is the most common subject of haiku.
Problems with Just one more time… Is it just me? Can you relate?
one more game
I tell myself
just one more
Snow Covered Cottage by Kawase Hasui
When I was younger, some games would really capture my attention and just not let go. It was always just one more game until before I knew it, the sun was rising. Civ 2 and 3 were famous[1] for this. From the reviews I read of the newer versions of Civ, it seems like the games are still very well-known for this trait. Just one more.
These days I’m not much of a gamer. I try sometimes, but I get bored quickly, then I die or lose and the game just loses all appeal. I want to get up, stretch, and go do something productive. Oh well. I still have my memories of when I enjoyed games far more to keep me company.
This haiku was inspired by watching my kids play their Nintendo Switch. It’s always just one more game with them too. Unfortunately for them, the Switch allows parents to set time limits, so they can’t keep just one more gameing until morning. On this particular day they had just had their playtime ended by the time limit and they were begging to me just one more game. That combined with my memory of when I had the same attitude put this haiku in my mind.
It doesn’t just apply to gaming. I know some bookworms are always doing the same. They read some, look at the clock and see the time, then think just one more chapter, and before they know it, it’s 4am.
Come to think of it, it does still happen to me. Not with gaming, but with research. I will be researching some haiku or some fact about historic Japan. My wife tells me she is going to bed, I say just a few more minutes, I look at see it’s past midnight and I think just a few more minutes, and before I know it, it’s 3am and I need to be up in two hours. Le sigh Some things never change, I suppose.
Most students of Japanese history learn that the Mongols were defeated by a typhoon, later named kamikaze, “divine wind”. People who read a bit more may understand that the Japanese did have something to do with the victory and that it wasn’t entirely the result of the gods and their wind. Seems like new evidence shows that there was even more to it than we always thought.
While history often depicts the invaders being repulsed in a day, new evidence shows the conflict extended to the gates of the administrative capital of Dazaifu.
Kyūshū University professor Hattori Hideo, an expert on the invasion:
Hattori has put forward a completely new theory that the invaders did not immediately withdraw as widely believed but advanced a considerable distance into the interior. In making his argument, he cites records that tell of fighting near the shogunal administrative center of Dazaifu four days after the Yuan army landed.
October is rapidly approaching. Things are finally starting to get cooler in Japan. Well… at least at night. A little. Or maybe it’s just my imagination. This summer has been brutal, so I’m jumping on any hint of autumn I can get!
The modern name for October in Japan is 十月, literally “tenth month”. Pretty boring, eh? The older name was more exciting! It comes with a fun story too. Let’s look!
The old name for October was was 神無月 (Kannazuki), “the month without gods”. This name raises a few questions. Why is the month without gods? Where did they go? What did the gods ever do for us anyway and why should we care if they go away?
There is an old legend that tells us all the Shinto gods in Japan have left their various shrines around the country and journeyed to Shimane for an annual meeting at Izumo Shrine. Izumo Shrine is believed to be the oldest shrine in Japan. According to myth, it was here that Ningi no Mikoto, grandson of the sun goddess Amaterasu, descended from the heavens. At one time, all of Japan was governed from Izumo. So you can see, it’s a pretty important place mythologically speaking, and a perfect place for the gods to meet.
Izumo Shrine by Tokuriki Tomikichiro
This meeting leaves the rest of the country momentarily godless, hence the name “the month without gods”. But interestingly, in Izumo the month had a different name. In this place the month was called 神有月 (Kamiarizuki), “the month with gods”.
It is a bit of a silly story, but as with much of mythology, it’s fun. People enjoy spreading the story, especially people in Shimane, who really have fun with it all, as you might imagine.
Gathering of gods at the great shrine at Izumo by Utagawa Sadahide
Modern scholarship tells us this story most likely came after the name. In the name 神無月 (Kannazuki), 神 means god or gods, 無 does mean “absent”, and 月 means month. Gods absent month would seem to make sense. But these scholars tell us 無 in this word probably was used for sound only, not meaning, and is therefore a possessive particle, making the 神無月 actually god’s month (or month of gods to make it sound better). So you see, this line of reasoning says that the entire story of the gods meeting in Izumo and abandoning the rest of the country is based on false etymology and came later.
The scholars who tell us this give a lot of evidence for their beliefs and they are probably right. Their argument makes sense and goes with other words. But…. the story of the gods and an Izumo meeting is more fun, so I don’t think it’s going to be going away anytime soon.
Many haiku reference this story. Here’s one:
禅寺の松の落葉や神無月 zendera ni matsu no ochiba ya kannazuki
the zen temple
pine needles falling
month of no gods
—Boncho
(trans. David LaSpina)
another:
留主のまにあれたる神の落葉哉 rusu no ma ni aretaru kami no ochiba kana
while the god is gone
the shrine is blanketed
with dead leaves
—Bashō
(trans. David LaSpina)
I’m sure I have some archived posts from the old site focusing on each of these haiku and giving more detail. One of these days I’ll find and repost them. ↩
floating in the haze
like small islands
treetops
—David LaSpina
浮かんでる霧の中にや木の梢 ラスピナ ukanderu kiri no naka ni ya kinokozue[1]
Late Fall by Kusaka Kenji
I put the English first above because that is how I wrote it, then I translated it to Japanese. The funny thing is for the Japanese I removed the simile like small islands, because that was just too long. That is something that surprises many people: that due to the structure of the language, the traditional 5 / 7 / 5 count works out to a much much shorter poem in Japanese than in English.
That makes the Japanese roughly: floating / in the haze / treetops. That may actually make a stronger haiku. It leaves more to you the reader to fill in instead of me explicitly telling you how to picture it. I’ve kept the original English version in this post for reference, but I may use the Japanese version and a shortened English version if I publish this elsewhere.
I wrote this haiku after driving in the countryside one morning. It was a foggy morning, as they occasionally are. We have started to get hints of cooler weather in the morning and at night, and that always brings fog, especially in the mountains and hills. As I drove through the mist, the treetops looked like small islands floating in an ocean, inspiring the haiku.
Fog is a kigo (season word) for autumn, which, according to the traditional Japanese calendar, we are already in. I actually had the Japanese word in mind when I wrote it, 霧 (kiri) which we usually translate as “fog”, reserving “haze” to describe the same thing but in spring (霞—kasumi—in Japanese) but I used “haze” simply because it sounded better to my ear as I wrote it. No other reason than that really.[2]
