LaSpina.org – Page 16 – By David LaSpina

Thursday, 21 December 2023

That Sound, Short Haiku, and Shigure

In what may be the shortest haiku ever published, 91 years ago Santōka wrote this.

音は時雨か
oto wa shigure ka[1]

that sound—
is it winter drizzle?
—Santōka[2]

^{Sengaku Temple by Tsuchiya Koitsu}

Returning to my favorite free-verse haiku poet, Santōka, we come to what may well be one of the shortest haiku or shortest poems of any time you are every likely to meet. Literally, he writes sound / winter drizzle?. We could even shorten that last word in translation to just drizzle; I add winter to it in my translation to give some degree of context. Shigure is the light drizzle that comes and goes in the brief overlap between autumn and winter. It is never heavy, rather it is a light rain that comes briefly and leaves quickly. It is cold, sometimes even cold enough to partially freeze, so some translate the word as sleet; it marks that dividing line between the color of autumn and the colorless barren landscape of winter.

I don’t know if winter drizzle is the best way to sum up these rains. Late autumn drizzle or early winter drizzle might be more accurate, but both are also more of a mouthful. In most saijiki (kigo encyclopedia), shigure is classified as a kigo (season word) for early winter, so that’s why I settle on winter drizzle. An argument could easily be made for a different translation, though.

The entire haiku is only 7 syllables in Japanese[3]. That’s really short!

Santōka wrote this in 1932, around this time. Probably a little before now, given that we are now in mid-winter. In 1932 he had just settled down to a hermitage in Yamaguchi which he named “Gochūan” (其中庵) after a verse in the Lotus Sutra. It was there that he published his first book of haiku. He lived on donations from friends and admirers.

Was Santōka at home, drinking some sake or sorting haiku for inclusion in his book, when suddenly he noticed that hush that comes with a light rain. Hmm… what’s that… is it drizzle?

See: Pronunciation of Japanese ↩
See: a note on translations ↩
technically morae: see here. ← Yes, that’s another link I haven’t moved over to this website yet. Rest assured, I’m the one who wrote it. ↩

Sunday, 17 December 2023

Tea with the Sky-Eye & Little Spring

As the warm weather continues into December, a kigo (season word) for this type of weather comes to mind. Let’s look at a haiku I enjoy using it.

天目に小春の雲の動きかな
tenmoku ni koharu no kumo no ugoki kana[1]

in my teabowl
the clouds of little spring
are moving
—Kikusha-ni[2]

^{Tea Ceremony, by Kasamatsu Shiro}

The teabowl in question, tenmoku is a fairly high-end and expensive tea bowl, literally sky-eye. You can maybe get a feeling as to why it’s called that by looking at it. Here’s one:

via Wikipedia

The poem is open to interpretation, but I’d say Kikusha-ni is paying a compliment on the teabowl, saying the design is suggestive of the “little spring” weather. The tea itself is then suggestive of clouds moving around. It feels to me like this haiku was written as a compliment to the tea master who led a tea ceremony she attended. Kikusha-ni was a accomplished tea master herself, so she might have been the one hosting a tea ceremony and was instead complimenting the tea bowl maker.

Little spring is when it gets warm again during the beginning of winter. In English we sometimes say Indian Summer for this period. This is a kigo (season word) for early winter, roughly 11/8₁₂/6. We are past that point now, but this year I feel this fits quite well with right now. Just the other day we had 18 degree (64°F) weather! If this keeps up, this entire winter could be a little spring.

Kikusha-ni was one of the few female poets of pre-modern times. She married at 16 but her husband soon died and she returned home. Shortly after, she began her study of haiku and quickly became very skilled at it. Later in life she became a nun of the Pure Land sect, the same that Chiyo-ni had joined a half-century before.

Thursday, 14 December 2023

Silver Eagles for My Kids

The other day I picked up two American Silver Eagles with the dates 2013 and 2016.

These years are special to me because they are the birth years of my two sons. I had wanted to buy ASEs for these two years for awhile, but buying ASEs is not exactly as easy to do in Japan as in the States, so I delayed doing it and didn’t get around to it until recently when I happened to come across a place that had them.

As you can see, very good condition. Not that the condition matters. I’ll explain what I mean by that in a minute. If the price of silver just goes completely nuts, I won’t hesitate to sell and make a profit, but assuming just slow growth I’m planning on holding these until my kids are 30–40 or so and then giving the coins to them.

Rather than put the two coins in some kind of protective sleeve and lock them away, they immediately went into my pockets, one on each side. They’ve been in my pockets for over a week already, which accounts for some of the wear you already see on them. I figure that it will make a much more sentimental gift to pass on if it’s a worn coin I’ve been carrying for them for 30 years rather than some mint coin I had locked away and never looked at or touched. I don’t know, I might be thinking crazy, and maybe it would be better to put them away somewhere safe, but that is my rational anyway.

Now also whenever I reach in my pockets and touch the coins, I think of my kids, and that is always a good thing. I still have very vivid memories of the birth of my first son. My second is a little less clear than the first because I was trying to control my curious oldest son—he was only three at the time and my wife wanted him in there to witness the birth with us—but still it is strong. He helped me cut the umbilical cord. They are both growing up way too quickly: seven and almost eleven already. Thoughts of them are always near, so I don’t need the carry piece to bring them to mind, but it also won’t hurt.

The are attractive coins when new, aren’t they? But old and worn silver coins are also attractive. Hopefully the idea that the coins were carried daily by their old man will make them even more attractive to my boys.

Who knows—on one of my next trips to the States, I may seek out and buy another two ASEs at a coin shop for these years and then put them away to keep them mint, so that will always be an option. Maybe I’ll put a few more. President Eisenhower is said to have always collected silver dollars from the year of his birth (1890) and given them away to people he met. I could see myself collecting not only ASEs but other coins and rounds with these dates.

But for now I really like the idea of keeping these both as pocket coins, to finger when I get nervous or just when I want to think of my kids, or just to carry with me, and to pass on the worn coins when they are both old enough to appreciate the gift.

Tuesday, 12 December 2023

To Kill an Ant, Performed

A few weeks ago Mr Louis Josephson, a Juilliard composer, sent me an email asking for permission to use my translation for the haiku To Kill an Ant for a performance he was writing. I am more than happy to support the arts, so of course I said yes.

Flash forward a few weeks and he sent me a video of the performance. Watch it below. Mine is the second haiku in the performance.

LINK: 7 Haikus

Friday, 8 December 2023

I Am Poor: Bashō’s Pursuit of Poetic Purity

It still seems like autumn outside, but by the traditional Japanese reckoning we are into winter now. This in mind, a verse Bashō wrote about 343 years ago comes to mind.

雪の朝独リ干鮭を噛み得タリ
yuki no ashita hitori karazake o kami e tari[1]

this snowy morn
by myself
chewing dried salmon
—Bashō[2]

Snowy Farmyard in Yaizu by Tsuchiya Koitsu

Dried salmon was an ordinary food, far from the luxury of the rich. Bashō is setting himself as a man of the common people, a place he was most comfortable. However, at the same time, he is also setting himself apart from the common people. Let’s look at how.

In a headnote to this haiku he tells us:

富家喰肌肉丈夫喫菜根. 予乏し
Fuka wa kiniku o kurai, jofu wa saikon o kissu. Yo wa toboshi.
Wealthy people eat fine meat, and ambitious young men eat roots. I am just poor. (or “I lack both”)

The reference to “roots” is a nod to a classic Chinese philosophical text called Saikontan (菜根譚, Caigentan in Chinese) which was very popular in Japan during the Edo era. Written by Kōjisei (Hong Yingming in Chinese), it is a book of aphorisms from Confucianism, Taoism, and Chan (Zen) Buddhism. It is still fairly popular to this day—I’ve seen it compared in popularity in Japan to Meditations by Marcus Aurelius in the West.

One line from the book tells us that “A man who can get by on roots can achieve anything” (人常咬得菜根, 則百事可做). One can easily guess how people who aspired to great things might take this line literally and adopt the practice of chewing vegetable roots as a way to get there.

Bashō is having a bit of fun poking at both sides. He is denying both riches and ambition. He has no desire for either and prefers to be a poor poet; just as a monk sets all ambition and desire aside in their pursuit of the Buddha, Bashō does the same in is pursuit of poetic purity.

Snow is a kigo (season word) for late winter, roughly 1/6 – 2/3 on our current calendar, but the main kigo here is dried salmon which is a kigo for all winter. Back in the day, salmon would have their guts removed and then be hung to dry under the eaves of buildings and would be eaten all winter.

^{Licensed under Creative Commons by Yosi Oka}

There is more in the archives