LaSpina.org — Haiku, Japan, and the misunderstood

Wednesday, 16 October 2024

Little Demons and Halloween in Japan

Looking at the event calendar, I see that a certain day is coming…

in this country too
the little demons
are preparing

When I first arrived in Japan some time ago, Halloween was mostly unknown. People who had some familiarity with Western customs knew the name and maybe a few key features of the day, such as trick or treat, but it was largely unknown. Within the last ten years, though, the day has exploded from mostly unknown to well-known and pretty popular. Kids love the day (of course) and young adults do too; a little too much in the case of the latter group, as they have been causing a lot of problems in Tokyo the past few years.

How exactly this change happened so quickly, I’m not entirely sure. It is a little funny because I used to joke about Japan stealing Western holidays and that Halloween was next. Japan had borrowed Christmas and Valentine’s Day (giving V-Day their own unique twist and spinning the Western V-Day into a separate holiday called White Day). Both of these adoptions seemed to me to have been motivated by department stores and, as Spaceballs put it, “the search for more money”[1] and Halloween or Easter seemed like prime candidates for the next one. While the cuteness of the Easter Bunny seemed right up Japan’s alley, I thought the religious angle might be off-putting (then again, that didn’t stop Christmas) so I was betting on Halloween. And it seems like I bet correctly! …I really should put my luck into winning the lottery or something instead of wasting it on things like predicting what holiday Japan adopts next.

Anyway, Halloween is now a part of this country and will probably keep growing here. Which takes us to my haiku. Treat or treating is still not a thing here, except in limited cases, but there are many many Halloween themed events and kids parties. My kids have already been to two of them.

So even here in this country, the little demons are preparing for the big day.

You’re welcome. And may the Schwartz be with you. ↩

Typhoon, Nowaki, and Escaping to the Temple

Autumn is the time for typhoon in Japan…

妻も子も寺で物くふ野分かな
tsuma mo ko mo tera de mono kū nowaki kana[1]

wives and children
eating at the temple…
autumn typhoon
—Buson[2]

Even today some temples still function as evacuation buildings. You can imagine how this might have been even more so back in the day, as they were fairly important buildings, well built, and everyone knew them, making them ideal locations for emergencies.

The word used here, nowaki, is emphasizing the typhoon wind and not the rain. “Field-dividing wind” may be a better translation, as the word gives an image of rice fields damaged by the strong wind. This is unfortunately not an uncommon occurrence.[3] Often after a typhoon passes I can walk to the rice fields and see portions of the rice paddies damaged or even completely destroyed.

I added “autumn” before typhoon in my translation just to put this in the proper season for any unfamiliar with these storms. Autumn is typhoon season in Japan, with always at least a few hitting, often at least one of which will be fairly big and might cause some damage somewhere on the main island (Honshū).

As always with his haiku, Buson is painting us a picture with his words. More than any other classic haiku poet, Buson was very visual in his words. His main job was as an artist, which may be why he leaned towards this style of haiku.

See: Pronunciation of Japanese ↩
See: a note on translations ↩
The title of the woodblock print is actually Nowaki as well. “Typhoon” is a simple translation so no explanation is needed, but now you know what nowaki is so it’s all good. ↩

Sunday, 6 October 2024

Dancing Leaves, Watching Nature

I was enjoying outside the other day, when a chance encounter with nature happened. I recorded it:

watching the leaves
blow in the wind

葉が風に舞うのを見ている
ha ga kaze ni mau no o mite iru[1]

Mizuno Toshikata - Chivalrous Man in Autumn — Mizuno Toshikata – Chivalrous Man in Autumn

I was sitting outside, watching nature while reading my book. Although the temperature has finally started dropping a bit in the evenings here, the leaves have not even started to change, and we are even further from when they start to fall. Nevertheless, one did flutter past me while I was sitting there after a particularly strong wind gust. Perhaps it had been loosened by one of the typhoon we’ve had recently. At any rate, as I watched it fall to the ground, this simple descriptive haiku came to me.

It strikes me very much in the style of Santōka. He was a wandering Zen monk who crisscrossed Japan on foot, drinking and writing haiku the entire way. He eschewed the traditional 5–7–5 structure and followed a much more—and usually even shorter—free-form style. Whether mine above is similar to a haiku from him that I’ve read before, or simply reminiscent of his style, I couldn’t say; I just know mine makes me think of him.

It also calls to mind—and this is another association I made only after writing it—a scene from American Beauty when they are watching a short film of a bag being blown to and from by the wind, fluttering this way and that, surrendering to nature, dancing in the breeze. As he says in that movie, "Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world.[2]. If we put a Japanese word to it, we might call it wabi-sabi (侘び寂び).

A common falling leaves kigo (season word) would be momiji chiru (紅葉散る), but there are others. They are all kigo for winter, which is a bit away from where we are now. Leaves, of course, do start to fall during the autumn in Japan, but in the Japanese traditional view, the colored leaves were for autumn, but falling leaves indicated autumn was now over and gave an image more of winter.

Thursday, 3 October 2024

Silent Moon

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 — “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.

[Last updated: 24 Aug 2025]

Friday, 27 September 2024

Just One More, a Haiku

Problems with Just one more time… Is it just me? Can you relate?

one more game
I tell myself
just one more

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.

Or maybe infamous. ↩

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