Christmas Rain, a Haiku

This was written a few years ago on Christmas Day. In the early morning we had gotten some light rain. I listened to it. Watched the results out my window, then wrote this:

so this is christmas…
the rest of the leaves taken
by the winter rain

Kasuga Shrine by Kawase Hasui
“Kasuga Shrine” by Kawase Hasui

The leaves were mostly gone, but a few were holding on. Then they were mostly all gone. While I was watching the brief rain, the John Lennon lyric popped into my head.

Falling leaves is a winter kigo: ochiba (落葉). That may seem a little strange to many in the West, but in traditional Japanese poetry the beautiful colored leaves were associated with autumn, but their falling was seen as part of the next season, when the beautiful colors give way to the colorless barren landscape of winter.

Combined with Christmas and winter rain, this haiku is loaded with winter kigo! But that’s ok; premodern haiku often contained multiple kigo, sometimes multiple kigo from different seasons, confusingly enough. Current more strict rules may frown at more than one kigo, but it was once something of the norm. Bashō himself used multiple kigo many times.

Looking at it now, I think we can get rid of that mention of winter on the last line. With the mention of Christmas we already know what season we are in and we might assume a mention of rain means a chilly winter rain. So then:

so this is christmas…
the rest of the leaves taken
by the rain

I kind of like the inclusion of winter in front of rain. It just sounds better to my ears. But I could go either way.

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?


  1. See: Pronunciation of Japanese  ↩

  2. See: a note on translations  ↩

  3. 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.  ↩

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.

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.

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

There is more in the archives