LaSpina.org — Haiku, Japan, and the misunderstood

Wednesday, 10 September 2025

An Autumn Moon Above Edo

As the guest in a linked-verse gathering in Iga, a young Bashō gave the following opening haiku:

詠むるや江戸には稀な山の月
nagamuru ya Edo niha marena yama no tsuki[1]

gazing up—
the mountain moon is rare
in worldly Edo
—Bashō[2]

Autumn Full Moon at Ishiyama by Hiroshige — “Autumn Full Moon at Ishiyama” by Hiroshige

Bashō was just 33 when he wrote this.[3] He had been struggling for four years to survive in Edo and was now back in Iga, his hometown. While there, he was invited to a renga session[4] and, as the honored guest, gave the opening verse: this haiku.

On the surface, he’s offering a very simple image. The phrase yama no tsuki, “mountain moon”, was a classical image in Chinese and Japanese poetry, evoking purity, solitude, and nature. A fitting, elegant beginning.

But dig deeper, and Bashō’s cleverness shines.

The word Edo (江戸) refers to what is now Tokyo — already the de facto capital by 1676. It puns on Edo (穢土), a Buddhist term meaning the impure land of earthly desire. It’s the place of attachment and suffering, where enlightenment is obstructed.

So when Bashō says the mountain moon is “rare in Edo,” he’s saying more than the city lacks natural beauty. He’s also suggesting that enlightenment, and the serene clarity it symbolizes, is hard to come by in a world of ambition, noise, and appetite.

After living as a struggling artist in the city, he may have had some bitterness, but moreover he’s following the etiquette of the renga world and of Japanese culture in general: praising the host’s rural setting while humbling himself as a traveler from the big city. Everyone in the room would have caught the gesture and the double meaning, and appreciated both.

This was the Danrin period of Bashō’s development, when his style was witty and full of wordplay. Later, he would grow dissatisfied with mere cleverness and find such displays distasteful. But here, in this early verse, you can already see him balancing elegance, depth, and social finesse.

And perhaps there’s one final twist. On the surface, he is being modest and praising his host and the rural beauty, yet implicitly elevating his own sensibility for being able to appreciate it. A bold move, but one that perfectly fits with the Danrin school and with young Bashō.

This isn’t usually considered one of his best haiku, but I like it. It shows off the cleverness that served him well when he was climbing to the top of the haiku world. And it’s a telling glimpse of what he would later reject. On top of everything, it’s a nice image. A good poem for marking his haiku journey.

See: Pronunciation of Japanese ↩
See: a note on translations ↩
He also wasn’t using the name Bashō yet. ↩
A kind of collaborative poetry party. Hugely popular at the time. ↩

Tuesday, 9 September 2025

Why Did Japanese Women Blacken Their Teeth?

When you look at old portraits of Japanese noblewomen—or ukiyo-e prints, you may sometimes notice something strange: pitch-black teeth. It’s quite shocking the first time you see it and your first impression might be that the picture was damaged because… black teeth?! Yep — black teeth. It isn’t poor dental hygiene. It’s ohaguro (お歯黒), the once-common practice of dyeing the teeth black.

To modern eyes, the effect can be unsettling. But for centuries in Japan, blackened teeth were not just accepted, but they were admired. They were symbols of maturity, beauty, and even loyalty.

Geisha blackening her teeth by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi — “Geisha blackening her teeth” by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

The Look of Refinement

The practice of ohaguro dates back at least to the Heian period (794–1185), though it became widespread among aristocrats during the later Muromachi and Edo periods. It was especially associated with court ladies and samurai wives, and eventually spread to townspeople and geisha as well.

Teeth were stained with a mixture made from iron filings dissolved in vinegar or sake, then combined with tannins from powdered gallnut or tea. The solution was reapplied regularly (sometimes daily) to maintain the glossy black appearance.

Far from being viewed as grotesque, ohaguro was considered elegant and refined. It served multiple cultural purposes:

Maturity and marital status: For many women, blackening the teeth marked their transition into adulthood, particularly after marriage or childbirth.
Beauty ideal: Just as white teeth are prized today, black teeth were seen as more harmonious with the powdered white faces of the time.
Loyalty: In some cases, the black teeth were seen as a way of suppressing sexual allure; something of a signal of devotion to one’s husband or household, similar to wearing a wedding ring today.

There is no contradiction between those last two, by the way. Blackened teeth were considered an elegant, refined beauty. It wasn’t about sexual allure in a provocative sense, but rather harmony, restraint, and cultural taste. It also functioned as a visual marker of being “off the market,” much like shaving one’s eyebrows (a custom called hikimayu) or wearing certain kimono styles. It muted or redirected sexual attention rather than inviting it.

Modern-style Makeup Mirror by Utagawa Kunisada :

Practical Benefits, Too

The irony is that ohaguro may have actually protected teeth. The iron-tannin compound formed a kind of sealant that prevented tooth decay, making this beauty ritual something of an accidental dental treatment.

People in the past generally had much better teeth than we do today. Less sugar, for one. And the harder food meant their jaws got more of a workout and became more developed, leading to fewer cases of crowding and crooked teeth. Add black teeth as yet another reason their teeth were better than ours.

The End of Ohaguro

The decline of ohaguro was swift once Japan opened to the West in the late 19th century. During the Meiji era, the government aggressively modernized national customs, partly to change Western perceptions that Japan was “backward.”

In 1870, an imperial decree forbade civil servants and nobility from blackening their teeth. This didn’t stop everyone immediately, but the cultural tide had clearly turned. Soon, black teeth were no longer a sign of elegance: they were seen as old-fashioned, even embarrassing. By the early 20th century, the practice had mostly disappeared.[1]

A Vanished Aesthetic

Today, ohaguro survives mostly in historical dramas or festivals, and even then it’s often misunderstood. To modern audiences, it can look alien or grotesque. Because of that, it is often skipped even by people who know about it. But this was once a mark of status, adulthood, and cultural belonging. It was no stranger, perhaps, than high heels or cosmetic surgery today; a Japanese person 200 years ago might have been just as horrified by Botox lips or giant fake breasts as we are by black teeth.

Understanding ohaguro reminds us that beauty standards are never fixed. They grow from the values and technologies of their time — and when those values shift, the standards disappear, often without explanation.

If you think the speed of this attitude shift is crazy, consider two examples from the West: smoking — once cool, now disgusting — and corsets, which went from fashion essential to ridiculous in just a couple generations. ↩

Sunday, 7 September 2025

The Death of Shiki

We are approaching the anniversary of Shiki’s death. Let’s look at a poem about that day from his most famous student.

子規逝くや十七日の月明に
shiki iku ya jushichi-nichi no getsumei ni

Shiki left us
on a moonlit night
in september
—Kyoshi

Cuckoo in the Rain by Yoshimoto Gesso — “Cuckoo in the Rain” by Yoshimoto Gesso

Shiki died on 19 Sept 1902 at the young age of only 35. His promising life was cut short by tuberculosis. Kyoshi, who would go on to control the haiku world in Japan for many years, was one of his students and was with him when he died.

Kyoshi uses the kigo (season word) “The 17th day moon”. This is a little confusing because he died on the 19th, not the 17th. It’s likely Kyoshi was referring to the traditional Japanese calendar, which lagged behind the modern Gregorian one by about a month. In that older systenm, the 17th night would have referred to a waning gibbous phase of the moon. We can know that because in the old calendar, which was a lunisolar calendar, the 1st of every month was the new moon and the 15th was the full moon. Japan had already adopted the Gregorian calendar by this point, having made the switch in 1873. However, many aspects of Japanese life, including the the kigo used in haiku, continued to follow the traditional lunisolar calendar. This tradition persists even today, with haiku kigo generally aligning with the older system.

Traditionally the moon of the eighth month was the most beautiful and most significant, being the harvest moon. For the entire month the moon took on a special importance. The full moon was the most important for moon viewing, but any moon of the month was considered special. Because of this, whenever we refer to the moon alone in haiku or whenever we count the days of the moon, we are referring to the month of the harvest moon. Therefore the 17th moon is referring to the 17th night (or 17th moon) of the eighth month. As I said above, there is about a month’s difference between the old and new calendars. So the moon of the 8th month becomes the September moon on the modern calendar. For that reason, I’ve translated Kyoshi’s kigo as simply “September.” It preserves the meaning while avoiding a long explanation.[1]

I’m not sure if the 19th of September in 1902 on the Gregorian calendar would have been the 17th day of the eighth month on the old Japanese calendar. It would have been close, but I don’t know exactly. I couldn’t find any online tools for precise conversion. If you can help, please let me know.

Regardless, the waning gibbous moon serves as a fitting metaphor for Shiki’s adult life: substantial and impactful, but drawing to a close. The specter of his TB haunted Shiki’s life from the moment he started to show symptoms of the disease in his mid–20s. In 1888 he started coughing up blood, much like a lesser cuckoo (a hototogisu) is said to do when it sings. This gave rise to his pen name: the kanji for hototogisu, 子規, can also be read as shiki. In those days TB was a death sentence. Knowing he had limited time may have been a driving force behind his remarkable productivity.

I realize I’m giving that very long explanation that I wanted to avoid. Go figure. ↩

Thursday, 4 September 2025

The Cicada Sing ~ Original Haiku

The cicada are still out and are wonderful. I’ve done a number of posts about them recently. The other day I was listening to them again and they inspired me to write a haiku.

眼つむれば若さを感じる蝉の声
me tsumureba wakasa kanjiru semi no koe

when I close my eyes
I feel young—
the cicada sing

I wrote the Japanese first, so the English is a translation. After you have been learning a language for awhile, for some situations the words of that language just pop up before words of your native language. It’s a strange experience when you think about it, but also normal enough.

I was sitting and listening to the cicada. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get completely overwhelmed by everything around me. Too much to read, way too much email, too much clutter on my desk and in my house, too much unwanted bad news echoing around in my head that people have told me about, too much everything. Meditation is a big help for these moods, but sometimes instead of going to my bedroom to sit on my zafu I’ll instead just kind of zone out, open the window, and listen to nature. That’s what I was doing here. I must have sat and listened to them for a few minutes, eyes closed, and then this popped into my head.

As many of you know, I prefer free-form haiku when I am writing in English. English is not Japanese and I think the 5/7/5 format doesn’t really work all that well with English syllables. It can be forced to work, but the flow of English is just different and I go with the flow. But with Japanese, I try to stick to the strict count. Japanese flows much much better, naturally falling into groups of 5 and 7 for starters, but also the structure helps me put the haiku together.

Although the cicada will continue into autumn, they are a summer kigo (season word) as that is their main time. It is autumn now according to the traditional Japanese calendar that the haiku world uses, so I suppose technically I should be using autumn kigo now and not summer ones. Oh well. I was never very good at following rules.

Tuesday, 2 September 2025

More Japanese Men Carrying Parasols

Nippon.com on a surprising trend:

Half of the people who made their “parasol debut” were men, with those in their thirties making up the largest segment.

Long ago when I first came to Japan, one thing that surprised me was how nearly all women used parasols throughout the summer. Coming from the U.S., my image of parasols was limited to Victorian ladies — an affectation long gone, or so I thought. I didn’t realize the practice was alive and well in the land of the rising sun.

But alive it was, and is. Women in Japan typically avoid the sun, keeping their skin as pale as possible, which is a long-held beauty ideal here. It may seem odd at first, but you get used to it. After all, considering pale skin beautiful in Japan is no stranger than considering tanned skin beautiful in the States. Just a cultural difference.

What I almost never saw, however, was men using parasols. While Japanese men usually don’t chase a tan, neither did they go out of their way to avoid one. About the only men I’d ever see carrying a parasol were really old guys.

But with the brutal heat of the past few years, that might be changing.

Some interesting stats given at the site. I can attest that I’ve been seeing more and more men with parasols these days.

LINK: More Men in Japan Opening Up to Parasols Amid Heatstroke Concerns

There is more in the archives