LaSpina.org - By David LaSpina

Sunday, 25 August 2024

Even the Cicada Are Hot

It’s hot in Japan this year. I mean really hot. It’s not just me that thinks so. I think the cicada agree.

暑き日や蝉が歌ってる影からね
atsuki hi ya semi ga utatteru kage kara ne[1]

it’s hot today
the cicada sing…
from the shade
—David LaSpina

Whether it’s global warming or El Niño or something I haven’t heard of yet—whatever the reason, it is really hot. The incredible humidity of Japan isn’t helping things. It’s reached the dangerous level many times this summer, and already there have been a number of deaths and many more hospitalizations from heat stroke.

The cicada are everywhere in Japan, as I’ve talked about before. Some States in the US have been complaining this year about the Brood X and the above average amount of cicada: well… it’s like that every year in Japan. Yeah, we have a lot. I enjoy them, so no complaints here, by the way. Anyway, one might imagine cicada enjoy the heat since they are usually out at the hottest part of summer.

But y’know… I notice a lot of them do their singing from the shade of tree branches. Even the cicada get hot, it seems! Or so I might imagine.

The English of the haiku came to my mind first, then I tried to backtrack to what a Japanese version might look like. The humor seems slightly different in the Japanese version as I wrote it, but rather than worry about it too much, I’m just going with my initial idea. If you have any suggestions for a better translation, let me know!

See: Pronunciation of Japanese ↩

Wednesday, 21 August 2024

Unfazed and Unenlightened Toad

Silly humans often gives some significance to lightning strikes. Either they mean something or they are just scary. But how does the animal kingdom respond to them?

稲妻や屁とも思はぬひきが顔　一茶
inazuma ya he to mo omowanu hiki ga kao[1]

lightning strike—
not caring in the least
the toad’s face
—Issa[2]

Heavy Showers at Higashi-hongan-ji Temple by Fujishima Takeji

As he often did, Issa is using one of his animal friends as the subject. I wonder also if he is referring to Bashō’s haiku about not being enlightened.

稲妻にさとらぬ人の貴さよ
inazuma ni satoranu hito no tattosa yo

one who sees lightning
without becoming enlightened
how admirable!

(See my notes about this haiku)

Bashō was expressing some frustration at all the religious “experts” who would boast abut how enlightened they were in attempts to gain a following. Not so different from people today. No doubt Issa would have been running into these same types of people in his day, which was around 120 years after Bashō, and probably held the same frustrations. How admirable for the toad that it also doesn’t claim to have become enlightened upon seeing that lightning strike!

The phrase that I translated as “not caring in the least” is literally “consider it less than a fart”, a colorful colloquial expression for “couldn’t care less”.

Saturday, 17 August 2024

Obon’s Moon in this World and the Next

It’s Obon, Japan’s ghost festival. Around 100 years ago on another Obon, Santōka wrote:

うちのようなよそのようなお盆の月夜
uchi no yōna yoso no yōna obon no tsukiyo[1]

similar here as elsewhere
a moonlit Obon night
—Santōka[2]

Obon is a three day festival in Japan when the dead ancestors of a family come back to visit. It is a time for celebration and there are many festival events for the entire period, culminating in a large community dance, called bon odori. It’s a fun event, not entirely dissimilar from Mexico’s Day of the Dead

There is a unique feeling in the air during Obon nights. The boundaries between this world and the next feel blurred and the night air has a certain feeling that enhances this mysterious time.

Santōka was writing this haiku from his hermitage. He might have been being simply matter-of-factly pointing out that the Obon moon was the same for him alone at his hermitage as for all the people doing bon odori at the shrine. Given the festival, he might have also been commenting about this world (here) and the next (elsewhere). You decide!

Saturday, 10 August 2024

Summer or Autumn, Which is Which?

Summer is over? Or is it? The calendar and our senses disagree.

is summer ending?
the heat says otherwise
but autumn has started
—David LaSpina

夏や果まだ熱いが秋初め
natsu ya hate mada atsui ga aki hajime[1]

Rishū (beginning of autumn) by Nishijima Katsuyuki

By the Japanese almanac, autumn started two days ago, on the eighth, was the start of Risshū (立秋), the first microseason of Autumn. Historically, even back in the days before global warming, August 8th was still hot, yet it was considered the turning point: past the peak of the heat when gradual signs of the true autumn will daily start to appear. In otherwords, it’s all downhill from here.

Well, that was the idea way back when, anyway. I’m not sure if it still holds very well these days, when the temperature of summer has swelled up much higher than it once was and seems to linger on far longer. Last year it was still pretty hot even into December, and this year is shaping up to be much the same.

Reflecting on this dissonance inspired the above haiku. After I wrote it, it reminded me very much of a similar haiku from Bashō, which probably means mine was subconsciously influenced by his. His was written on a day long ago when the solar-based Japanese almanac didn’t quite line up with the lunar year; according to the almanac, spring had started, but according to the moon, New Years was still two days away. He found the situation amusing because the image is that the first day of the year was the first day of spring, so he wrote the following:

春や来し年や行きけん小晦日
haru ya koshi toshi ya yukiken kotsugomori

is spring here?
is the year over already?
second-to-last-day

It goes without saying that in Bashō’s day everyone would have been aware of the Japanese almanac and would have gotten his little joke, whereas most of my readers probably have no idea what I’m talking about. Hmm… I suppose there is humor in that situation too!

See: Pronunciation of Japanese ↩

Wednesday, 7 August 2024

Fun with Headaches and Haiku

Unfortunately I have long suffered from headaches. My mom has had daily headaches since she was a little girl, so I blame her genes. I don’t get them as often as her, thankfully, but they do come once every few weeks, or when I’m lucky, every few months; when they do they knock me out for awhile. Sometimes they morph into migraines, in which case they knock me out for an even longer while. Despite tracking food I consume over the years, I’ve never been able to figure out a trigger, so I live with them.

The other day I woke up around 2:30 am with a headache. In my misery, I wrote the following.

robbed of sleep
a gift from
my family tree

Sometimes I can ignore the headaches enough to fall back asleep, but not this one: this one was bad enough to wake me up and keep me up. I tried to deal with it for awhile, but eventually I resorted to a painkiller. Those aren’t good for my body, I know, but when faced with a head screaming in agony, I sometimes just don’t have the mental fortitude to withstand the pain. Often the painkiller doesn’t work very well. A lifetime of taking them has built up my tolerance and made my body fairly resistant I suppose, but this time it was magic. Unfortunately painkillers in Japan almost always have caffeine in them, even when it isn’t listed on the bottle, so even though I was now pain-free, I couldn’t get back to bed. Oh well. I laid there for awhile, letting my mind drift to where it would. I figured even if I wasn’t asleep, I was resting in a sense so maybe would be able to avoid some of the tiredness of the day.

But before I knew it, it was 5am and I needed to start getting ready for my day. Oh well.

At least I got a haiku from the ordeal, eh?[1]

After publishing this, a reader with a similar reoccurring headache suggested allergies might be a cause and she shared what helped reduce them for her. So maybe I got more from this ordeal than then the haiku! ↩

There is more in the archives