Sleeping Boy and Kite Flying

Monday, 12 February 2024

たこだいたなりですやすやたりけり 一茶
tako daita nari de suya-suya netari keri[1]

holding his kite
soundly and peacefully
sleeping
—Issa
[2]

Hiroshige - Kakegawa Kites Flying at Fukuroi
Hiroshige – Kakegawa Kites Flying at Fukuroi

Kite is a spring kigo (season word), so this is considered a spring haiku, but flying kites is traditional a New Years activity in Japan and so that is the time that might be first thought of when we hear the word.

It’s right there in the second verse of the New Year’s song (Oshōgatsu)

お正月には凧あげて
Oshōgatsu ni wa, tako agete
On New Year’s Day, we will fly kites

On the traditional calendar, Japan celebrated the lunar New Year and that was usually near the first day of spring, so you can see the connection.[3]

As sweet a scene as this haiku paints, it is actually bittersweet. Issa’s children all died young, too young to have enjoyed flying a kite. He wrote this in 1816, after they were all gone. He may have been sitting there one day close to New Years and thinking of them, wishing he had had a chance to watch them enjoy this traditional activity.

I can really relate to this haiku. When my boys were smaller they were always falling asleep clutching their toys close. Well, they still do that. When they were smaller it was usually toy cars or action figures; these days it is usually their Switch.

Some things never change, eh?


  1. See: Pronunciation of Japanese  ↩

  2. See: a note on translations  ↩

  3. Technically the system that tracked the seasons was a solar system whereas the calendar was a lunar system. As you might imagine, these two systems didn’t sync up exactly. For example, this year (2024) the first day of spring occurred about a week before the lunar new year.  ↩

Published by David

Watching the world drift by, learning as I go, lost in Japan





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