Temple Bell Butterfly

釣鐘に止まりてねむる胡蝶かな
tsurigane ni tomarite nemuru kochō kana1

on the temple bell
sleeping
a butterfly
—Buson2

(“Myohon Temple, Kamakura” by Hasui Kawase)

This may be Buson’s most famous haiku3. It stands on it’s own as a peaceful and simple little verse, but let’s dig in a little deeper.

It is a spring haiku and the season word is butterfly. Butterflies in haiku are traditionally nearly always a reference to Chuang-tzu and his questions about the nature of reality.4

One night Chuang-tzu dreamed he was a butterfly. All day long he floated here and there, without care of who he was or where he was going. Upon waking, he asked himself:

不知周之夢為胡蝶與，胡蝶之夢為周與
“Am I a Man”, he thought,
“who dreamed that I was a butterfly?
Or am I butterfly, dreaming that I am a man?”5

In Buson’s verse, presumably the butterfly will wake and fly away soon enough, as soon as the surrounding quiet is broken, making his stay on the bell a temporary rest. The impermanence of life is a constant theme in Japan. It is why the cherry blossoms are so beloved, for instance, because they remind us of the transience of life. Just as the butterfly will be woken soon from his sleep, so will we. Perhaps woken to find out that we are that butterfly?

But there is more than that going on here.

The most famous epic in Japan is Heike Monogatari, The Tale of the Heike. It has been called the Japanese Iliad, and that’s not a bad comparison to help you understand it’s importance to Japanese culture. It tells the true story of the Genpei War (1180–1185), the rise and the fall of the Taira clan (the Heike), of their head, Kiyomori, his rise and his downfall, and of the clan’s eventual fall to the Minamoto (the Genji). A major theme of the story is one of impermanence. What begins, must end. The famous opening of the epic (which all schoolchildren in Japan have to memorize) sums it up:

The ring of the bells at Gion temple
echoes the impermanence of all things.
The color of the sala flowers
reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall.
The proud do not endure long
like a passing dream on a spring night.
The mighty fall at last,
like dust in the wind

Somewhat fittingly, the family crest of the Taira was a butterfly:

Kiyomori’s dream to control Japan, like the dream of a butterfly resting on a temple bell.

There is a good reason why this is Buson’s most famous haiku. It is doing a lot of work, not only painting us a pleasant scene, but also leading us to Chuang-tzu and his dream of being a butterfly and to Kiyomori and his dream of controlling Japan.