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

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.