Before Shiki

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Haikai before and after Shiki

Quote from
Hugh Bygott

The Dark Half-Century I

What really did happen in that half-century from the death of Kobayashi Issa (1827) to the time when the youthful Masaoka Shiki composed his first hokku (circa 1883)? We are told that Shiki reformed the hokku.
I have always been doubtful of that claim.
Certainly Shiki gave the Japanese short form poem a new direction, and certainly he renamed it giving it a name from the haikai no renga, a genre he detested.

Can we find some examples of the hokku that Shiki was supposed to have reformed? Are we to include Chiyo-ni and Issa in this group as well as the minor hokku poets? Are we to include Ueda Akinari (1734 - 1809) with this example:

Sakura zakura
Chirite kajin no
Yume ni iru

Cherry bossoms fall
Entering into the dreams
Of lovely women.

[translated by Blake Morgan Young]

Are we to include the much better hokku of Hozumi Eiki (1823 - 1904)?

Fleeing the Battlefield of Ueno

Chi wo nagasu
ame ya orifushi
hototogisu

Rain washes away
The blood: just at that moment
A nightingale sings.

[translated by Donald Keene]

I have found it difficult to get access to the texts of many of these minor poets. However, I have found some. I intend to start with a woman poet, a contemporary of Issa, who though dying quite early before 1827, might be representative of the Dark Half Century. I have used that phrase, not because I think that it was a degenerative period, but because it is so difficult to get information.

ENOMOTO SEIFU-JO (1731 - 1814)

choo oite
tamashii kiku ni
asobu kana

Like all Japanese classical hokku, this poem is rich in verbs. The verb oiru means to grow old and is presented in the te-form, growing old. Idiomatically, this should be translated as having grown old.

Kiku 5096 is chrysanthemum.
Asobu is the verb to play, dictionary form.
Kana 779 is the exclamatory particle, and Henderson is probably right in considering it meaningless.

A butterfly,
having grown old, its soul plays
in the chrysanthemums.

I have translated this hokku from 17 Japanese mora into 17 English syllables.

I think that this poem is a superb hokku with wonderful layers of meaning. It is true that it has two kigo, but the second one takes precedence over the first, so that it is an autumn butterfly which is near its death. The idea of the transience of phenomenal things had already been developed in that great classic of Japanese Literature, the Man'yoo Shu from the VIII Century.

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Quote from Hugh Bygott

Dear Larry

You have raised important questions. You will realise that it takes a while to research and translate the texts I use. I consistently try to present original work. It will be a while before I can answer the points that you have raised. At the moment I am working on the idea
that we should regard 1895 as a dividing line. We should call poems written before that time classical haiku. Poems written from that date should be called modern haiku.

Part of the argument will be to turn Shiki scholarship on its head, arguing that the early Shiki was a better poet than the later Shiki.

It was in 1895 that Shiki through the influence of the painter Nakamura Fusetsu began his shasei theory. He formulated a three principle theory, shajitsu, reality; ari no mama ni utsusu, to depect as is; and shasei, sketch from life.

In the autumn of 1934 Karl Popper published in Vienna Logic der Forschung.
That work was published in English in 1959 as The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
I am in the fortunate position of having studied the philosophy of science long before I studied hokku/haiku or Shiki. No one now believes that you simply observe nature, understand and explain everything. Poetry is no different from physics - only bold conjectures, only attempts to go beyond the immediate perception to underlying truths can advance knowledge. In this respect Bashoo and Chiyo-ni are incomparably greater poets than Shiki.

In The Dark Half-Century II I will take an obscure woman poet who in 1840 wrote a far better hokku than a Shiki haiku written in 1896, yet we are told Shiki reformed the hokku. It is simply not true.

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Quote from Larry Bole

As most poets do, I think Shiki wrote some very good poems both early and late in his career. Shiki, in his pre- and post-reformation styles, makes me think of Buson's two plum trees:

futamoto no ume ni chisoku wo aisu kana

The two plum-trees:
I love their blooming,
One early, one later.

trans. Blyth


Regarding Shiki's reformation: even the worst poets who ever lived can occasionally rise above themselves and write a good, even a great poem, so I'm sure there are obscure haiku poets in the mid-nineteenth century who wrote some haiku that were better than some of Shiki's haiku.

My impression, from what I've read, is that Shiki's reform had more to do with tearing down the deification of Basho, the tearing down of the importance of schools and lineages, and the enabling of non- specialists to write haiku, rather than having anything to do with quality per se, although I'm sure he saw his reform as an improvement on the overall quality of 'tsukinami' haijins' haiku.
In one sense, Shiki's reform of haiku is not that different from the "reform" that Basho brought about in his era. Basho reacted against the "point-garnering" haiku and other shortcomings of haikai of his era. Unfortunately, "reform" often becomes stultifyingly set in its ways, and eventually another reform is needed.
Buson similarly "reformed" haikai in his era by helping to bring about the "back to Basho" movement.

And Basho recognized the importance of a fresh approach to writing haiku. Basho's disciple Dohoo wrote:

"Experienced poets have a disease. The Master stated, 'When it comes to haikai, one should let a small child compose it. The verse of a beginner is most promising.' The Master repeated these comments in order to reveal the disease carried by experienced poets." (from Haruo Shirane's book, "Traces of Dreams")

In spite of the initial good that it did, perhaps it's 'shasei' that needs reforming now. Lucien Stryk, in his introduction to "Cage of Fireflies," has an imagined meeting between Basho, Buson, Issa, and Shiki, in which he has Basho say, "To your credit Shiki, you did start something! You see, I've learned from your disciples, and it's true you never promised anything significant would come of it. What does 'shasei' really lead to? Haiku groups like Tenro, bearing notebooks, pens, scribbling in unison on anything in sight."


David Landis Barnhill has translated 724 of Basho's hokku.

He categorizes eight of the 724 as seasonless hokku (including the Sogi hokku). Here are the remaining seven:

tsuki hana no kore ya makoto no arujitachi

these three
of the moon and flowers:
masters of the truth

Note: "In the haibun "Praise for a Painting of Three Sages," which was written on a portrait... painted by Basho's disciple Morikawa Kyoriku (1656-1715)."
See entry : The Three Vinegar Tasters


monohoshi ya fukuro no uchi no tsuki to hana

On a Portrait of Hotei

so desirable--
inside his satchel,
moon and blossoms


musashino ya sawaru mono naki kimi ga kasa

Musashino fields--
no hindrances now,
your bamboo hat


kachi naraha tsue-tsuki-zaka o rakuba kana

if only I had walked
Walking-stick Hill:
falling from my horse

[In "Knapsack Notebook" (Oi no Kobumi)]


asa yosa o taga matsu shima zo katagokoro

morning and evening,
as if someone waits for me at Matsushima:
my unfulfilled love

(Higginson translates it as:

morning and evening
someone waits at Matsushima!
one-sided love

and notes that "it was published in Basho's day in the brief 'zo' section of a seasonal collection.")


tsuki hana mo nakute sake nomu hitori kana

On a Painting of someone drinking sake

no moon, no blossoms,
just drinking sake
all alone


tsuki ka hana ka toedo shisui no ibiki kana

moon? blossoms?
to such questions,
just four sleepers snoring

Note: "Written on a painting of four Buddhist monks sleeping."
See entry : The Four Sleepers


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The Dark Half-Century II

How important was that change on January 1, 1873 when the Meiji
Government adopted the Gregorian solar calendar? Before that time for
centuries the Japanese had used the lunisolar calendar giving a date
which indicates both the moon phase and the season.

The months followed the moon’s cycle of the phases of the moon.
Since the moon orbits the earth in about 29.5 days, an adjustment was
required and this was done by making months with either 30 days or 29
days. The Gregorian cycle loses 6 hours each year, thus a extra day is
added every four years [29 February]. The lunar cycle requires a 13th
month every 6 years to align it with the natural cycle of the Earth
around the Sun.

In the Japanese system the New Year corresponds to the beginning of
Spring. The Tanabata Festival is on the seventh day of the seventh
month and the temperature is lower then than if the calculation was
made from January 1.

As Makoto Uedo shows, Bashô’s first datable hokku was composed on February 7 1663 of the Gregorian Calendar.

was it spring that came
or was it the year that went?
the Second Last Day.

Bashô is referring to the twenty ninth day of the twelfth month. This
is the specific kigo. Contrary to what Donald Keene says, I do not
believe that the change to the Gregorian calendar had any effect on
haiku composition. Bashô and Buson and others used kigo that related
to the lunisolar calendar, all of Shiki’s haiku were composed after the
Gregorian calendar had been adopted.

As I search through Shiki’s work, I find many fine haiku, indeed his
best. Why do we think that Shiki reformed haiku poetry and rejected
much of his earlier work?

I will give an example of Shiki’s supposed reform.

Here is Miwa Suiu-Jo (1766 - 1846) writing in 1840 in the Dark Half-Century.

Haru yuku mo
Shira-de ya nemuru
Kusa no chô

Not knowing that Spring
is departing, a butterfly
lies dying in the grass.

[Translated by Hugh Bygott]


Here is an example of Shiki’s supposed reform:

hikuku tobu aze no imago ya hi no yowari

See how low it flies,
That locust on the paddy walk -
The sunshine weakens.

[Translated by Donald Keene]

Miwa Suiu-Jo, a woman poet, has understood the “pathos of things.”
This mono no aware, an ideal from the waka poetry of the Heian Period,
is expressed beautifully. I concede that I have translated nemuru as
to die rather than the more usual to sleep. The first meaning is given
as a variant in The New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary.

Shiki being faithful to his 1895 shasei theory has tried to observe
objectively. I don’t know of any one who now believes in objective
shasei theory. In my judgement Shiki’s haiku is decidedly inferior to
Miwa Suiu-Jo’s.

Fortunately for us, Shiki did not always use shasei theory in his final
poems. I regard the haiku Shiki composed on 9 September 1900 as his
masterpiece. We should describe that date as the end of the period of
classical haiku, so that all of Shiki’s haiku before that date should
be regarded very highly, and that the distinction between his early
work and his alleged mature shasei haiku be abandoned.

keitô no jûshigohon mo arinubeshi

Cockscombs -
most definitely
there must have been 14 or 15.

[Bygott-Kato translation]

The two kireji are the particles no and mo the first indicating the
genitive case and the second a dramatic emphasis. But it is the final
line, the verb, and Shiki’s poems in the classical tradition are rich
in verbs, which gives the power to the haiku. It is such a compact
form which cannot be reproduced in English. The verb is aru, the verb
affix, the preterite tense, and the verb suffix the modality.

In the autumn of 1934 in Vienna, Karl Popper published Logik der
Forschung. From that time objective observation could not be taken
seriously. Haiku theorists don’t know it, but all observation is
theory laden. It was the end of shasei theory. Fortunately, Shiki had
already abandoned it in this poem of 9 September 1900. Shiki had
wanted in his university days to be a philosopher. Perhaps he would
have enjoyed reading Popper’s book had he lived. Particularly he may
have liked the comment by Novalis with which Popper opened his book.

Theories are nets: only he who casts will catch.

Teizen, Before the Garden shows Shiki making a conjecture, an attempt to go beyond the limits imposed by illness, to contrast the vitality of life with the certainty of death. The powerful modality of the poem is the antithesis of shasei.

Of course, Miwa Suiu-Jo’s haiku is the antithesis of shasei too. That
is what makes it a fine poem and a contradiction to Blyth’s claim that
there were no haiku poets of merit between Issa and Shiki.


. . . . . More comments by Larry Bole

Hugh,

I assume the reason most critics/commentators think Shiki reformed haiku is because he did. If you don't like the word "reformed," one could say he certainly changed the way haiku was thought about, and the way it was composed (to a great extent), in significant ways from how it was thought about and composed prior to his "reform."

Janine Beichman, in her book, "Masaoka Shiki," says that Shiki's mature style began to develop in the winter of 1892. Donald Keene, in his book, "Dawn to the West," says that "Shiki's first haiku of distinction was composed in 1890," although he doesn't give the haiku. So it seems that there is a distinct change in the quality of Shiki's haiku from the 1880s to the 1890s, at least as far as these two critics are concerned. Perhaps Shiki recognized this change in
the quality of his haiku too.

Did Shiki explicity reject "much of his earlier work?" I wouldn't be surprised if he did, but could you cite a source in which he did so?

Miwa Suiu-Jo's haiku:

Not knowing that Spring
is departing, a butterfly
lies dying in the grass

(trans. Hugh Bygott)

does indeed beautifully express the "pathos of things." But as you point out, this is "an ideal from the waka poetry of the Heian Period." Haiku, being such a short form, runs the risk of becoming trivial and/or vulgar. I would suggest that it also runs the risk of becoming the opposite: simply a shorter version of a waka.

Is pointing out that a dying butterfly isn't aware that it's dying in this simple a way genuinely moving, or is this haiku an example of 'tsukinami' (monthly) haiku, written in a formulaic way?

Now let's see what Donald Keene says about Shiki's haiku:

See how low it flies,
That locust on the paddy walk--
The sunshine weakens.

(trans. Keene)

"It is autumn. The rice has been harvested and the locust, deprived of a place of concealment in the paddy field, rests on the raised path. At Shiki's approach it flies up, but so weakly it does not rise very high. The sunshine has also lost its summer intensity. Shiki's close observation of the locust is saved from triviality (always a danger in shasei haiku) by his perception that not only the locust but the sun itself has weakened."

At any rate, this haiku of Shiki's is not as pretty as Suiu-Jo's haiku. It's not as easy to like. The pathos is perhaps not as obvious. But Shiki's haiku seems original in a way that Suiu-Jo's does not. By the way, Keene dates this haiku of Shiki's to the summer of 1894, a year before your date of 1895 for Shiki's shasei theory.

The term 'shasei' was used in the Japanese art world prior to Shiki bringing the term into the Japanese literary world. In all that has been written about Shiki and shasei, I can't seem to find in English-language sources when he first used the term in his writings. Does anybody know?

As far as anyone believing in "objective Shasei theory:" Shiki himself seems to have waffled on this issue throughout his critical writings. What we have really inherited is not Shiki's version of
shasei, but his disciple Kyoshi's rather more strict version of shasei. And as is well-known, there was dissent from Kyoshi's version of shasei in Kyoshi's writing lifetime. Kyoshi 'excommunicated' a number of haijin from the major haiku magazine, "Hototgisu," for not adhering to his standard of acceptable shasei practice.

Of the several things that Shiki's haiku reform accomplished, perhaps the most significant was to allow non-specialists entry into the haiku-writing world, giving the lay-person, as it were, the ability to write haiku without specialized knowledge. In that sense most of us English-language haikuists are indebted to Shiki's reformation.

I will let Makoto Ueda have the final word on Shiki's reform of haiku, from the introduction to Ueda's "Modern Japanese Haiku: An Anthology:"

"It is clear that Shiki was opposed above all to the mannerism of contemporary haiku. In his view the Japanese haiku of the nineteenth century were trite in motif, diffuse in style, pedantic in expression, restrictive in vocabulary, and too conscious of poetic factions. He sought the opposite of all those qualities in modern haiku, the haiku after his revolution."

................................... ANSWER

Hugh Bygott :

.... the three critical problems that I have presented.

(a) Where are the hokku written after Issa’s death that are supposed to be so unsatisfactory?

I have access to these works in the Aoi Pavillion of the Cambridge University Library, one of the greatest research libraries in the world. Most of these are in Japanese. Recently I quoted Bakin’s 1803 Collection of 2600 kigo. There are 50 sources for Takizawa Bakin (1767 - 1848) in the library, all in Japanese. [The complete works of Masaoka Shiki are there in 27 sources.]

You quoted Makoto Uedo: "It is clear that Shiki was opposed above all to the mannerism of contemporary haiku. In his view the Japanese haiku of the nineteenth century were trite in motif, diffuse in style, pedantic in expression, restrictive in vocabulary, and too conscious of
poetic factions. He sought the opposite of all those qualities in modern haiku, the haiku after his revolution."

You will notice that Makoto Uedo is not presenting any examples; he is simply quoting Shiki. Nor have I seen any examples given by Shiki. It looks as if everyone is quoting Shiki. Remember, that Shiki thought that 90% of Bashô’s hokku were doggerel. Thus the third class mind of Shiki presumes to downgrade the genius of Bashô.

(b) Are the hokku written before Shiki met Nakamura Fusetsu really immature and juvenile? As you know I regard Ebumi very highly.

Botan saku
Jôdo no tera no
Ebumi kana

Peonies bloom:
at the Jôdo temple,
Christ’s picture is trampl’d.

[Translated by Hugh Bygott with cultural advice by Gabi Greve.]

Is this one of the hokku to which Makoto Uedo is referring? Is this one of Shiki’s own hokku which Shiki rejected?

(c) Shiki’s shasei theory “depicting things as they are” is inconsistent with the philosophy of science. We simply do not observe things in a neutral, objective way. All observation is theory laden.
Science progresses by hypotheses and deductive logic. We would never have reached Quantum Theory or String Theory or DNA simply by observing. The great poets of all languages went beyond the immediate sensations of experience to try and understand reality. The power of the imagination is essential to poetry. Buson never saw “Kappa’s Inn”, nor did he ever see “a rabbit crossing Suwa Lake.”

When Sôgi wrote:

Close by my brush hut
the insects too seem forlorn
as I await the dawn.

[Translated by Steven Carter]

did he have some special sensory empathy with insects or is he creating a mood through the power of words and the creative power of the imagination?

The truth is that shasei theory is a dead end. It is about time we turn Shiki scholarship on its head.

Hugh.

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Larry :

Dear Hugh,

a) You make a good point regarding the fact that the hokku from what you call "the dark half-century" have not been translated. But there are a LOT of haiku, eveny by haijin of past eras whose names are well- known, which haven't been translated. How many haiku by Basho's
contemporaries and disciples have been translated into English? How many by Buson's contemporaries?

Regarding Shiki's opinion of Basho: as Janine Beichman points out in her book, "Masoka Shiki," Shiki's opinion of Basho was complex. True, according to Beichman, Shiki does claim, in 'Bashoo Zoodan' ["Some Remarks on Basho," 1893] "that nine-tenths of Basho's poems were doggerel." However, Beichman goes on to write, "a careful reading of his [Shiki's] works on Basho shows that it is not true that he [Shiki] dismissed Basho's poetry as worthless."

Beichman goes on to write, " Shiki valued Basho as a poet for two reasons: first, because he believed that Basho had been the first realistic poet in the haiku and second, because many of his poems had possessed 'sublimity and grandeur' ('yuukon goo soo'). ...

"Shiki found Basho's work deficient in one area, however: he had not used imagination." [There follows a quote from 'Some Remarks on Basho'.] [I believe it is now known that Shiki was wrong in this opinion, especially since the discovery in the 1940s of the travel diary Sora kept during the trip immortalized in "The Narrow Road to the Deep North."]

Beichman discusses Shiki's thoughts about Basho vs. Buson in Shiki's "The Haiku Poet Buson" ("Haijin Buson", 1897). She sums up the discussion by writing:

"Since Shiki's analysis treats the history of the haiku as a kind of evolution, one might expect that in the end he would firmly maintain that Buson was a better poet than Basho. But in fact he went out of his way to deny this, explictily stating in 'The Haiku Poet Buson' that while Buson and Basho were opposite in every way, they were the two greatest haiku poets who had ever lived and he did not consider either better than the other.

"In reconsidering Shiki's early attack on Basho in 1893, then, it is well to take his remarks of 1897 in 'The Haiku Poet Buson' into account. It is also important to remember that even though he dismissed nine-tenths of Basho's poems as doggerel in 1893, he went on to add that the remaining tenth were enough to justify his high reputation."


b) Shiki's "ebumi" haiku. When was it written? Beichman gives some examples of Shiki's early work, when he was still under the influece of the 'tsukinami' poets:

ki o tsumite yo no akeyasuki komado kana (1885)

the tree cut,
dawn breaks early
at my little window

(trans. Beichman)

Beichman comments: "This poem requires the reader to supply a logical connection, to think, rather than to feel, his or her way into the poem. ... It is a clever observation, but hardly qualifies, by Shiki's later standards, as a poem."

hitoezutsu hitoezutsu chire yaezakura (1886)

scattered layer
by layer, eight-layered
cherry blossoms!

After a discussion by Beichman of why this haiku (written two years after Shiki's first haiku) is unrealistic, she writes: "he still, by his own account, believed that beauty was a sort of pleasure that arose from the exercise of the intellect. Thus the play of words... is the poem's center, although Shiki later rejected such verbal play with much disdain."


meigetsu no deru ya yurameku hanasusuki (1887)

at the full moon's
rising, the silver-plumed
reeds tremble

(trans. Beichman)

Beichman's comment: "In later poems, Shiki would avoid the use of personification, particularly of this sentimental sort, for, like word play, it interposed something between the reader and the natural scene."


chiru hana ni motsururu tori no tsubasa kana (1887)

entangled with
the scattering cherry blossoms--
the wings of birds!

(trans. Beichman)

Beichman's comment: "The image of the falling blossoms catching in the wings of the birds (or bird) is quite lovely; but the word 'entangled' is an exaggeration. Shiki would not allow himself
such idealization in later works. ... Here, clearly, he was still seeking the startling image, the breath-taking 'poetic' scene."


c) I don't think literature needs to be consistent with the philosophy of science. Isn't this comparing apples and oranges?

The object of observation in literature is realism. The object of observaton in science is the establishing of facts. I don't think Shiki, or any poet, is ever trying to establish facts, except when philosophizing using the form of poetry, as Lucretius did.

As a matter of fact, Shiki valued imagination. Shiki praised Buson for his imagination, and criticized Basho for what Shiki felt was a lack of imagination on Basho's part (just so you know, I think Shiki misreads Basho when Shiki contends that Basho's haiku lack imagination).

According to Beichman, Shiki, in "The Haiku Poet Buson," praises Buson's imagination and, as examples of Buson's imagination, Shiki included these haiku of Buson's:

kawataro no koisura yado ya natsu no tsuki

an inn for
kappa to make love in--
summer moon


meigetsu ya usagi no wataru Suwa no umi

harvest moon--
a rabbit crossing
Suwa Lake

(translations Beichman)

So, I'm not sure that Shiki proposed shasei as something in opposition to imagination, as you seem to suggest, or at least not until the last couple of years of his life.

Larry

(GABI: There is a rabbit living in the moon ... in Asian lore The Rabbit in the Moon and Haiku .

..........................................

... Now Hugh again ...

Dear Larry

You have raised many important points.
This question of the tsukinami poets is extremely interesting. I concede that I have made a mistake in attempting to find the source of Shiki?s criticism in the period after 1827. I have discovered that Shiki made a collection of the work of many of the Tokugawa poets. In
concentrating on the haikai no renga he avoided all the poets before Bashoo his is surprising given his ability to write and compose in Classical Chinese.

There is no doubt whatever of the influence of Chinese poetry on the renga poets. Shiki simply disregarded Soo and Shinkei dispite the quality of their hokku and hiraku. It must be a
severe criticism of Shiki that he made no reference to Issa or Chiyo-ni. Shiki seems to have worked from arbitrary principles. He despised the tsukinami poets because they met on a regular basis and composed hokku as an art form. How diifferent is this from the Renga
Poetry Competitions in the XV Century or XX and XXI Century Haiku Competitions?

I have discovered many interesting things in my research. These include the Bashoo rvival in the XVIII Century, the poets who met regularly with Buson, and the commentary of Iwama Otsuni (1756 - 1823) on Buson's hokku. [This overturns the view, of Russell and others,
that Shiki discovered Buson.] I have discovered many more hokku poets who deserve translation. You are right there is work to be down on all the major haiku poets as well as many lessor poets.

What we need is the set for each haiku of the kanji and hiragana characters, the romanization and the English translation. There has been a great deal of work on translation studies in recent years. We really need to re-translate some of the early attempts. Even though I appear to be a critic of Masaoka Shiki, I am very aware of the fact that for English readers many of Shiki?s 18,000 haiku are not accessible. Most of the minor XVIII and XIX Century hokku poets are
almost unknown. We have to re-think our position and not allow Shiki followers to impose on scholarship a distorted view of what these minor poets were really like.

Hugh Bygott

...........................................

... Writes Larry :

Hugh,

I agree with much of what you say here. I don't know anything about Iwama Otsuni, but I would like to know about him. Maybe Shiki is thought of as having "discovered" Buson because Shiki wrote about him in a widely-read newspaper. I suspect that Otsuni didn't. From time to time neglected poets in English poetry have been critically revived. I'm not surprised that the same thing has happened in Japan. And before Buson was critically revived as a poet, he was well-known as a painter, so it's not like he was a totally obscure person.

Speaking of translation, it would be nice if someone would translate Shiki's essays into English. It would be nice to read what Shiki wrote about the art of haiku first-hand, rather than having to rely on second-hand, abbreviated interpretations.

By the way, I think I've found where Shiki first applied the artistic concept of shasei to literature. Donald Keene, in "Dawn to the West," writes that Shiki presented the idea of shasei "in a series of ten short essays entitled 'Utayomi nu atauru Sho' (Letters to the Tanka Poets, 1898)."

According to Keene (somewhere between the third and seventh letters):

"Shiki...presented his famous concept of 'shasei', 'copying life,' as a technique of modern poetry. ... Shiki was at pains, however, to make it clear that he did not propose using realism to the exclusion of the imagination; realistic techniques in poetry could be applied even to subjects that went beyond normal realistic expression."

And Lee Gurga, in an essay entitled, "Toward an Aesthetic for an English-language Haiku,"
http://www.baymoon.com/~ariadne/form/haiku/haiku.aesthetics.gurga.htm

writes the following:

"... I am not advocating mere journalistic reporting of events as an alternative to the use of imagination. Masaoki Shiki, the great modernizer of Japanese haiku, recommended shasei or 'sketching from life' for beginners, and it is against the sterility of the images of many of these sketches that the proponents of the use of imaginary elements seem to be reacting.

"But according to Makoto Ueda's Modern Japanese Poets (Stanford University Press (1983)), Shiki recommended other ways of composing haiku for more advanced poets. Shiki did, in fact, support the use of imagination in haiku, but proposed that poets attempt its use only after they had developed a sufficiently fine perception of the world and experience of truth. Only then could they be trusted to attempt to convey their personal vision to the reader through the
distillation of the imagination. Shiki's suggested development of the poet - from 'sketches of life' for the beginner to 'selective realism' for the more advanced poet to makoto or 'poetic truth' for the master - is as valid today as it was one hundred years ago when he proposed it."

Larry

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The Dark Half-Century III

I concede that I have made an error of judgement in choosing the half-century before Shiki’s first composition as the period of Shiki’s criticism and reform. Many commentators, including Donald Keene and Makoto Uedo, claim that this immediate period before Shiki was one of
decline and formulaic composition of hokku.

I have discovered that Shiki studied and made collections of many of the Tokugawa poets. He was extremely critical of the tsukinami poets and would have certainly been aware of the national register of haikai poets from 1813 and 1821.
[The first register contained 500 names and the second 620 names.] It is clear that Shiki’s criticism goes back much further than 1827. It presumeably goes back to the death of Buson 1783. It is unthinkable that we should include Issa in such a dark full-century. Why is it
that Shiki never refers to Issa or Chiyo-ni?

I have gone back another quarter-century to the beginning of the XIX Century.

I have chosen a hokku composed almost 100 years before a Shiki haiku on a similar topic from the end of the XIX Century.

Imaizumi Sogetsu (c1750 - 1804), a woman poet, describes an autumn scene.

yukashisa ya ochiba kaburishi otoke tachi

How lovely!
Fallen leaves have reached and veiled
an image of Buddha.

[Translated by Hugh Bygott]

I am treating ya as an exclamatory particle. Thus what charm! = How lovely!

It is all very well for Blyth to call such hokku not worth much or not worth the paper they are written on, or Makoto Ueda to speak of mediocre compositions, but this hokku has three full verbs. The verbs to fall, to reach and to cover [cover the head or veil the head] are present. Since we do not expect a statue of Buddha to be hidden under the trees, the poet has suggested that the wind has blown the leaves to reach and cover or hide or veil the statue. This hokku is quite a technical accomplishment. It has layers of meaning.

Now let us look at a Shiki haiku of a covered image of Buddha.

daibutsu no kata hada no yuki toke ni keri

The snow on one shoulder
of the image of Great Buddha
has thawed.

[Translated by Hugh Bygott]

In what way has Shiki reformed Sogetsu’s hokku? It is true that Shiki has made an objective empirical statement. His haiku invokes a more dramatic image, for example the image of the Great Buddha at Nara. Shiki may have imagined the Nara Buddha or transposed the image from a local buddha. This is just what Buson would have done. Buson meet regularly with other poets to compose hokku. Why is this different from the practices of the tsukinami poets of 1830?

Sogetsu’s hokku tries to invoke a mood and has inferred the motion of the leaves from one place to another place. I find them both admirable poems. I do not detect any reform. Indeed, I regard the hokku of Sogetsu as technically superior.

Of course, Donald Keene will claim that Shiki’s haiku belongs to his early poems and lacks the maturity of the full shasei period. However, it is not shasei theory which makes the later Shiki poems more memorable - it is Shiki entering into his own poems subjectively, just as Sôgi, Bashô and Chiyo-ni did. Keene and other critics entirely ignore the fine philosophical character of Shiki’s early haiku.

Hugh Bygott

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The discussion will continue HERE :

Daibutsu and Hotoke :
Problems with the translation of the last two haiku !
GABI


NEXT

THE DARK HALF-CENTURY IV


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