The Dark Half-Century VI

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THE DARK HALF-CENTURY VI

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THE DARK HALF-CENTURY IV

Hugh Bygott

The 22 volumes of the 1929-1931 Kaizôsha edition of Shiki Zenshű is very formidable indeed. Line after vertical line of haiku fill the pages. The 1928-1929 Arusu edition of Bunrui haiku zenshű, [Classified Collection of Haiku] forms 12 volumes. Shiki began work on the collection of haiku when he moved to 82 Kami-Negishi, Shitaya-ku, near Ueno. It would then have been on the outskirts of Tokyo. How different Tokyo is today!

Bunrui haiku zenshű is a treasure house. I have had to buy a very powerful magnifying glass to read the fine kanji characters. The names of these unknown poets leads to a greater prize; the really perfect crystal. This will be the mature Shiki composing a metaphysical haiku. There are plenty of these from other poets whom Shiki has so carefully read and collected.

This brings me to a very important point. Shiki described many of the XIX Century hokku as banal. People may have thought that these were trivial, common-place, and mediocre. He meant something quite different. He opposed intellectual haiku and the logic they required. He thought that the proper function of literature should be the creation of aesthetic sentiment.

"The creation of beauty is the criterion of literature. This criterion of literature, in turn, is the criterion of haiku." Haikai Tayiyo [translated by V.H.Vigliemo] Bashô and Chiyo-ni aref oten
philosophical. It is not surprizing then that Shiki found Buson's hokku so attractive.

One of the XIX Century poets particularly criticised by Shiki was Sakurai Baishitsu (1768 - 1852] I have chosen a hokku which critics may say is contrived and unrealistic. I have chosen a Shiki haiku to match it for unrealism.

kaya tsureba ka mo omoshiroshi tsuki ni tobu

[When the mosquito net is put up, there is an amusing aspect ...mosquitoes flying in moonlight.]

Mosquito net in place . . .
How amusing these mosquitoes are
flying in moonlight!

[Translated by Hugh Bygott]

I doubt if Shiki would have thought any more highly of this haiku:

Waiting for the dawn -
a mosquito's silences
mark the passing time.

[Letters from Huang Zhijuan II]

Lets us see if Shiki can do any better with his ‘reform.

hiru naka ya kumo ni tomarite naku hibari

Midday -
perched on the clouds
skylarks are singing.

[Translated by Hugh Bygott]

Since I believe that all haiku are fundamentally philosophical, Huang Zhijuan's haiku having many layers of meaning from the Chinese Cultural Revolution is the superior poem. Shiki has decidedly written the worst poem and it could hardly be described as reforming Baishitsu's poem.

Hugh Bygott

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Shiki's Ideas about Haiku Composition
Comment by Larry Bole

I just recently got Makoto Ueda's book, "Modern Japanese Poets and the Nature of Literature," Stanford University Press, 1983, from the library. The first chapter is about Shiki. Ueda gives information I haven't found anywhere else. As I read and digest it, I hope to post
some of it here. One good thing about the book is that it gives a list of all the books in English (up to that time) which have translations of Shiki's haiku and tanka, along with the number of the
haiku and tanka translated in each book. One of the drawbacks of the book is that no Japanese is given for the poems translated.

Shiki once wrote an essay entitled "My Moon Poem for a Contest."

According to Ueda:

"The occasion was a day in 1898 when Shiki was invited to contribute a poem to a haiku contest on the subject 'the moon.' Already bedridden, he set out to compose a poem while lying on his back. He wanted to write a realistic haiku, particularly since the contest judge was Hekigodoo, to whom he had always stressed the importance of realism.
Perhaps because of that desire, the first scene that came to mind was a plain, ordinary one--a road extending beside a forest in the moonlight, along an open field. ... The attempt did not succeed because the vision involved the lapse of too much time for a haiku. Thereupon, Shiki's mind roamed to his own garden, where he had often watched the moon through the leaves of a large pasania tree. Recalling the familiar scene, he wrote:

Somewhere in the leaves
moonlight breaks and falls
in myriad pieces.


After reading this a couple of times, he realized that it was awful. So he abandoned it and went back, in his mind, to the road along the woods. This time he followed a trail into the forest and obtained this poem:

Here and there
the moonlight is seeping through:
a trail under cedars.


When the poem was completed, however, its banality surprised him. He tried to write another haiku using the same setting, but when that attempt, too, ended in failure his mind left the woods and wandered to the edge of water.

There he visualized a small boat floating on an immense river, the waves bathed in moonlight. Trying carefully not to use an unrealistic word like 'unearthly,' he wrote:

Loaded with wine
a boat is lazily adrift--
lovers of the moon.


Although he was not quite content with the poem, Shiki was getting tired and almost decided to settle on it. Yet he was bothered by the thought that a haiku on the moon he had written spontaneously a few days before was better than this one, and he felt he had to try a bit longer. This time he imagined himself on a pavilion at the edge of the river. ... The scene, however, could not be made into a haiku., as it seemed too much like a setting for a Chinese poem.
[He realizes he was getting the image from a Chinese novel, 'Water Margin', which he had read the previous year.] ...at this point Shiki realized he was getting too far from realism. ...

Still keeping the image of a pavilion overlooking the water, Shiki changed the setting to Japan. He imagined a group of students having a farewell party:

At the seaside pavilion
friends sorrowfully part
this moonlit night.


However, he was not content, for the poem seemed a bit stale. He also did not like the friends having a party inside while there was a beautiful moon outside. Therefore he changed the first line:

On the wharf
friends sorrowfully part
this moonlit night.


Yet the poem seemed lacking in emotion. Accodingly, he visualized a man and a woman parting on the wharf. ... The scene soon crystallized into a haiku:

On the wharf
they sorrowfully part:
a man and his wife.


Shiki then noticed that the poem did not have the moon in it. Without success he tried to move the setting to Mitsuhama, a seaport near his native town. Finally he settled on:

They bid farewell--
no one is drunk any more
on the moonlit boat.


Shiki did not consider the poem a great success, but thought it at least without glaring faults.

The process through which this poem was written illustrates a number of Shiki's beliefs about poetic composition. Since he was bedridden, he could not do shasei in its strict sense, but he did try to base his poem on past experience. Rather than attempt to locate the moon in some renowned place, he tried to recall it shining on his garden in Tokyo or his boat at Mitsuhama. On the other hand, he was well aware of the traps into which realistic poems sometimes fall, and when his first attempts seemed trivial or stale, he shifted to imaginary scenes such as those from 'Water Margin'.

He also endeavored to inject emotion by visualizing a farewell scene. It is noteworthy, however, that the parting scene, which originated in 'Water Margin', became more and more realistic as Shiki's revisions progressed. The final poem reflects, not the Chinese novel, but his past experience at Mitsuhama, where he bade farewell to his friends aboard the S.S. 'Toyonaka' in 1883.
A youngster of eighteen, he was departing for Tokyo, four hundred miles away. ... Thus in the process of finding and focusing emotion, Shiki did combine shasei and imagination."

Shiki was well-aware of the pitfalls of strict shasei. I suppose that is why he recommended it only for beginners. For intermediate poets he recommeneded being selective in both subject and how the subject is depicted (in line with what I
heard an American poet once say in a lecture: anything can be a poem, but not everything is). And for advanced poets, he said it was acceptable to use imagination, but tempered by realism.

Larry

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At least the mosquito haiku above by Shiki, from his middle period,
are fresh in how the subject matter is handled.
Read a comment by Larry about The Dark Half-Century VI here.


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THE DARK HALF-CENTURY VII

It must remain contentious whether Shiki reformed haiku. Certainly, he wrote many fine haiku and deservedly is in the front rank of Japanese haiku poets, but this did not stop the decline after Kyoshi. We might be tempted to blame Hekigoto who is simply following the maxim -
realism first, then in maturity, imagination. What I find disappointing in Shiki is the absence of metaphysical elements of poetry which are so evident in Bashooand Chiyo-ni.

To give an example of this, I have returned to the late XVIII Century, to the nun Matsumoto Koyoo-ni. I have found secondary references which include translations in modern European languages. Since I do not know of any computerised version of Shiki's Bunrui haiku zenshuu I have to search by hand to find more of her hokku.

hana chirite shizuka ni narinu hito kokoro

Contrasting the verbs ochiru and chiru, the first line is:

cherry blossoms scattering.

Taking the phrase shizuka ni as a composite adverbial phrase gives me still.

The principal verb is naru = become. I consider the suffix -nu to be preterite following a verb stem in i or e. Idiomatically in English, narinu = have become.

[I hope minimalists note the prevalence of verbs in Classical Japanese poetry.]

The most interesting word in the poem, in my view, is kokoro. The kanji 1780 in my view should be understood as mind. This interpretation is in line with the idea, , found in Classical Japanese poetry, following the influence of the Chinese Sung Dynasty Literature, the conflict between reason and the emotions. I am translating kanji 99 as people.

People's minds
have become still again . . .
cherry blossoms scatter --.

Matsumoto Koyoo ni

[Translated by Hugh Bygott]

There is an aesthetic realization, an intellectual appreciation of the beauty of Spring when the cherry blossoms come. But it is such a transient thing - I know from my experience in Tokyo - and a sharp Spring wind can quickly take away the beauty. This is not shasei theory: it is what Aristotle claimed - we know best what is remote from us, the intellect rising above the senses.

This is what I mean by a metaphysical element, the characteristic of Bashooand Chiyo-ni.

Hugh Bygott


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