Shiki about Basho

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Masaoka Shiki about Matsuo Basho

QUOTE
©　Larry Bole


We might ask where did all these restrictive views of haiku come from?Undoubtedly Shiki is partly responsible, but all the blame cannot belaid on him. His poetical career may have been very different if hehad not met the painter Nakamura Fusetsu. This was the source of hisidea of depicting things as they are. This would immediately diminishBashô and Chiyo-ni. We know that Shiki dismissed part of Bashô's hokkuas doggerel. He never mentions Chiyo-ni or Issa. There is somethingseriously wrong with Shiki's view.
Hugh Bygott
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/simply_haiku/message/21481


"We know that Shiki dismissed part of Bashô's hokku as doggerel. He never mentions Chiyo-ni or Issa. There is something seriously wrong with Shiki's view."

Dear Hugh,

Please allow me to respond to the above comments in more detail.

As far as Shiki dismissing part of Basho's hokku as doggerel: Janine
Beichman, in her book, "Masaoka Shiki," in discussing Shiki's
essay, 'Some Remarks on Basho', 'Angya Haijin Basho', [The Voyager
Poet Basho, 1890], writes: "Shiki made the statement that nine-tenths
of Basho's poems were doggerel." However, Beichman goes on to
write "a careful reading of his works on Basho shows that it is not
true that he dismissed Basho's poetry as worthless."

According to Beichman:

"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 goosoo)."

[Here Beichman quotes two of Basho's haiku which Shiki used to
illustrate his contention about Basho's "grandeur"]

"The sublime tone was, according to Shiki, unique to Basho. Although
his realism had been successfully imitated by his followers and later
poets, no poet after him had achieved the sublime tone."

[Here Beichman quotes a passage from Shiki' writing which makes the
above points]

Beichman goes on:

"Shiki found Basho's work deficient in one area, however, he had not
used imagination."

Beichman adds a little later:

"It is also important to remember that even though he [Shiki]
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."

[end of excerpt]

And according to Donald Keene, in his book "Dawn to the West":

"Other famous poems by Basho were denounced [by Shiki] as plagiarism
or close adaptations of earlier haiku, and Shiki was especially
irritated by any display of ingenuity. His final judgment was that
Basho's poetry, all in all, was no more than a junk heap of bad and
good works indiscriminately thrown together.

"Shiki, however, denied that he thought Basho's poetry was worthless;
on the contrary, his good haiku possessed the qualities most lacking
in Japanese literature: masculinity and grandeur. ...Basho's poetry
was the first in centuries to display virility and amplitude."

Further on Keene writes:

"...Shiki's criticism of Basho was always tempered with expressions
of admiration."

[end of excerpt]

When Shiki dismissed nine-tenths of Basho's haiku as doggerel, he was attempting to undermine the LITERAL deification of Basho that was putting a stranglehold on progress in haiku prior to Shiki, progress that was necessary to prevent haiku from being overwhelmed by the Western influence that was flooding Japan at the time. And although we now know that Shiki was mistaken about Basho's use of imagination, thanks to the discovery in the 1940s of the diary that Sora kept during the Narrow Road journey, there are some commentators who still don't care for Basho's incorporation of whole phrases from Noh plays, and allusions to earlier poetry, in some of his haiku.


Moving on...

Does Shiki never mention Chiyo-ni and Issa? I don't know if a
translation of Shiki's 'Haiku Bunrui' (Classified Collection of
Haiku, 1900), for which Shiki read through all of the haiku written
up to his time, exists in English. If one does, I haven't read it.
Have you read an English translation, or the original? I'd be curious
if Shiki includes haiku written by Chiyo-ni and Issa and, if he does,
what he has to say about them, if anything.

I assume that you mean by "he never mentions Chiyo-ni or Issa" that you thnk he should have mentioned them as being equal to Buson. From the translations of Chiyo-ni I've read in English, I have to say that although Chiyo-ni wrote some good haiku, I don't think she is the equal of Buson. I'm not sure she's even any better than some of the other women haijin who wrote in and around her general era.

And regarding both Chiyo-ni and Issa, how were they viewed in their
own eras? There were dozens, if not hundreds, maybe thousands, of
professional and talented amateur poets writing haiku in the same
time periods as both of them. My impression is that both of them,
especially Issa, were viewed as being somewhat provincial. Shiki very
likely wasn't as comprehensively aware of Chiyo-ni and Issa as we are
today, for a variety of reasons.

Even today, Issa's reputation isn't as secure in Japan as it seems to
be in the West. Makoto Ueda, in his book "Dew on the Grass: The Life
and Poetry of Kobayashi Issa," points out that:

"Today's Japanese scholars...seem reluctant to grant him [Issa] the
same high literary stature as the other two masters [Basho and
Buson]. Ogata Tsutomu, generally considered the foremost living
authority on haiku literature, has consistently taken the position
that the history of haiku has had only two towering peaks, Basho and
Buson. Konishi Jin'ichi, another distinguished scholar of
international renown, has plainly asserted in his insightful 'The
World of Haiku' (Haiku no sekai, 1981) that Issa's poetry, though it
stands conspicuously above his contemporaries, in no way equals the
achievements of Basho and Buson. This unfavorable opinion is shared
even by two leading Issa scholars of our time.

Kobayashi Keiichiroo in his standard biography 'Kobayashi Issa' (1961) and Maruyama Kazuhiko in his preface to the collected works of Issa ('Issa shuu', 1970) concede that Issa's significance as a poet clearly falls short of his two rivals. Their appraisal sounds especially convincing, coming as it does from authorities who have dedicated most of their scholarly careers to the study of Issa's poetry."


For that matter, Shiki himself didn't start out admiring Buson from
the get-go. According to Keene:

"...(in 1893) he [Shiki] had merely mentioned Buson among the poets
of the late eighteenth century, and apparently considered Ooshima
Ryoota to be the most provocative poet of that period, but he soon
changed his mind and declared that Buson was the most distinguished
of the 'five great poets' of the era. He now wrote slightingly of
Ryoota's vulgarity and coarse tone."

Unfortunately, Keene doesn't mention who Shiki thought were the "five
great poets" of the era.


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Matsuyama and Masaoka Shiki (松山と正岡子規)

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