Karumi ... Takiguchi

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. Matsuo Basho 松尾芭蕉 - Archives of the WKD .


Karumi
Matsuo Basho's Ultimate Poetical Value, Or was it?

By SUSUMU TAKIGUCHI

QUOTE
©　worldhaikureview2 August 2010

Lecturer in Japanese Language and Civilisation
The University of Aston, Birmingham, UK

For the Proceedings of
The London Conference of the British Association for Japanese Studies
6th-8th April 1983

Introduction

In early May, 1694 (Genroku 7)1 Matsuo Basho set out westwards from his riverside hut in Fukagawa, Edo on a long journey whose destination is thought to have been Nagasaki. On his departure, one of his disciples, Yaha, asked the master what the New Year's poems2 should be like. It was in Basho's reply to this question that a very significant pointer could be found to his thinking at that time about the poetical style which he was developing. 'For the time being' he said, 'the present (hakai)3 style (of the Basho School) will do. However, in about five or six years' time it will have changed completely and our style will turn ever lighter.' This episode is recorded in Kyorai's Tabineron4 which by general consent is thought to be one of the more reliable documents about Basho's ideas on poetics.

Exactly five months later, one of his most famous and also his last poem was composed in Osaka: Tabi ni yande yume wa kareno wo kake meguru (Taken ill on a journey, my dreams roam over a moor). Among various possible interpretations of this poem, one that is relevant to Basho's unceasing search for an improved style is that the poem reflects a demonic power which had possessed Basho and had driven him endlessly into writing poems. But looked at from the opposite point of view, the poem can be said to reflect the degree to which Basho despaired that the death which he felt was rapidly approaching would terminate his endeavour to perpetuate the creation of a new style. Sadly, that actually came true four days later on 12th October 1694.

Basho's same apprehension is attested by writings of his disciples, notably Toho's Akazoshi5 which is another important first-line document about Basho. From these it is quite clear that in his last days, Basho was proceeding in earnest with forming a new poetical ideal which he called karumi, or 'lightness' and that he was not at all complacent about the progress he was making. On the contrary, in the end he came to an agonising realisation that this endeavour was not to be completed during his lifetime and that his only hope rested upon a number of chosen disciples who, by following his teaching, might be able to continue and finish the task where he had left off.
Karumi, then, is a concept which needs to be fully investigated not only because it may provide a key to the true understanding of Basho's poetical theory in his last years but also, it may enable us to take a fresh look at the whole of his achievement and its meaning.

A Hypothesis
First and foremost, let me put forward a somewhat ambitious working hypothesis plus a few auxiliary 'mini' assumptions on karumi, a concept which is rather elusive and difficult to define. Basho's whole poetry during his last fifteen years may be reduced to two fundamental elements which exist side by side or in a mixed or compound state7. One can be represented by that celebrated aesthetic term sabi and my hypothesis is that the other can and should be represented by karumi. That is to say, that the traditional custom of giving the former the sabi element, a predominant position in Basho's poetical theory might be amended and that the understanding of his life and work will not be complete unless and until the latter, the karumi element, is given proper status. Sabi represents the element which is characterised by the traditional, medieval poetic values based on aristocratic sensitivities, such as mono no aware, yugen, u-shin and sabi itself.8

By contrast, karumi represents the element characterised by Basho's contemporary world of the common people whose plain speech and everyday activities provided an immensely rich source for humorous rendering and light-hearted diction of universal relevance.

Of course, the relative importance of the sabi and karumi elements in Basho's poetry varied according to different stages of his development. But towards the end of his life, the karumi element was markedly becoming more and more crucial to the perfection of the so called Shofu, the style of the Basho School. The full development of the concept karumi itself was terminated, as we have seen, by Basho's death but the implication of my hypothesis is that karumi was to have been developed into an aesthetic key word equal in its importance to sabi.

The first of my 'mini' assumptions is the possibility that one of the main objectives of Basho's last journey might have been to disseminate the new style of karumi among his followers in the western regions, particularly Kamigata. The second assumption is that the urgency and enthusiasm with which Basho was trying to develop karumi in his last years can be explained partly by the fact that some of his important disciples were falling away or even challenging the introduction of his new style and that he therefore had to try even harder to establish it. The third of my assumptions is an extension of the hypothesis described above. It is that the greatest of all Basho's achievements is to be found in the creation of a new kind of poetry, born out of the marriage of the already existing two poetic worlds represented by sabi and karumi.


A Brief Account of the Development of Karumi

For the investigation of the Shofu as a whole, any study should go at least as far back as 1680 (Empo 8), the year which marks the first of what I call 'Basho's four turning points'. In that year he gave up his increasingly successful career as a haikai master and moved from the bustling hurly-burly of Nihonbashi to the picturesque tranquillity of the East Bank of Sumida River, to start a new life as a poet recluse. Here he took up residence in a simple fisherman's hut, later to be known as Basho-an (The Banana Hut). He was beginning to take over the dominant role in haikai poetry from Nishiyama Soin (1605-82) master of the Danrin School, as his own style turned decisively towards a more earnest search for truth and beauty.

The second turning point came in 1684 (Jokyo 1) when he made the trip of Nozarashi Kiko (The Journey of a Weather-beaten Skeleton) which triggered off a series of similar trips of special importance to Basho's 'Weltanschauung', epitomised by his belief that 'life itself is a journey'. During that trip of Nozarashi Kiko, he wrote the poem Konoha chiru sakura wa karoshi hinokigasa (Leaves of cherry trees, having turned colour, are falling lightly on my cypress hat). This is the first known instance of Basho using the word karoshi, the adjective from karumi, in his poetry. Although we must refrain from speculating, as some do, that it was the point of departure for Basho's quest for karumi, it is significant that Basho who was meticulous about terminology should have actually used the word.

Basho's journey of 1689 for Oku no hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North) was of the greatest importance, having far-reaching consequences in both his life and literature. This forms his third turning point, the effect of which on the subsequent development of Basho's haikai style was beyond measure. The same year saw the publication of Arano, an anthology compiled by Kakei, which was later commented on by Morikawa Kyoriku (1656-1715) as already containing the characteristics of karumi. Kyoriku, a samurai of Hikone, had long adored Basho but curiously did not become his disciple until 1692 (Genroku 5). But when he did, he helped Basho's endeavour concerning karumi as an important disciple almost straight away.

It seems as if karumi as a poetic tenet can be traced in a tangible form as far back as the Arano Anthology. In the following year, Basho composed a poem which he himself commented on as embodying the style of karumi:
Ko no moto ni shiru mo namasu mo sakura kana
(Under the trees/Soup, fish salad and all/In cherry blossoms
- tr. Ueda9). His own letters as well as writings by the disciples suggest that he had now intensified his efforts to develop and to teach the new concept of karumi.

After that momentous journey to the north he continued to stay in his home town, Iga, and such fondest places as Zeze, near Lake Biwa, Genju-an (The Hut of Unreal Dwelling) in Ishiyama and Rakushi-sha (The Hut of the Falling Persimmon) in Saga in Kyoto until at last in the autumn he returned to Edo after two and a half years' absence. During the summer, that illustrious anthology, Sarumino (The Monkey's Cloak) had been published. This, of course, is the monument, the magnum opus, of the Shofu haikai. And its leading spirit is sabi, or put conversely sabi found its complete expression in this work. However, life in Edo did not prove uneventful for him, creating the last new phase of his life. Coming back to Edo thus turned out to be the fourth turning point. It was the period when Basho began putting different aspects of karumi into practice on a full scale, culminating in the year 1694, which brings us back to where we began.


The Outline of Basho's Idea on Poetry

Basho's choice of the word karumi was rather unfortunate. Almost all senses attached to the adjective karoshi, of which karomi or karumi is the noun derivative, are negative and pejorative: trivial, frivolous, insignificant, flippant, lowly, thoughtless, contemptible, worthless etc, apart from its primary meaning of the 'lightness of the weight of things'.10 It sounds hardly appropriate to name something so significant as the final style of verse of a most outstanding Japanese poet. Not surprisingly, this seems to have led to various misunderstandings even in Basho's time, in that it was taken to mean no more than the usual frivolity of comic poems.11 There are instances which reflect these misunderstandings in the anthology Sumidawara (A Sack of Charcoal) which is regarded as the embodiment of the concept karumi.

What I propose to do is to think of all the possible connotations of karumi other than those mentioned above and narrow them down to what can reasonably be established as the sense in which Basho must have used the term.

But before going into the details, let us first look briefly at Basho's general idea about what the art of haikai should be like. First of all, Basho believes in something which runs through all the best works of any branches of Japanese art. 'Be it Saigyo's waka, Sogi's renga, Sesshu's painting or Rikyu's tea-ceremony, what permeates them all is one and the same', says Basho in a travel diary called Oi no kobumi (The Records of a Travel-worn Satchel).12 One may call it a fundamental principle or an ultimate aesthetic value or an artistic truth. But one should take heed not to define it because to do so is to restrict the scope which this common denominator possesses. Suffice it to say, that it is something which makes the best artists and authors what they are and their works so meaningful to us.

It goes without saying that Basho wanted to share this 'something' with classical masters, particularly with those he admired.13 Naturally, this became his driving force which was to find expression in its poetic application, fuga no makoto14 (poetic sincerity or truth). For Basho, fuga means haikai in most cases. It follows that achieving fuga no makoto became the aim which pervaded all of Basho's tireless effort to realise better styles for haikai. In other words, fuga no makoto was the ultimate criterion to judge the value of haikai works, whether they were hokku or renku15 or even a complete anthology itself. Moreover, according to Toho what distinguished Basho from previous haikai masters such as Matsunaga Teitoku (1571-1653) or Nishiyama Soin (1605-1682) was the fact that with him, haikai was transcended for the first time to a level of great literary merit and that it was the makoto that made it happen. Thus, Basho aimed at haikai no makoto and achieved makoto no haikai.

Quite possibly, Basho might not have been able to achieve this poetic spirit, fuga no makoto, had he not come up with the famous modus operandi called fueki-ryuko. Like all other Basho's haikai vocabulary this word was not new, nor was it Basho's invention. It was the meaning Basho gave it that was new. We may perhaps be excused in calling it revolutionary even - judging from the consequences it created. It refers to the dual nature of good haikai poems having both 'a perception of some eternal truth (fueki) and an element of contemporaneity (ryuko)16. Ueda Makoto sums this up neatly in his Literary and Art Theories in Japan:17

'.....According to Basho, then, all the styles of the Haiku fall into two large categories: the one that has qualities transcending time and place, and the other that is rooted in the taste of the time. Both styles are good, the former because of its universal appeal, the latter because of its freshness in expression. Basho, however, thinks that the two are ultimately one - the poetic spirit.'

Thus, fueki-ryuko made it possible for Basho to solve the dilemma which had dogged earlier haikai masters. That is to say, that if they sought in haikai only the traditional canon of poetry such as yugen, sabi and mono no aware they would deprive haikai of its main characteristics, namely humour and jocularity. On the other hand, if they did not do so the haikai would quickly degenerate into a frivolous play of words, whimsical conceit or pedantic witticism, which was the cause of the decline of many schools or individual poets. Waka and renga may have belonged to the aristocratic world of court poetry and samurai culture but haikai should and can remain the poetry of men in the street. Basho's solution is somewhat like the triadic movement of Hegel's dialectic where fueki (thesis) and ryoko (antithesis) are sublimated into fuga no makoto (synthesis) but retaining what Hegel called 'aufgehobene Momente', namely, synthesised characteristics of fueki and ryuko of the pre-synthesis stage. In this way, Basho could continue to employ the so-called zokudan-heiwa (plain language) as well as subjects of the common people and still attain the depth and quality which is found in the best of Japanese art. Humour, pathos, sympathy with nature, understanding of humanity, beauty and truth - all are there in Basho's best poems.

These two concepts, ie, fuga no makoto and fueki-ryuko, served as the foundation of Basho's creative work and occupied the central position in his haikai. They are like the warp and the weft in weaving, determining the very fabric of poetry, while other poetical attributes such as wabi, sabi, shiori, hosomi and karumi can be likened to pattern books with different colours, patterns and motifs. Among the latter, sabi is perhaps the most well-known. This is a historical extension of Fujiwara Shunzei's yugen and Fujiwara Teika's u-shin and subsequent aesthetic ideals of such diverse names as Shotetsu (1381-1459), Zeami (1363?-1443) and Shinkei (1406-1475). But Basho's haikai represents sabi in such a powerful way that it has almost become synonymous with him. And yet, Basho left no word about it. Those of his disciples are but fragmentary notes with little theoretical consistency.


'Patinated loneliness and desolation'
seems to be the best English translation18 so far of the word sabi. Since sabi is one of those Japanese bywords pregnant with all shades of implication and ramification, one would try in vain to pin it down with a single interpretation. However, Basho inherited the essential characteristics of sabi from earlier poets and we need only to check the deviation which Basho made when applying the concept to his own poetry. Firstly, he seems to have rejected the idea of depicting the scene of sabi for the sake of doing so. Loneliness, for example, will not of itself constitute sabi. Technical skills such as clever use of terminology will not guarantee the presence of sabi. Rather, it comes from the heart of the poet and colours the poem he composes of its own accord. 'The presence or absence of sabi', says an authoritative commentator,19 'does not...depend upon choosing for one's theme, objects which possess or do not possess such qualities'.
Secondly, Basho tended to find the quality of sabi in the contrast of two opposite things like the aged watchmen with white heads against the young blossoms of cherry trees, or an old warrior in the battlefield. The whiteness of the old men is set against the gorgeous colours of the cherry blossoms, thus emphasising the feeling of sabi in the former ever more strongly. The old warrior in a state of decline and decay and soon dying is placed in the environment which symbolises vigour, energy and violent death. Thirdly, sabi is taken by Basho to mean some 'impersonal atmosphere' which has been transformed from naked sorrow, as Ueda emphasises in the book mentioned above.20 As an example of this, he cites Basho's hokku which talks about a lonely green cypress tree standing amid the cherry blossoms.



Basho's important contribution here is that:

a) he enlarged the scope for sabi by liberating it from a narrow sense of sorrow; and

b) he gave it more depth and vividness by introducing the technique of contrasting what might be construed as representing sabi with that which is opposite to it. Added to this should be Basho's other achievement of spreading sabi, a concept enjoyed by the upper class, among the populace, or conversely of elevating the popular literature to the higher level that had belonged to the intellectual few.


Apart from these specific points pertaining to Basho's own expansion of the word, sabi can be regarded as a manifestation of what Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801) later called mono no aware21 in its broadest sense. So basically are the next two concepts, shiori and hosomi? In fact, they are so similar that it seems to me to be more sensible to bundle them together in this paper to avoid unnecessary confusion.

It is enough for our purposes to note that shiori and hosomi also reflect a sense of loneliness, desolation and beauty, perceived in the decaying, wilting and withering of things.22 The rest of the poetical ideas used in Basho's haikai will be dealt with only when necessary in relation to the concept karumi.23

To sum up the observation so far, Basho's goal, fuga no makoto (poetic truth) was ultimately the same as was found in all the best works of any branch of Japanese art. He achieved it by means of fueki-ryuko (constancy and change) and the resulting works were very much of Basho's unique style, characterised by such poetic values as wabi, sabi, shiori and hosomi. However, it has to be said that Basho is a poet with whose unparalleled significance it is easier to agree than it is to understand those values which make him so significant.


Forces that paved the way for Karumi

From the foregoing, it would look as if the concept of karumi is totally unconnected with the traditional poetic ideals we have been describing. The latter have the all-pervasive calm tones of resigned loneliness and muted acceptance of the sad reality of life, and furthermore, of the unquestioning longing to find solace in nature. By contrast, karumi seems at first to picture the opposite end of human perception: the light-hearted approach to the human predicament with a bit of fun in this wretched world, providing comedy rather than tragedy to a too-restrained and too-pessimistic an audience.

This, in fact, is not entirely mistaken but it is too superficial an analysis to reach the depths of Basho's intentions. In order to understand the connection, we need to study the forces at work when Shofu was being constructed. First of all, there is a built-in force in Japanese literature which, like the swing of the pendulum, alternates between the serious (yubi) and humorous (kokkei). During the Heian period (794-1192), from waka there developed renga (linked-verse) whose characteristics were wit and humour. As a reaction to this, the so-called u-shin renga24 of the Kakinomoto-shu emerged at the beginning of the Kamakura period (1192-1333) to follow the traditional 'courtly elegance and decorous taste'25 of Shunzei and Teika, particularly the latter. This u-shin renga in turn was challenged by the mushin renga26 of the Kurinomoto-shu whose interest lay in making unserious, jocular verses. In the Muromachi period (1333-1603) renga was once again dominated by the serious school of waka with all its principles and conventions, led by such brilliant figures as Nijo Yoshimoto, Shotetsu, Shinkei and Sogi (1421-1502).
But towards the end of this period, with the rise and prosperity of local samurai and chonin (townsmen) of commercial towns such as Sakai, u-shin renga became too rigid and sterile to accommodate the freedom of the new style, themes and expressions demanded by these newcomers. The demand was all the more explosive because the orthodox renga had restricted its range, striking off the comic renga from the legitimate register. Thus, haikai-no-renga (literally, comic renga) was given its first real chance to come to the fore and dominate the scene. Needless to say, haikai and eventually haiku were to develop from this haikai-no-renga. Sokan (1465-1553)27 and Moritake (1473-1549) are usually deemed the fathers of this new movement, again with jeu d'esprit and quip as its keynote. Then, in the early Edo period (1603-1867), Teitoku started a new school, Teimon trying to swing back more towards the serious renga but his failure led to the rise of the Danrin School whose master, Soin, reversed the trend. And as we know, this degenerated into excessive jest and facetious word-play until at last Basho took over the leadership to bring haikai back on the track of traditional waka values.

Within Basho's own development itself, we see the same pendulum movement at work. As a young man, he started off by being initiated into the world of waka and haikai under the guidance of his master, Lord Yoshitada (nom de plume, Sengin) whose teacher was Kitamura Kigin (1624-1705), an influential disciple of Teitoku. But Basho was not to be restricted to the serious and genteel style adhered to by the conservatives. His first and only publication, Kai-oi, which came out in Edo when he was twenty-eight provides us with his poems full of witticism, play upon words and even sensual teasing of amorous love. This was three years before Soin came down to Edo and spread the humorous style of the Danrin School. It was this school Basho associated himself with until he had to abandon it because of its debasement into frivolity as we have seen. His dissatisfaction led him eventually to give up his career as a renowned haikai master and in the winter of 1680 he resigned from this world and moved to Basho-an in Fukagawa, then still a scenic countryside, sparsely populated.

It was only natural that Basho should have become more and more serious in his rendering of poetry as well as his teaching. But in many instances of his renku he still continued to show wit and light-heartedness and within the serious overtones generally observed in his last ten years or so there was nevertheless a subtle oscillation between serious and light tones. Nozarashi-Kiko (The Journal of a Weather-beaten Skeleton) is perhaps the most serious of all the journals he wrote and Sarumino (The Monkey's Cloak) is regarded as the apex of the Basho School. We then have Sumidawara (A Sack of Charcoal) and Zoku Sarumino (The Sequal to The Monkey's Cloak) which have much lighter and more humorous tones.

The oscillation and interaction between the serious and the humorous are a common feature of Japanese literature. It is therefore not surprising that such a concept as karumi should have emerged in Basho's haikai. On the contrary, it would have been very odd if it had not. Of course, Basho's world is tinged with serious and melancholic tones, reflecting his personality as well as the temperament inherent in his samurai background. But it was inevitable that something like karumi should become part and parcel of Basho's haikai sooner or later and perhaps one can even argue that coming from such a stern person as Basho, karumi is so much more significant and merits profound investigation.

Another important force which was seen in the formation of Shofu is atarashimi (newness). Basho was a dynamic poet. He had an almost obsessional urge to seek new ideas and inspiration so that his poetry could remain unhackneyed. Atarashimi became particularly necessary after the publication of Sarumino. Some of his disciples felt that having reached the highest point there was no need to go any further but simply to preserve what was achieved. This led to the rise of sated conservatism which in Basho's view would be the quickest way to the decline of Shomon. The worry added more urgency to the introduction and development of a new style based on karumi.

The third force at work was Basho's desire to create an entirely new kind of haikai and to increase its literary merits to such an extent that it would be ranked not only as one of the highest forms of Japanese poetry but also as one of the most important branches of Japanese literature itself. I am not suggesting that Basho worked every minute of the day with this task clearly in mind but the result of his passion is something we know only too well. This posed, however, an intractable problem when dealing with the dichotomy seen in haikai between the serious aspect and the comic one. The latter was the ultimate raison d'etre of haikai and one which can only be derived from ordinary words and a mundane life. And as we shall see in more detail, karumi seems to have played a vital role in solving the problem.


Various Aspects of Karumi

Let us now turn to the salient characteristics of karumi. Since Basho left no writing of his own, explaining what it was and since his disciples' fragmentary explanation of it does not provide any clear definition, we may as well begin by looking at what was not karumi. In other words, instead of being reduced to conjectures as to what karumi must have meant, we resort to an elimination method by investigating the known antitheses of karumi.

a) Karumi as the Antithesis of Omomi
The most obvious concept opposite to karumi is omomi or heaviness. The best document in which to see the relation between the two is Fugyoku-Ate-Kyorai-Ronsho which is a long letter Kyorai wrote to another disciple of Basho's Fugyoku, in which he discusses poetics. The word omomi used here has several different connotations. Firstly Basho is quoted as saying, 'Never let haikai stagnate, otherwise it will become heavy'. In this instance, omomi relates to the stagnation of poetry, which from other evidence is to be interpreted as meaning the conservative attitude of a poet clinging to one style with the result that he loses fresh inspiration and innovation.

Another sense of omomi can be found in a word Kyorai uses: omokuretaru. This means oppressed, clumsy, awkward, tedious, leaden, ponderous, dull, etc. Kyorai cautions that it should not be confused with genju (strict, severe) or jo no fukaki (deep feelings). Kori (stiffness) and nigori (muddiness) are also words associated with omomi.

From these various shades of omomi's implications, one can deduce that the quality of karumi seems to be obtained from the newness or freshness of that which does not stagnate or become stiff but constantly changes and flows, rather like a shallow mountain stream28: fresh, clear and light.

It is in this sense of omomi that Kyorai made the following famous statement:


'The reason why the Master's teaching centred at that time around karumi is that (the old concept of) omomi had to be destroyed. And how could anything else have destroyed this conventional concept (of omomi) except karumi itself?'

b) Karumi as the Antithesis of Furubi
It should now be clear that karumi has antipodal characteristics to what is old-fashioned, repetitive and conventional, which is summed up in the word furubi (oldness) as Ogata Tsutomu points out in his 'Karumi eno Shiko',29 what Basho was referring to by this term is the tendency of some unimaginative and conservative poets to rely heavily on the conventional practice of kanso, which was the abuse of traditional poems about nature, distorting them to describe one's views on life and the world. If this becomes the central feature of a stanza, it inhibits the natural flow of the poet's feelings and thus causes stagnation in expression because the poem would be over-loaded with irksome intellectualisation.

c) Karumi as the Antithesis of Nebari and Shiburi

These are normally expressed as kokoro no nebari or kokoro no shiburi or kotoba no shiburi. The former, nebari, means sticky and the latter, shiburi, signifies that something does not proceed smoothly. Therefore, both are similar to omomi which we saw above and may be regarded as an aspect of it. It refers to contrived artificiality, lacking in naturalness.

d) Karumi as the Antithesis of Shi-i
Shi-i means self-will and was strongly condemned by Basho as a hindrance to true poetry. This has three dimensions. Firstly, it relates to individual subjectivity which in those days was regarded as being a barrier to reaching the truth of the outside world. Secondly, it relates to a lack of discipline or deviation from rules, particularly from the master's teachings. Thirdly, it relates to a split between man and nature, which ought to coalesce in a true poem. None of these, in fact, is directly opposite to karumi but they are conducive to negative qualities such as forced conceptualisation, long-winded arbitrariness or lack of intuitive diction, which are contrary to karumi. The most famous of all Basho's words in this connection are to be found in Toho's Akazoshi30:-

The master said:
"Learn about a pine tree from a pine tree, and about a bamboo plant from a bamboo plant.' What he meant was that the poet should detach the mind from his own self. Nevertheless, some people interpret the word 'learn' in their own ways and never really 'learn'. 'Learn' means to enter into the object, perceive its delicate life, and feel its feeling, whereupon a poem forms itself. Even a poem that lucidly describes an object could not attain a true poetic sentiment unless it contains the feelings that spontaneously emerged out of the object. In such a poem the object and the poet's self would remain forever separate, for it was composed by the poet's personal self.

The abandonment of self and the coalescence with the object are intrinsic qualities which permeate Japanese creative activities. Basho was very stringent about this and it may be noted that Natsume Soseki's last ideal of sokuten-kyoshi has a ring curiously resembling Basho's view.

e) Karumi as the Antithesis of Amami
Amami is probably the most ambiguous and misleading of all Basho's terminology. None of the senses given to the word amashi in Kojien, for example, seem to apply to what Basho was supposed to be saying. According to Ebara Taizo and Akahane Manabu31, amami is expressed by way of another word noen, whose literal meaning is luxuriant charm. But in the context of a reverse sense to karumi it is understood to mean the excessively extravagant poetic diction of the classicism that was elaborate, 'rococo' and florid. Interestingly, this fashion seems to have been entertained particularly by the poets living in Kyoto.
And nothing evokes it more effectively than love poems. For instance, Kyorai (a Kyoto poet) wrote a love poem to which Basho added a tsukeku stanza.32 Afterwards, Basho commented on this event in the letter he wrote from Kyoto to his Edo disciple, Yaha, saying 'Authors around here have not yet managed to get rid of this business of amami. You, yourself should be very careful not to neglect karumi.'33

It looks as though the term amami was introduced to highlight a requirement of karumi in that while the poet should be deeply moved and his perception very profound, the actual poetic diction and imagery should not be artificially sought or contrived but be rendered in an easy and natural manner. It should not be 'too heavily loaded with emotion', as Ueda puts it.34 Kyoriku, who wrote a great deal about karumi, comments in the same vein in his Haikai Mondo:-

What is meant by karumi, whether it is hokku or tsukeku, is that it is composed as one sees, so to speak,35 without reaching out for it. Using plain words does not mean that the sentiment expressed is slight. (On the contrary) it should come deep from the poet's heart and the finished stanza should have perfect naturalness.

Immediately after this, Kyoriku gives three examples of renku which seem to him to embody karumi.

Butsudan no shoji ni tsuki no sashi kakari
The moon shines through the shoji sliding door of the Buddhist shrine within the household

Gyozui no senaka wo terasu natsu no tsuki
The back of a bathing lady is illuminated by the summer moon


Takaba no ue wo kari wataru nari
A flock of wild geese fly over the hawking ground


Indeed, each of these poems has such a striking vividness that the feeling is almost overpowering. It is as if we ourselves are seeing what the poet saw. Moreover, none of the words used is affected and none of the objects elaborate or florid and yet the poetic sentiment is one of a deeply-felt human experience.

f) Karumi as the Antithesis of Umami
There is another slightly puzzling term which was used to help explain karumi. And that is umami, which should perhaps be translated as 'being delicious to taste' judging from Kyoriku's explanation. In the anthology-cum-treatises called Hentsuki of which Kyoriku was a co-editor36 he introduces a famous episode of Basho's life and then talks against umami:-

The master said:
you must know that (the life of) haikai poems lasts only while they are being composed on a bundai (writing desk). Once they are removed from it they are no more than old scraps of paper. These are precious words. Nevertheless, the haikai currently in fashion does not possess the quality of elegance or grace. Today's haikai poets, if they happen to hit on an interesting idea, would bite at its umami (tasty, juicy bit) and cling to it without realising that there is poetry also to be found where there is no such 'taste'. However, when I say that tastelessness is good, I don't mean that the taste shouldn't be there from the start. What I am saying is that we should extract umami from that taste and throw it away.


To my understanding, this seems to be saying that even a genuinely clever idea will become a cumbersome bore if it is repeated as gospel and that good poems may look plain at first sight because that cleverness is deliberately removed from them. And of course it is karumi that does the trick.

In order to see how much clearer the image of karumi has so far become to us, let me try here to say in one of the twentieth century Western languages, English, what Basho tried to teach by karumi. A haikai poet should never cease to advance in his unremitting search for new inspiration and style. A halt can mean stagnation which deprives his creative spirit of freshness, turning his poems into ponderous and jaded tedium. He should also guard against the ill-effects of dogmatic subjectivity and arbitrary self-centredness as they tend to push him further and further away from poetic truth. Instead, he should rid himself of self-assertiveness in order to attain spontaneous, objective and impersonal poetry. The poet must not indulge in imitating the old fashioned features of classic time, or in too elaborate and florid a style as they are not compatible with haikai's most fundamental prerequisite - plain language and humour. Over-ingenuity and gimmicks are also to be avoided. All these may be achieved by means of karumi, which is 'counteractive' to the negative qualities mentioned.


Characteristics of Karumi

Having seen various aspects of karumi in a 'negative image', as it were, let us now look at its 'positive' characteristics.

a) Kogo-kizoku
What helped prevent Basho's haikai from becoming either an adulterated version of waka or yet another specimen of vulgar literature was his artistic frame of mind which Basho scholars often refer to in an abbreviated form as Kogo-kizoku. This was derived from Basho's own teaching, 'Takaku kokoro wo satorite zoku ni kaerubeshi', which can be freely rendered as, 'a poet's mind should reach lofty enlightenment and then return to the popular' or better still, 'the poet should mingle with the herd yet preserve a noble mind'.37 The short sentence just quoted in Japanese is placed in Toho's Akazoshi in a humble and isolated sort of way, almost drowned by the sea of other impressive entries. And yet it represents a crucial breakthrough in Basho's long suffering reform of the art of haikai. Kogo, the noble mind, exemplifies the highest values in Japanese artistic creativity as well as aesthetic receptivity, while kizoku (returning to the herd) illustrates Basho's bifocal undertaking of:

i) popularising the traditionally aristocratic poetical forms;
and
ii) of elevating the popular literature to that traditional height.

The synthesis of these seemingly conflicting factors was made possible by the help of karumi. Ebara Taizo, one of the pioneers advocating the importance of karumi in Basho's theory and practice goes so far as to say that 'the highest and deepest spirit in Basho's haikai should be found not in sabi nor in shiori or hosomi but in karumi.'38 Sabi, shiori and hosomi may indeed represent traditional aesthetic values but even they on their own fail to create an advanced poetic dimension of kogo-kizoku. To see how karumi succeeded would be to see more of karumi's own characteristics.

When the poet is well-versed in the traditional values mentioned, he then has to acquire additional elements which make up the principle of karumi in order to arrive at Basho's last ideal, symbolised by kogo-kizoku. Simplicity, humour, detachment, plain language and mundane materials found in people's daily life are such elements. They helped the birth of an entirely new literary form from the union between the waka tradition and the haikai tradition. It was neither going back to the genre of waka nor coming down to the lower merit of the hitherto existing haikai, but a 'creative evolution' into a synthesised new entity made possible by Basho's genius and struggle. It is in this context that the true significance of karumi should be evaluated.

b) Haikai-jiyu
In a way, 'freedom' may well be a better translation of karumi. After all, a function of karumi is to liberate haikai from the tedious fetters of rules and conventions of the past. The new poetic form thus effected should be free from prolixity, cerebral conceptualisation, arbitrary subjectivity and over-elaborate poetic diction. This function has been traditionally called haikai-jiyu (the freedom of the haikai) as opposed to waka-yubi (the elegant beauty of waka). Waka and renga had long denied poets access to rich sources for poetical inspiration and expression, namely, the daily experience, language, perception and the way of life of the greatest part of the population. Karumi played a pivotal role in realising this liberation.

At the same time, karumi sets a limitation as to how popular a haikai poem is allowed to become. Some of Basho's students on occasions went too far in applying karumi to their haikai composition, making their poetry simply banal and vulgar. For example, Boncho, a Kyoto disciple, had composed the last two lines only of a triplet: yuki tsumu ue no yoru no ame (the night rain falling on top of the settling snow), but was unable to write the beginning line. Basho instructed that it should be 'shimo-kyo ya' (in South Kyoto). According to Kyorai-sho Boncho fidgeted restlessly, apparently not very pleased with Basho's idea. He wanted something plainer and more ordinary. But Basho immediately put him in his place, saying, 'you should be proud of having this first line to your stanza. But of course if you can come up with something better, I would at once abandon my haikai career'.

The motto is that Basho was teaching the importance of preserving the elegance of tranquil beauty (or kanga) even in a poem which may be the embodiment of karumi.

c) Karumi and Zen
The impact of Zen Buddhism on Basho's haikai is a popular theme for Western writers. Basho's encounter with his Zen teacher, Butcho is estimated to have taken place around 1681 (Tenwa 1) a year after Basho moved to Fukagawa. We may recall that just before the move he composed an important poem
kare eda ni karasu no tomari taru ya aki no kure
(On the withered branch/ A crow has alighted-/ Nightfall in Autumn. Tr DK).
This autumn poem is said to reflect the influence on him of the monk-poets of the Gozan Zenrin. He made the famous trip to Kashima, east of Edo, to visit Butcho, now an old friend, at the Nemoto-ji Temple in 1687 (Jokyo 4) and it was a year before this that he composed the verse
Furuike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto.

During these eight years, a number of events took place which drew Basho towards a serious religious quest, particularly that of Zen: the loss of Basho-an by fire (thus homelessness), the death of his mother (thus the realisation of the ephemeral nature of our existence) and the journey of Nozarashi Kiko (thus the journey which had such vital significance for Basho's philosophy). But all these events pre-date the time when the first hint of karumi is said to have emerged, ie, in 1689 (Genroku 2). However, judging from some of the features of karumi, there seems little doubt that Zen helped formulate this concept to a greater or lesser extent. The immediacy and directness of karumi as well as the intuitive grasp of the subject matter has obvious similarities to Zen practice. The enlightenment of kogo-kizoku and the freedom of the haikai-jiyu which we have seen, possess heavy undertones of Zen. The abandonment of shi-i, self-will, is a necessary condition for enlightenment in both cases. Karumi's rejection of conceptualisation or intellectualisation of things is akin to the Zen approach. But above all, flashes of insight are strongly present both in karumi and Zen.

d) Humour
Humour plays a very important role in Basho's haikai generally and this was especially so when the concept karumi was being implemented. Karumi's characteristics are light-hearted, comic and humorous. If these characteristics are combined with the poet's detached, impersonal attitude towards his external world, a new frame of mind will be achieved, whereby he can face the world with equanimity, gently smiling away, whatever happens to him, without losing sincerity. If he furthermore attains kogo -kizoku, he will be like the poets Ueda describes:

'...those who have returned to the earthly world after attaining a high stage of enlightenment can look at life with a smile, for they are part of that life and are not so. Knowing what life ultimately is, they can take suffering with a detached, light-hearted attitude - with lightness.39

In the West, joy and sorrow are separate, mutually-exclusive entities. But in the Japanese sentiment, they are often unarticulated or one surreptitiously turns into another. Basho's humour has such overtones and it is what Yamamoto Kenkichi calls the 'sublimated karumi' that makes Basho's humour humane. With karumi, the contents of humour is expanded and enriched to include such things as affinity with nature, warmth towards one's fellow human beings and acceptance of the idea that whatever is, is right, where the real question is not 'to be or not to be' but 'to be and not to be' as a Zen book puts it. Another study gives further evidence:

'karumi is often combined with okashimi ('the comic')....It implies an attitude towards life in which the world is not taken too solemnly and sentimentally but looked at dispassionately and with detachment.'40

e) Karumi's Pictorial Qualities
Basho had studied painting in the style of the Kano School before he met Kyoriku, a talented artist as well as a poet, who now gave lessons to Basho. There are Basho's extant haiga (haikai paintings) which testify to a moderate degree of talent in this direction but more significantly, to the importance paintings generally had for Basho's literary endeavour. Those who are familiar with Basho's verses cannot help having some pictorial images emerging form the lines they are reading. Some verses are more evocative of these images than others. Karumi actually had been an important factor in Japanese painting and a contemporary of Basho's, Tosa Mitsuoki, for instance declared in 1690 that what was required of paintings was none other than a single Chinese character 'kei' (or 'lightness').

An example from Sumidawara may help illustrate this:

Kuratsubo ni kobozu noruya daikohiki
On a saddle, a little boy witnesses the pulling of Daikon radishes.

Kyorai's comment on this stanza indicates that what makes it an interesting poem is its quality to conjure up a vivid picture of the scene described. This poem is taken up as a typical manifestation of karumi by Yamamoto Kenkichi, who is one of the most powerful advocates of the concept. Another example, from Oku no hosomichi has strong pictorial qualities:

Aka aka to hi wa tsurenaku mo aki no kaze
Red, Red is the sun

Heatlessly indifferent to time
The wind knows, however,
The promise of early chill...
Tr. Yuasa Nobuyuki


Basho composed this on his way from Kanazawa to Komatsu. There is a painting by Basho based on this poem on which Sampu commented, 'the painting, too, is executed in a 'light' way'. The feeling of lightness inherent in haikai paintings and the karumi of Bahso's haikai seem to have influenced each other in instances like this. By introducing pictorial qualities Basho also hoped to emancipate his poetry both from the Danrin type wordiness and from the rigid conceptualisation of waka tradition.

f) Karumi and Musical Qualities
Notwithstanding the validity of the generally-held view that Japanese poems usually lack the characteristics of Western prosody, musical qualities do play their part in them. In an extreme case, if a Japanese poem sounds monotonous to the Western ears, the Japanese hear 'their' music in that monotony. In this sense, Dorothy Britton's interpretation that 'the shichi-go-cho, or the seven-five meter, is to Japanese poetry and drama what Shakespeare's iambic pentameter is to English' is a healthy one.

Basho's early works, as seen in Kai-oi had taken plentifully, words and rhythm from kouta, popular songs of his time. They demonstrated a considerable musicality, even though they lacked the depth and literary merit of his later poems. This quality of musicality, though not apparent during much of his subsequent work, seems to have re-emerged towards the end of his life, possibly through the development of karumi.

The relation of karumi with music had been close. For instance, Zeami's textbook on utai called Fushizukesho talks about the importance of 'lightness' over and over again. The haikai of the Danrin School is particularly noted for its musical bent; so much so that it is sometimes referred to as 'hyoshi-no-haikai' (or rhythm-haikai). When young, Basho was under the direct influence of this type of haikai, from which he subsequently disassociated himself.

Basho's famous metaphor of karumi,
'sunagawa no asaku nagaruru'
(the flow of a sandy shallow)
may first strike one as a vivid pictorial image but it also transmits the allegretto of the clear stream, the music and dance of glistening water and its light-hearted rhythmical play with the sand underneath. The musical characteristics of karumi are most manifest in poems using onomatopoeia. In Japanese, it would be gitai-go as well as gisei-go. Let us just listen to the sound only of these poems.


Horohoro to yamabuki chiruka taki no oto.
(Arano)

Kariato ya wase katakata no shigi no koe.
(Oinikki)

Hyorohyoro to nao tsuyukeshi ya ominaeshi.
(Arano)

Hiyahiya to kabe wo fumaete hirune kana.
(Oinikki)

Hirahira to aguru ogi ya kumo no mine.
(ditto)

Mume ga ka ni notto hi no deru yamaji kana.
(Sumidawara)


In my opinion these, though undoubtedly magnificent, are in a way an easy way out. Onomatopoeia, so rich in Japanese, has such great expediency that it can cheapen the poem. The more challenging and satisfying way is to achieve the same musically pleasing effect through the choice of words, refined contents and the so-called yo-jo (overflow of deep feelings). Here are a few successful examples.

Ariake mo misoka ni chikashi mochi no oto.
(Shinseki Jigasan)

Sazanami ya kaze no kaori no aibyoshi.
(Oinikki)

Kanbutsu ya shiwade awasuru juzu no oto.
(Sanzoshi)

Kogakure te chatsumi mo kiku ya hototogisu.
(Betsuzashiki)

Kari sawagu toba no tazura ya kan no ame.
(Saikashu)

Zosui ni biwa kiku noki no arare kana.
(Arisoumi)

We have been looking at different aspects of karumi.
They are, however, only the most obvious issues. The question of karumi is not something that can be neatly explained away but has implications far more profound because it is not only a form of Basho's haikai theory but an integral part of his way of life. Therefore, it should also be examined from a biographical viewpoint. As R H Blyth puts it, 'What makes Basho one of the greatest poets of the world is the fact that he lived the poetry he wrote, and wrote the poetry he lived'.

By way of conclusion,
I would propose that karumi, a preoccupation of Basho's final years, was an extremely important vehicle by which he tried to merge the refined, traditional poetic style of aristocratic vein with the new, humorous and light-hearted style of the common herd, using ordinary words and everyday subjects thus, perpetuating the creation of the Shofu, which would be an entirely new Japanese poetic expression. How far he succeeded in doing so is open to discussion. All depends on how much of the hypothesis I have set out can be proved, some of the groundwork for which, I hope, has been provided in this paper. Besides, the only ultimate recourse we can have to appreciate his poems is after all to his works themselves. At any rate, it is deeply regrettable that death overtook Basho before he had been able to develop the concept of karumi to the point where it could unquestionably stand comparison with mono no aware, yugen and sabi. But let us listen to Basho's own words that we may not make a culpable mistake here:

Haikai wa tada fuga nari.
Fuga ni ron wa sukoshi mo gazanaku soro.

Haikai is nothing but poetry.
Poetry needs no theory.


NOTES

1. Months given are based on the lunar calendar.


2. These poems are called Saitan. They were composed at Saitanbiraki (New Year's Poetry Meeting) on an auspicious day in January by a master such as Basho himself and his top disciples. It was customary to have the poems printed on a single sheet or in a booklet, which was then given as a season's greeting or sold to the general public.

3. The word haikai is derived from haikai no renga (comic linked-verse) which was a form of renga. Haikai comprises hokku (opening stanza) and tsukeku (capping stanzas) forming renku (linked stanzas) but in a looser sense it can include such writings in prose as journals of journeys and diaries. Hokku was the most important as it set the tone and style of a particular renku sequence and was therefore usually composed by a master or a senior poet. So important was it that it came to be composed sometimes outside the renku session whenever a poet thought of a good idea for hokku, which he jotted down to be used in future renku sessions. This led to the situation where hokku was composed in its own right, thus paving the way for what we now know as haiku. The word haiku began to be used in this sense during the Meiji period (1868-1912), particularly by Masaoka Shiki although the earliest known usage of it (in the same sense as hokku) was during the Kambun period, ie, in the 1660's.

4. Kyorai also records the same conversation of Noha with Basho at the end of the Kyoraisho (Conversations with Kyorai). The wording, however, is slightly different and karumi is not referred to.
Kyorai records a similar episode in his 'Rekidai Kokkeiden' (Successive Comic Tales), citing Basho's poem in the anthology 'Fukagawa' (1693). The poem embodies the idea of karumi and Kyoriku comments, 'My master said that his haikai would all be like this one in four or five years' time'.
Kyoriku as quoted in 'Rekidai Kokkeiden' refers to a passage of 'Fukagawa' (Shado ed. published Genroku 6, 1693) showing the following renku by Ranran and Basho.

Norikake no chochin shimesu asaoroshi
Ranran

Shio sashikakaru hoshikawa no hashi
Basho

According to Kyoriku, Basho said, 'All of my haikai will become like this in four or five year's time.'
Kyorai records also that Basho indicated to Izen on his last journey that the haikai style would become lighter and lighter from then on.

5. On his death-bed Basho was asked by his pupils about the future of haikai. He mentions first that haikai, which originated from him, had undergone many a change, in his own words, 'a hundred changes and a hundred transformations.' However, he goes on to say that in spite of the changes the essence of haikai would still be contained in three principal elements called shin, so and gyo. What is significant and even surprising is that he then laments that he had not yet been able to achieve any one of these. Immediately after this sentence, Toho also records the fact that, jokingly, Basho had often compared his haikai to tawara, a straw rice-bag, saying he had not yet even opened it, which is to say that there was a long way to go before he could come to any attainment in his haikai.

6. Karumi occupies a very important position in the development of what is known as Shofu, or the style of the Basho School. There is no doubt that Basho took it very seriously and the importance he attached to it can be measured from the letter he wrote to Kyorai on 29th January 1694 (Genroku 7). Basho had for some time now been challenged by some of his followers, notably Kakei over their differences about the style of poetry. Basho tells Kyorai simply to ignore these dissenters and declares that 'at the time when one is pursuing the task of constructing the one great way of haikai style (not just for our own time but) for all times, how could one be bothered with such trifles?' Here, Basho was of course referring to the developing style of karumi as Imoto Noichi, a noted Basho scholar, points out in his 'Basho' (Vol18, Nihon Koten Kansho Koza 1964, p27).

7. See Appendix.

8. Though these terms are untranslatable, best approximations may be given as gentle melancholy (mono no aware), mysterious depth (yugen), mind-possessing (u-shin) and patinated loneliness and desolation (sabi).

9. Ueda Makoto, Literary and Art Theories in Japan, p166

10. It is most probable that Basho simply decided on the word karumi because it had been used as a technical term in theories of renga and other areas of art including tea ceremony, flower arrangement and calligraphy.

11. See Yamamoto Kenkichi, Basho, Shincho-sha 1957, p425
12. This is also pronounced Oi no obumi.
13. Noin, Saigyo, Sogi, etc

14. Fu and ga were originally two of the Rikugi (six poetical forms) in classical Chinese poetry. As a compound word, fuga was used either broadly to mean the arts in general or more narrowly all kinds of poetry of which haikai was a part.

15. See note 3.
16. Encyclopaedia Britannica 10-1070.
17. p147
18. Geoffrey Bownas, Introduction to the Penguin Book of Japanese Verse, p lxvii.

19. The Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai (Special Haiku Committee), Haikai and Haiku, Tokyo, 1958, Introduction xviii.

20. pp 149-150.

21. Monono Aware refers to something sad and pathetic that can be perceived as inherent in human affairs and their natural environment by those sensitive to such perception. 'Gentle melancholy' (above) is one standard English translation for the term, 'sensitivity to the beautiful sadness of things' another.

22. For a concise account, see p xix, Introduction ,The Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai (op cit.)

23. There is another set of concepts (nioi, hibiki, omokage, etc) in Basho's haikai theory. They relate to the tsukeai (linking) of renku and will not detain us here.

24. Serious renga, characterised by u-shin, or 'having heart', namely understanding of the deepest of human feelings.
25. Geoffrey Bownas, op. cit. p.lviii
26. Comic renga characterised by mu-shin, or having no heart.

27. Little is known about Sokan's life and the dates given of his birth and death vary. Donald Keene cites 'the commonly given dates for his life' being 1464-1552.

28. This analogy is not entirely the product of the present author. It is based on Basho's own famous analogy, asaki sunagawa, or a shallow sandy stream, which can be found in the preface of Betsu-zashiki, (Shisan ed. May Genroku 7, 1694).

29. Karumi eno Shiko (Towards Karumi), in the Bungaku, Feb 1967.

30. The quotation is from the translation by Ueda, pp157-58 op cit

31. Ebara, Karumi no Shingi in Haikai Seishin no Tankyu pp 100-102. Akahane Manabu, Basho Haikai no Seishin, pp831-884.

32. Funbetsu nashi ni koi ni shikakaru
Kyorai

33. Asajiu ni omoshirogezuku Fushimi waki
Basho

Kyorai-sho, Senshi-hyo.


34. Ueda Makoto, op cit ('Theories') pp167-168.
35. In waka, this is called 'miruyotei'.

36. Hentsuki, Kyoriku and Riyu (ed), published in Genroku 11, or 1698 by Izutsuya. The quotation is from a treatise entitled 'Hokku Choren no Ben'.

37. This last translation is given in Bownas, op cit p.lxvi.

38 Ebara Taizo, Haikai Seishin no Tankyu, p 90. Yamamoto Kenkichi endorses Ebara's view quoted.

39. Ueda, op. cit. ('Theories'), p 169.

40. The Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai, op cit.
http://sites.google.com/site/worldhaikureview2/home/august-2010/re-reading-some


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- - - - - Peipei-Qiu

. . . . . the Shômon style of the 1690s, which Bashô describes as karumi (lightness). In karumi, Bashô called for naturalness and spontaneity in haikai composition as opposed to the heavy conceptual implications of earlier haikai.

Kyorai once wrote:
“The reason that the Master emphasized karumi in his teaching at that time was to break the heaviness of haikai. Only with ‘lightness,’ could we get rid of the heftiness of the lingering flaws.”

The hefty flaws that karumi was meant to address, as Ogata pointed out, were three major tendencies: furubi, or classicism in haikai in general, including the Shômon haikai in the 1680s; keiki, or the landscape style that represented a return to the classical waka and renga style in the beginning of the Genroku period; and tentori haikai, or the point-garnering haikai that focused on technical competition.
Parting company with these tendencies, Bashô used karumi to characterize a natural style free of these flaws. —

source : Basho-and-the-Dao - Peipei-Qiu


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Allusion in Haiku

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Allusion in Haiku

QUOTE ©　artdurkee.blogspot.com . dragoncave

Allusion in Haiku

Allusions are references to literary works, to art, to cultural, historical, and political events. They can be explicit or indirect, evocative or direct. They are connections to a shared pool of cultural imagery and conception, and the reader is expected to understand the reference. Allusion in poetry is expected to deepen the meaning of a poem, for example by connecting a contemporary scene to one from ancient Greek mythology.

Allusion is common in classical Chinese and Japanese poetry: references to great poets of the past are made frequently, and one is expected to understand them. This tendency of classical poetry does appear in classical haiku. More than one of Basho's haiku in Oku no hosomichi refers to a poet or famous figure of the past, and many haiku memorialize places that resonate with history and memory. There is no doubt that allusion can be effective in haiku for deepening the emotional response to the poem.

But what of haiku in English?

Are we to use allusions to the Western cultural heritage, or may we also use allusions to classical Japanese literature of the past? I find myself doing the latter more often than the former, in part because for haiku is also a do, a way, a form of meditation, with both Taoist and Zen overtones. One often reads about "the haiku moment," which is a timeless moment, a moment or experience that stands outside of the normal flow of time, in the eternal present. The best haiku, for me, are memorable and resonant precisely because they exist in the eternal present: the image that inspired the haiku may have been fleeting, and the poem itself may have been dashed off in a quick burst of inspiration, but the experience in the poem itself is timeless, eternal, never-ending.

I would tend to avoid simile and metaphor in haiku, though, because the haiku moment is about direct observation, about seeing what is really there. What the poem evokes is a recreation of what was actually there. There is no need—and no room, in such a short poetic form—to say things like "the clouds were like creampuffs."

Actually, I don't much like simile in poetry, in any way: simile is usually lazy, a shorthand way of making metaphoric connections, but without committing to using an actual metaphor. One does much better in any poem to use metaphor rather than simile, regardless of content, form, or style. It's just more concise and direct.

In using allusion in haiku, it is considered more classically usual to allude to nature, to natural rhythms and cycles, and to personal experience. It is far less usual to allude to political and social-history images. One of the basic distinctions that is often made between haiku and senryu is that senryu are poems in haiku form that are ironic, humorous, and about people and social relationships, rather than the classical timeless nature-infused topics of haiku. Senryu tend to be funny, in a gently ironic manner, and often get us to laugh at the failings and foibles of our imperfect human selves. When you encounter a haiku whose content is political, especially if it is satirical or mocking, it is often better to classify it as a senryu. Of course, none of this is absolute; there are exceptions, and some definitions have permeable membranes.

Let's look for example at two English-language poems that were published as haiku, in haiku journals.

Arlington
the tulips
wide open

—Carolyn Hall (Published in Heron's Nest)

At Quang Tri, Vietnam

Tet:
both armies
wet

—Ty Hadman (Published in Haiku World)

Both of these poems are concise, compact, short-syllable poems. The second is unusual for haiku in that it rhymes; rhyme is problematic in English-language haiku, as are many other techniques familiar to English-language poets, for example, meter, or alliteration. (Some bad early translations of haiku set the poems into rhymed quatrains. Not only does this really miss the entire spirit of haiku, it's really clunky and inaccurate in terms of bringing either the tone or the meaning of haiku into English.)

Both of these have political themes. Both refer to the memorials of war, and to war itself, either directly or indirectly. Both of them could be considered anti-war poems, although it's not clear that the poets intended this.

There is a tendency in English-language haiku to carry concision and compression too far. Arguments continue to be made that because English is naturally iambic (Japanese is not), it is more acceptable for English-language haiku to fall into a 4/6/4 syllabic pattern rather than the classical 5/7/5 pattern. This is highly debatable. One of the joys of writing haiku, for example, can be to discover what one can do within the traditional constraints, before one gives them up in favor of the spirit and tone of the form.

I'm honestly not sure I'd call either of these poems haiku, per se, even American haiku. They succeed of allusion, bringing forth many memories: of the graveyard at Arlington, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier there, both of which I have visited; and of the horrors of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, in which so many soldiers were butchered. But part of me wants to see, in English (frankly, American) haiku, more of a sense of respect for the original style and tone of the haiku form.

Are these excellent short poems? Absolutely. For that reason alone, they're worth discussing. But are they haiku? I'm not completely convinced of that.

Meanwhile, returning to the idea of allusion per se: I tend to want haiku to be timeless, egoless, eternal, epiphany moments of the human experience, and of life's many kinds of moments. This isn't to say that one cannot write an allusive, topical, even political poem in haiku form. But when does the poem lose that numinous quality that the best haiku have and become, for example, a senryu?

I think that the Arlington poem is the better of the two, on this front: very much in the spirit of evoking the floating world, this dewdrop world, the ephemerality of life, the sense of life's transience, and the sadness at its passing. I would say it works not because it's allusive to the national military cemetery at Arlington, but because it falls into that genre of war poetry that goes back centuries. Wilfred Owen. Keith Douglas. Siegfried Sassoon. Michael Casey. Musashi. And so forth. These are mother's poems, warrior's poems, poems about the pity and desolation of war. The Arlington poem can safely join ranks with those.

The Tet poem, to my reading, seems glib, even a bit gimmicky. The rhyme in such a short poem makes the poem seem glib for this serious topic. Yes, gallows humor, laughter in the face of death, and so forth, I respect all that. But the poem is less allusive, for me, than the Arlington poem, or than anything Michael Casey wrote in his book Obscenities, which is a collection of short poems about his experiences in Nam during the war—and about coming home. Casey's short book set a high standard for contemporary war poetry, to be sure.

A poet who works mostly in this very short, haiku-derived if not always strictly haiku formalism, is Cid Corman. Both of these poems remind me of his poetry.

Now let's look at a haiku-form poem I wrote some years ago. Politcal, perhaps allusive, possibly topical although also timeless. Is it a haiku? Or just a poem in haiku form? Is it a senryu?

politicians and
businessmen lie constantly—
snow falls in the tropics

It's a sarcastic poem about impossible events: snow falling in the tropics. I don't think it's a haiku, personally, but then, what is it?

There is often mention, in discussions of the spirit of haiku poetry, of that quality that is non-literary to the poem: the numinous, liminal part of the experience of the poem that pushes it past words towards something more sublime. Some haiku masters claim that this non-linguistic aspect of the poetry must also be present, in order for it to be a haiku rather than a senryu. I generally tend to agree. All of Basho's and Issa's best haiku have that sense of the ineffable about them: that there is something more going on, something both larger and deeper than our everyday selves. In this lies, in part, the transcendance of the ego that we were talking about earlier. Perhaps the use of political allusions in haiku bring the spirit of the poetry out of the numinous and too much into "the floating world," that world of impermanence and transience that marks all of mortal life.

The Arlington poem reminds me of two of Basho's haiku in Oku no hosomichi that refer to wars and battlefields of the past:

summer grass
all that remains
of warrior's dreams

in deutzia blossoms
Kanefusa can be seen:
white hair

The haibun section between these two haiku is perhaps necessary to supply the backdrop, although the story of the retainer/warrior whose name was Kanefusa would have to have been known to make this poem work—a prime example of historical allusion in classical haiku. (Basho was visiting the Takadate Castle at Hiraizumi, where a historic battle was fought in a civil war in the 12th century. It was a tragedy, ending with the great general Yoshitune committing suicide after killing his wife and children.)

The reasons I would be willing to call the Arlington poem a haiku, but would not call the Tet poem a haiku, are tied up with both this allusiveness, and with the numinous quality of the best haiku, already mentioned. The Arlington poem is also more suggestive, a technique used to good effect in the best haiku, while the Tet poem is more bluntly direct (an American characteristic).

But lest we think that the numinous quality of haiku is all about being pretty, and using stereotypical nature imagery, let's remind ourselves that sometimes the haiku moment is very raw, even while being exalted and sublime. Another of Basho's haiku in Oku no hosomichi is this one, coming after a description of a long day of travel, followed by nights sleepless in a barn during a heavy storm:

fleas, lice,
the horse pissing
near my pillow

Yes, exalted. Yes, sublime. The exalted and sublime are precisely in the piss-ridden barn and the compost pile. Thinking haiku only have to be about "pretty things" misses the point by making a judgment about the superficial elements of the poem, missing the non-literary aspects of the poem.

Haiku is all about waking up. That's the Zen influence on it, of course, but Basho and Issa emphasized that very strongly. To write a haiku, to experience a haiku moment and write it down, is to, if only for a moment, be awakened. "Buddha" means "awakened one," not "savior." Everyone is potentially the Buddha, if only they'd wake up for long enough to realize it! Haiku writing can be a form of spiritual practice, therefore, as much as it can be a literary art. How do you approach it? It is possible to approach it as both literary art and as a spiritual practice.

This discussion of allusion, I think, deals with the literary more than the spiritual; but note how the sublime moment described in the Arlington poem makes that piece a haiku because it contains a spiritual view as well—and don't conflate "spiritual" with "religious"—whereas the Tet poem is not a haiku because it is all about being glib and clever on the literary level, but lacks that non-literary movement of the spirit that the Arlingotn poem contains. The same goes for my own political senryu: it lacks any movement of the spirit, it's just a clever bit of irony.

Clever, witty, glib irony—literary wit in its most self-conscious exemplars—overshadows, even kills, the movement of the spirit, in most poetry that is written from the ego, the head, rather than from egolessness, and from the heart. Egolessness in haiku is about waking up to what's really there, versus what we think is there, or what we project as being there, or what we imagine is there.

So, I would say that the Arlington poem is a rare achievement: a haiku tha does contain allusion. Basho's own haiku along these lines also work because they contain that same sadness and awareness of the transcience of life.

Here's how the whole world wants to wake us up, if only we'd let it:

Our usual experience is that, just when our perception is getting vivid, we get jumpy. The world is always displaying itself, always waving an winking, but we are so self-involved that we miss it. The experience of sticking with it, of not giving up, is one in which the whole world, everything that we see, becomes extremely vivid and more solid, and at the same time, less substantial and more transparent. We’re not talking about seeing anything other than the person sitting in front of us: seeing how his or her hair sticks up or lies down, is dirty or clean, brushed or gnarled; or seeing a bird with black feathers and a twig in its mouth, sitting in a tree. The things we see all the time can pop us out of the painful cycle of samsara.

If we stick with it, our experience becomes more vivid and more transparent, and we can no longer not get the message. And this is a message that never gets interpreted. Things speak for themselves. It’s not that red cushion means passion, or little mouse darting in and out means discursive mind; it’s just red cushion and little mouse darting out from behind the chair.

Sound is the same thing, ordinary sound—every sound that we ever hear, from the alarm clock waking us up in the morning to our snoring companion at night. We all know what sounds are like when they punctuate and startle us, but what does your pen sound like, writing in your notebook? And how does it sound when you turn the pages of this book? What about your own voice? It’s interesting to hear one’s own voice; it sounds like someone else’s voice. To hear what we say and see how it goes out into the environment and communicates also has the power to pop us out of the deadness of samsara. Even if we’re alone, our yawns and farts communicate. So every ordinary little peep or scratch or snicker, every little chewing sound or drinking sound or whatever, can wake us up. The idea of samaya is that if we don’t avoid our personal experience—if we don’t think there’s a better, more inspiring, less irritating, or less disturbing sound—sounds become vivid and transparent.

The same goes for mind. As we practice, we see that thoughts do not go away; they become more precise and less substantial. At the level of mind, we break samaya making things “wrong” or making things “right.” We think we have some choice to make, some alternative to just hanging out with not solving anything, not resolving anything, We could say that, at the level of mind, breaking samaya is feeling that we must come up with a solution to a problem—or feeling that there is a solution or a problem at all. That might give you some idea of how difficult it is to keep samaya.

—Pema Chödrön, in her book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, from the chapter entitled The Trick of Choicelessness

http://artdurkee.blogspot.com/2008/06/allusion-in-haiku.html


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A Sampling of Cultural Haiku
First published in Hermitage 3:1–2, 2006 (Romania), pages 79–83.

http://sites.google.com/site/graceguts/essays/cultural-haiku



Haiku in English—or at least in North America—is sometimes criticized for lacking the geographical, cultural, literary, or personal references that frequently enrich haiku in Japanese. However, a sampling of just one issue of a recent journal, the June 2004 issue of The Heron’s Nest (VI:5), calls this criticism into question. Indeed, the following sample poems all provide allusions and references that make for a richer reader experience.



Chappaquiddick
a water strider
crosses the pond



This poem by Kay Grimnes of Alma, Michigan, presents a successful example of a geographical reference that carries extra meaning for many American readers. It’s an example, in English-language haiku, of a reference to a famous place (meisho in Japanese). As many North Americans know, U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy was driving on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts on July 18, 1969, with his companion Mary Jo Kopechne. That night, while drunk, he crashed his car off a bridge, and the car sank into murky water. Kennedy was able to escape, but Kopechne drowned. Despite his apparent negligence, and (as some people claimed) because of his political position or celebrity, Kennedy was not charged with manslaughter, but was found guilty merely of leaving the scene of an accident. The Chappaquiddick story has reached such mythical proportions that in 1992 Joyce Carol Oates retold the story in her novella Black Water (Dutton) and, like the word “Watergate,” “Chappaquiddick” is now commonly used as shorthand to refer to scandals that befall politicians—especially scandals that they are able to weasel out of. What makes the place name resonate even more deeply within this poem, of course, is the reference to the water strider that is able to cross the pond without sinking. Water striders are sometimes called “Jesus bugs,” and the story of Jesus walking on water is an additional historical reference in this poem. The water strider could symbolically represent Kennedy himself, satirizing him as if he were similarly “divine” and untouchable, in obvious contrast to the sad story of Mary Jo Kopechne’s drowning.

The following poem, by Mark Brooks of Austin, Texas, also appeared in the June 2004 issue of The Heron’s Nest:



Seuss’s birthday
a dad and two lads plant
a plant in a planter



Here, instead of a reference to a place name, we have a successful cultural and literary reference to children’s book author Dr. Seuss, whom most English-speaking people know well. The second and third lines, while managing to retain the trait of literal objective description that works so well in haiku, also adopt Dr. Seuss’s distinctive writing style by using rhyme and repetition. Though about a birth rather than a death, this poem follows in the Japanese tradition of the “master’s day” (okina no ki) season word, which venerates Bashō’s day—the day of the writer’s death. In English, haiku might similarly venerate the birth dates or death dates of William Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Princess Diana, or many other literary, historical, and contemporary celebrities. William J. Higginson has been collecting poems that commemorate leading haiku writers and their birth or death days, and in Haiku World (Kodansha, 1996), he includes a poem by vincent tripi written to commemorate the death day of prominent American haiku poet Nick Virgilio. The poem, “Nick remembered— / deepening the lily / in a woodcut,” is also a reference to Virgilio’s famous lily haiku, so it has allusive cultural relevance to the English-language haiku community on that level as well.

The same issue of The Heron’s Nest also includes this next poem, by Alice Frampton, then living in Delta, British Columbia:



alder stump—
an inch worm arches across
1984



The year 1984 is not randomly chosen, and carries with it the obvious associations with George Orwell’s famous dystopian novel of 1949. While the Big Brother paranoia of Orwell’s book has waned in public consciousness, especially since the fall of communism in Russia, any reference to the year 1984 still carries with it the overtones of dark totalitarianism. Even the inchworm in this poem seems to prefer arching over the doomcrying tree ring that represents 1984, as if to reach a brighter year.

Finally, the same issue of The Heron’s Nest includes this amusing yet layered haiku by Joann Klontz of Swedesboro, New Jersey:



faint stars . . .
I wonder what Yu Chang
is doing tonight



This empathetic and intuitive poem may have resonance limited to the English-language or perhaps even the North American haiku community, yet it serves as a superlative example, though rare, of a reference to a specific contemporary person in English-language haiku. Many haiku writers know Yu Chang, who lives in Schenectady, New York, as a demure yet sensitive and accomplished haiku poet. Joann Klontz enjoys her stargazing in the context of wondering what Yu Chang might be doing at the same time, and she may even share the moment of looking up at the faintest of stars with him, despite the distance between them. The naming of any other poet in the poem would seem not to work nearly so well because of the effective associations with Yu Chang’s name and his work by those who know him, and how they resonate with the deep appreciation even of stars that are momentarily faint. The naming of a different poet would clearly change the meaning and overtones of the poem, and perhaps render the juxtaposition with “faint stars” ineffective.

The reference to Yu Chang is deliberate for another reason, however, and it adds another significant layer to Joann Klontz’s playful and groundbreaking haiku. It’s not just a personal reference, but a literary and slightly historical reference as well, because Yu Chang won one of his two first prizes in the Shiki International Haiku Contest with “faint stars— / the flapping of canvas / on the grape truck” (this was the 1997 winner; he won first place again in 1998). Thus Klontz’s poem offers a homage to Chang’s poem as well as to Chang himself, for on seeing faint stars, she thinks of him because of his prize-winning poem. Perhaps not all readers will know or remember Chang’s winning poem, but for those who do, Klontz’s poem takes on a deeper resonance.

Sometimes translations of haiku from Japanese into English are criticized for not being able to capture various deep allusions or multiple meanings, and this is frequently true. Indeed, as Hiroaki Sato wrote in One Hundred Frogs: From Renga to Haiku to English, “among [Japanese] haikai poets . . . allusion in general was a permanent tool” (New York: Weatherhill, 1983, 72). However, it can be just as difficult to translate English-language haiku into other languages for the same reasons. Indeed, we have no dearth of opportunity in English to produce effective allusions and multiple meanings, as Klontz’s poem demonstrates. The difficulty of translating these allusions and multiple meanings from one language to another should not be confused with the potential for poems to make use of effective allusions and multiple meanings in the language that the poem was written in. In comparison with Japanese, English has no deficiencies in this regard.

Other American or Western cultural references used in the same issue of The Heron’s Nest include “Father’s Day,” “a ringer” (a reference to horseshoes, played mostly in North America), “Daylight Savings” (the seasonal adjustment of clocks to maximize the use of daylight hours), and “southern drawl.” These poems with cultural sonorities succeed to varying degrees, but a significant part of how they do succeed lies in their use of effective cultural references.

Those few critics who have said that English-language haiku do not make sufficient use of geographical, cultural, literary, or personal references may still be right—we could all give greater attention to this opportunity. However, just considering the single issue of The Heron’s Nest from which all of these examples are quoted, the evidence shows that North American haiku poets seem to be responding to this claim as if to prove it wrong. One would hope that other English-language haiku, as well as haiku in other languages, are also increasingly taking advantage of cultural allusions and references. Haruo Shirane is one critic who has observed the past insufficiency of cultural references in North American haiku. In his gadfly essay, “Beyond the Haiku Moment: Bashō, Buson, and Modern Haiku Myths” (Modern Haiku XXX:1, Winter-Spring 2000), he observed that the horizontal axis of haiku—that is, a focus on the present, contemporary world—is more than abundant in North American examples, but that the vertical axis, which is a movement across time, including geographical, historical, and literary references, is largely missing (53). It seems, though, that North American poets are listening, and have actively sought to deepen the possibilities for cultural reference in their haiku. Certainly, the editors of The Heron’s Nest have sought to promote such poetry through their sensitive selections. The evidence appears not just in The Heron’s Nest, but in an increasing number of haiku in other journals as well.



Note: For a more in-depth discussion of the vertical and horizontal axes in haiku, read Haruo Shirane’s Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō (Stanford University Press, 1998).
http://sites.google.com/site/graceguts/essays/cultural-haiku




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Allusion in Haiku

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100 Frogs ...

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A Contrarian View on Basho's Frog Haiku

QUOTE
©　WHR / Susumu Takiguchi


Thanks in part to the global reach of the Internet and the increasing dominance of English as a world language, haiku that might have been shared only through letters between distant friends or seen in tiny-circulation journals can now be read by anyone who can open a Web browser. ...

... With free verse having been the dominant mode of poetry for decades now, haiku may be the one example of formal poetry many people would still recognize on sight. Your letter carrier or phlebotomist might be hard-pressed to identify a sonnet or terza rima, but show her Basho's famous verse:

The old pond
A frog jumps in—
The sound of the water

and she'll know it's haiku.

From: 'Haiku casts big Net, An old and clever form of Japanese poetry is making a global splash', by Jim Higgins, the Journal Sentinel staff, JSOnline, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, last Updated: March 31, 2001

There are no greater clichés among haiku circles than quoting Basho's frog haiku. I have been trying my best to avoid talking about this haiku, as it (talking, not the haiku) bores me to tears. However, from time-to-time, and under certain circumstances, it becomes an inescapable task for me to deal with it. On such occasions, I try to say something which has seldom been said or, better still, never been said at all. And that is often a contrarian view.

Basho's frog haiku is almost definitely the most famous haiku ever composed on this planet. As seen in the article by Jim Higgins, above, it is the starting point for haiku beginners. It also seems to be the finishing point for the most experienced and established haiku poets, as no one appears to be able to write any haiku which would surpass it. So, the most famous it is; and yet, I happen to believe that it is one of the most misunderstood haiku poems as well.

Let us start off with clichés in order to establish what it is that have become stereo-typed views about the frog haiku. There are over 170 different English translations of this haiku and it would not be too difficult to add more. If we include other languages, the number of translations would multiply even further. This ought to mean that there are easily over 170 different interpretations. In a sense it is so, as a change of a comma in a haiku, let alone a word, would create a new interpretation for the haiku connoisseurs and the uninitiated alike. However, apart from such niceties, the underlying views, or basic understanding of the frog haiku, remain mostly intact and therefore clichés. Hiroaki Sato's book* is the most entertaining in this respect. Some sample translations quoted by him are set out below (The term hokku should really be used here instead of haiku, which I shall use in this article unless otherwise specified, as it is more commonly known):


An old pond
A frog jumps in—
Sound of water. (Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite)

The old pond!
A frog jumps in—
Sound of the water. (Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai)


An ancient pond!
With a sound from the water
Of the frog as it plunges in. (W. G. Aston)


The old pond, aye! And the sound of a frog leaping into the water. (Basil Hall Chamberlain)


The old pond.
A frog jumps in—
Plop! (R. H. Blyth)


The ancient pond
A frog leaps in
The sound of the water. (Donald Keene)


The old green pond is silent; here the hop
Of a frog plumbs the evening stillness: plop! (Harold Stewart)


The old pond
A frog jumped in,
Kerplunk! (Allen Ginsberg)


Breaking the silence
Of an ancient pond,
A frog jumped into water—
A deep resonance. (Nobuyuki Yuasa)


The quiet pond
A Frog leaps in,
The sound of the water. (Edward G. Seidensticker)


The old pond—
A frog leaps in,
And a splash. (Makoto Ueda)


The still old pond
and as a frog leaps in it
the sound of a splash (Earl Miner)


Ancient pond unstirred
Into which a frog has plunged,
A splash was heard. (Kenneth Yasuda)


Old pond.
a frog leaps in
water's sound. (William J. Higginson)


Listen! A frog
Jumping into the stillness
Of an ancient pond! (Dorothy Briton)



ancient pond—
a frog jumping into its splash (R. Clarence Matsuo-Allard)


pond
frog
plop! (James Kirkup)


Oh thou unrippled pool of quietness
Upon whose shimmering surface, like the tears
Of olden days, a small batrachian leaps,
The while aquatic sounds assail our ears. (Lindley Williams Hubbell)


There once was a curious frog
Who sat by a pond on a log
And, to see what resulted,
In the pond catapulted
With a water-noise heard round the bog. (in the style of limerick)


A frog who would a-water-sounding go
Into some obscure algae-covered pool
had best be sure no poetasting fool
Is waiting in the weeds and, to his woe,
Commemorates his pluck so all will know
His name and lineage, not for the fine school
He learned to sing at, nor, to make men drool
The flavor of his leg from thigh to toe.
He will not for his mother be remembered,
Nor for his father's deeds, his honor bright,
Nor for his brother's leg dismembered,
And eaten by a king with rare delight.
He will be famous simply for the sorta
Noise he makes just when he hits the water. (in the style of sonnet)

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Now, why do I say that Basho's frog haiku is one of the most misunderstood haiku poems? Possible misunderstandings about this haiku include:

We seldom see in Japan a single frog, rather many of them around a pond, rice paddies or any other similar places in spring time as it is the season for their mating. They are noisy and in abundance. Why should it then, be a single frog and not a number of, or many frogs? Only three translations refer to "frogs" out of 100 in Sato. Who decided it was only one frog? If we have an open mind, it would be either frogs (plural), which is the most natural interpretation, or at least a single frog but only as a literary device to represent many frogs (which is often the case in Japanese poems or paintings).
Though there is a tradition in Japan and China to have a single subject/object such as kogan (a lone goose) or ikken-ya (a lone house) as an artistic or poetic technique, there is no reason to believe why Basho's haiku should be talking about a lone frog. The fact that the two known haiga in Basho's hand depict only one frog is not really a definitive proof that he meant one frog in the poem, though it is a strong possibility. They are only drawings, or even doodles, whereby his inclination was to draw only one frog whatever the reason (it could be that his drawing skill then was not good enough to draw a lot of frogs, as the frog is poorly drawn. We simply do not know it). He could well have drawn more than one frog on other occasions like he did with the crow-perching-a-withered-branch haiku whereby he drew more than one crow.


Frogs tend to jump into the water one after another, or simultaneously in spring time. Why should it be a single splash? If it is in other seasons, they may jump into the water more intermittently.


As has been mentioned, frogs are noisy in spring, when this haiku is believed to have been composed, because of the mating season. They are a symbol of the merriment, colour, noises, life (sex) and bustling movements of spring—a celebration of life on earth. Take the kigo, kawazu-gassen for example. This is a kigo which depicts many frogs mating in spring, but specifically many males mounting a single female on top of each other. They fight and jostle for the female and that is why the word gassen (kassen), or battle or fight is used. A battle among male frogs cannot be quiet or peaceful.
Why, then, should the scene of Basho's haiku be doctored and philosophised into one of stillness, loneliness, quietude and tranquillity? Does it not sound too good to be true? There are many factors which can be attributed as having contributed to this popular interpretation of the frog haiku, ranging from serious factors to nonsensical speculations. They form the other side of the coin of what I am raising as forgotten or neglected questions in this article. Therefore, in order to understand this coin fully we need to look into them again but that will need another article.


The first five moji (the first stanza of the three components of haiku) is often referred to as johgo (or kamigo), i.e. 'top five' moji, and as it sets the scene is normally very important. In Basho's haiku, it is furuike ya (old pond). However, as is well-known, it was originally suggested in a meeting at Basho's request by Kikaku to be yamabuki ya (Japanese yellow rose, or mountain rose, kerria japonica). Yamabuki had been frequently used in conjunction with frogs in Japanese poetic tradition. The brilliant yellow colour of yamabuki, like gold, is another symbol of the arrival of spring.
The episode suggests that there must have been a joyful feeling among the people gathered together with Basho when this poem was composed, and the melancholic or pensive stillness normally attached to this haiku could be either an outright mistake, or at least an overplay and an instance of "reading too much into it". Such interpretation could well be an invention by some of Basho's followers, especially after his death, to boost the reputation of the Shofu (Basho School or its 'way'). It is a good story and it sells. This interpretation has been swallowed hook, line and sinker, and amplified by over-zealous Western interpreters, which has made it a 'universal truth' across the world.

This must not be mixed up with Basho's own preoccupation at the time to bring something new into Shofu, which eventually led to then innovative furuike ya. The idea of the 'old pond' would have been received by other people with conventional wisdom to be boring, out of order or just too flat had it been proposed by somebody else. However, it was proposed by none other than Basho, and those present were his important disciples and other disciples sympathetic to Basho's new ideas. Even they must have been surprised, at first. However, they probably had the receptive mind to understand the significance and implications of furuike ya. The ordinariness of this first five moji is, in an ironical sense, precisely the reason why the haiku became almost 'revolutionary'. This is really the point which relates to the oft-mentioned observation that the frog haiku was Basho's Shofu kai-gan no ku (the haiku which opened Basho's eyes to a new style, which established the Shofu).


The frog haiku has three versions.
This fact almost proves some of the points I have made: that the haiku was not composed in a single session in a complete form; that the haiku had a number of issues for Basho, such as finding a new way (which relates to the first five moji: away, for example, from the conventional and traditional yamabuki ya to Basho's own world of furuike ya) or a change in the philosophy of haiku (from the comic style of the Danrin School to the refinement of the Shofu: away from kawazu tondaru to kawazu tobikomu).

The first Basho-an (Basho Hut) was a gift from Basho's disciple, Sugiyama Sanpu, who was a successful and wealthy fish merchant doing business with the Tokugawa Shogunate. It is known that there was an ikesu (a special pond or pool where many fish are kept before being sold) near his hut. There is a possibility according to a theory that this ikesu was no longer used and had effectively become an 'old pond'. And it is perfectly possible that there were frogs which were spawned in that 'pond'. So, it is theoretically possible that Basho was talking about a frog or frogs of this 'pond' and composed the frog haiku in question. (Another theory goes that it was a pond for fish-farming.)

However, even then, it is implausible that Basho heard the sound of a frog or frogs jumping into the 'pond' from inside the hut where he was holding a meeting. This is because the sound frogs make when they enter water would not be loud enough to reach a human ear farther than ten yards or so, unlike their croak. Of course, it is possible that Basho went out into the garden with his guests and upon hearing the sound of frogs jumping into the water, composed the haiku later inside the hut. However, it is much more natural to think that Basho had already formulated in his mind the phrase of 'the sound of the water' when frogs jumped in, either from his earlier experiences in his garden, or in some other places in the past.

Thus it was that only thing yet left for him to achieve was to find the right first five moji to cap this already established phrase of second 7 and last 5. The phrase, 'old pond' can well be something like an image Basho was developing in his mind, even if it had been as familiar an experience for him as it was for others. This is perfectly understandable. It is a similar thing to the case of composers, say Mozart or Beethoven, in which they think of a phrase, have it somewhere in mind until their creative juice rushes in, and then elaborating the rest pf the movement around that phrase. In the case of Basho's frog haiku, he broke with tradition by not using the celebrated and orthodox yamabuki ya, but chose, instead, a very ordinary-sounding phrase, furuike ya. The interesting thing is, that in the very ordinariness of the phrase can be found the almost revolutionary significance of its use in the frog haiku.

Basho lived in this first Basho-an from the winter of 8 Enpoh (1680) to 28 December of 2 Tenna (1682). The earliest date estimated for the composition of the frog haiku is 1 Tenna (1681). So, it is possible that Basho composed the haiku here in the first Basho-an in his second or third year of residence. However, the weight of evidence tends to be inclined towards a much later date. The most popular theory is that the haiku was composed in the spring of 3 Jokyo (1686), in which case Basho was no longer living in the first Basho-an, which had been burnt to ashes, but in the second. He lived in the new place from the winter of 3 Tenna (1683) to March of 2 Genroku (1689).
It was in the estate of Morita Sozaemon, located at Motobansho of Fukagawa. It was one of the houses called nagaya (a long row of one-story cottages). If there was an old pond, it must have been a communal pond shared by all the people living in these cottages, a situation which makes the interpretation of quiet, lonely and philosophical atmosphere attributed to this haiku even less plausible.

Another issue is what part of the day it was when Basho composed the frog haiku. It seems as though the dominant opinion during the Edo period was to assume it was during the period of dusk-to-night. In modern times, scholars and commentators have voiced the opinion that it must have been daytime. Interestingly, there seems to be no apparent evidence to assert, let alone prove, either.
It seems, at first sight, that the darkening twilight hours fit extremely well in the kind of atmosphere of serenity, quietude and stillness, when nothing was heard except for this single splash of a lone frog jumping into the water, breaking the silence and then immediately giving the silence back to the darkening world. However, there can be no assumption that it was evening. Even if it had been evening, frogs would have continued their mating battle, though the noise may have somewhat subsided.
Once again, these factual details are of lesser importance anyway, when compared with what was going on in Basho's mind and imagination, i.e. how to move on to attain new way of haiku by means of the frog haiku. For a person like Basho, it would not have been difficult at all to think of various versions of a particular haiku of his own, judge their pros and cons, revise each for the better, or whatever. That was what he was doing as a master to his disciples all the time. Therefore, that could not have been his main preoccupation. His main concern was to find a new way, and he knew that this frog haiku could give him that breakthrough.

Some brave commentators in Japan have even gone so far as to say that this world-famous haiku is not that brilliant, and that, in fact, it is rather mediocre (e.g. Hotta Bakusui, Naito Meisetsu). I personally do not subscribe to that perspective, but the haiku may be slightly over-rated. If the comments I have made here were to be established, even so much as to present reasonable assumptions, if not proven truths, the whole understanding of haiku in the West might well go through a serious rethinking, or worse still, a fundamental correction. Surprisingly, the same can also be said with the fundamental understanding of Basho's haiku in Japan.


There are a number of important issues involved in this discussion which can be deduced from the above points:

Firstly,
it should be noted that Basho did not always write his poems in situ from direct experiences. Nor did he keep his original poems unchanged and unrevised. On the contrary, it is known that he wrote some of his poems after the event (sometimes long after the event) and that it was his practice to revise (suiko) his poems, often not just once but several times. To write a haiku while you are directly experiencing something, or at least soon after—is a teaching of kyakkan-shasei (or objective sketch from life) from the later Shiki-Kyoshi school—taken a little too far.
In Basho's mind, there were ideas or 'phrases' (part of a haiku which he composed in his mind) at any given time. Also, even if he had written a haiku, it was lingering in his mind afterward for a long time if he was not completely satisfied with it. True, he was teaching that haiku should be written within a certain short period of time, i.e. relatively quickly. If one cannot do so, he taught, one should throw it away into the dustbin. However, this is slightly different from doing the suiko (revision).

So, it is wrong to assume, let alone conclude, that Basho wrote the frog haiku in situ or even from direct experience. The assumption, regrettably, has, over centuries, come to be regarded as fact. It is more natural to think that Basho had this idea or phrase about the scene of a frog or frogs jumping into the water for some length of time, which is nothing new or outstanding because it is the experience of everybody else, too. What is remarkable, is that Basho identified this common experience as something with which he could innovate a new way of dealing with it (and by extension with haiku as a whole) and he pursued it relentlessly.
Like ingredients for cooking, the materials Basho had are the same which are available to all of us. It is his cooking that was different—very different at that! In another simile, Mont Sainte-Victoire or fruit, pots and vases are all available to any artists, but it is the way Cezanne looked at and dealt with them that was different.

What must have been on his mind is the shift of emphasis away from 'frogs' croak' to the act of jumping and to the sound it makes when they dive into the water, which is a departure from tradition. The other thing of which it is certain was on his mind, is the question of what sort of first five moji he should choose to write to cap the middle seven and the last five, as he knew that the first five could make or break the whole poem. In other words, it is extremely important for us to understand that in this haiku, the first five moji was something of a special concern for Basho. It was like a missing link or even a holy grail. He was in search of it, and in the end he got it.

All this is pointing to the importance of imagination and memory when we consider any of Basho's poems, writings or remarks. It is well known that Basho often altered facts and used some fictions, for example, in the Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North), in order to make it a good read and interesting and higher literary work. His imagination was always at work. So, it is perfectly possible that the idea of the 'old pond' as the first five moji was kept for some considerable time on Basho's mind and imagination as a new way, rather than something which Basho suddenly thought of when he happened to hear the sound of frogs jumping into the water, which is indeed the popular preconception.

If we allow for the important role played by Basho's imagination, then, it could even be speculated that the 'old' in the 'old pond' may also have been a product of his imaginative power, rather than the actual old pond which he may or may not have seen, wherever it may have been located. In short, furuike ya (old pond) could well be a product of Basho's imagination.
The probability is derived from the fact that the 'old pond' was an idea which stayed in his mind for a long time. It is also derived that it was not the croak of the frogs but the sound the jumping frogs make when they hit the water that Basho was preoccupied with. This is typical of Basho, who was so sensitive to the five senses of man, plus the sixth sense. Yamabuki ya (mountain rose) was not only too conventional to open a new gate for his Shofu, but also too garish and distracting to fit into Basho's schemes. He had to rely on his imagination and creative force. Basho was a poet, a wordsmith and literary person, whereby creative impulse and rich imagination were the spur.
He was a creator of art and inventor of new literature. He was not a newspaper reporter or an academic historian.

To put it another way, one must understand fully that this frog haiku was not something Basho composed easily in one sitting at a haikai-no-renga, or whatever else meeting, in a single, simple and smooth way with all three components of it coherently joined and connected in one fell swoop. And, yet, this is no more than an assumption which most people have come to believe as fact. Rather, it was a disjointed haiku composition whereby the sound of frog(s) jumping into the water, rather than their croak, was given prominence and brought to the fore, disrupting the traditional rendering of the theme of frogs.
More importantly, the phrase for the first five moji was independently contemplated; the way of joining it to the rest of the poem was the major concern for Basho. I rather cast doubt over the popular belief described above. That seems to me to be more of a wishful thinking and legend which his followers promoted after his death than a historical fact. Perhaps, people have been led up the garden path.

My hunch leads me to deduce that instead of Basho composing the frog haiku spontaneously and extemporaneously in a renku meeting, as is popularly believed, he used such a meeting, most likely to be the Kawazu Awase meeting of 3 Jokyo (1686), for deciding the definitive version for the frog haiku once and for all. In other words, after a long deliberation within himself he was now ready and determined to settle with the final version come what may.
In this connection, the last remaining part of the frog haiku in the making was, as Shiko suggested, the beginning five moji. This is perfectly plausible because the Kawazu Awase meeting was not the usual renku session. It was a special meeting whereby poets gather to compose and compete haiku (hokku in this case) on a single theme. Here the theme was 'frogs' (and toads). They put two hokku at a time side by side (i.e. left and right) for competition.

There were believed to be forty poets (Basho's disciples), plus another person. Quite how these forty-one poets got into what must have been a small house is beyond me. Probably another myth and another item to be reviewed! The judging was done by shugi-han (not by the leader, author or an invited hanja judge but by the discussion among participants), which indicates that Basho was actually wishing to hear other people's opinions and desirous of presenting his idea to them. In this instance of the Kawazu Awase meeting at Basho-an, the other people believed to have been there include Kikaku himself, Kyorai, Sanpu, Senka, Sodo, Ransetsu, Rika, Ranran, Haryu, Kasoku and Kooku—many of Basho's important disciples.
This indicates that Basho had some great expectation as to the results of his poem, for which he had struggled so long. Basho's frog haiku was the starting poem of Kawazu Awase and placed left (i.e. the top place). All-in-all, they had a niju-ban kuawase (twenty pairs of hokku). The results of the Kawazu Awase were collected and edited by Senka, and published in Uruu March in 3 Jokyo (1686) under the same title.

Secondly,
it is equally wrong to assume, let alone conclude, that Basho had an old pond in the garden of his hut and that this was the very pond where the frog(s) jumped in, the sound of which Basho heard from inside his hut while he was talking to his guests. There may well be other explanations. Some people have gone so far as to assert that the frogs were jumping into the Sumida River and not the silly old pond (e.g. Kaneko Tohta). A lot depends on the fundamental question of when and how the frog haiku came to be composed. There have been good studies done on this question but I don't feel that any of the theories or informed scholarly guesses so far presented have established themselves as definitive.

The attributed dates of the composition of the frog haiku ranges from 1 Tenna (1681) to 3 Jokyo (1686). If we believe the theory that Kikaku was with Basho when this haiku was composed (Shiko et al), then the right date needs to be targeted at the time when Kikaku and Basho were both in Edo and during springtime, as both men were on journeys from time-to-time. Possible dates between 1681 and 1686 were thus derived from the known dates when Basho and Kikaku were in Edo during springtime, and were suggested by scholars, including Shida Yoshihide.

Kikaku was born in Edo but came from a farming family in Katada of Ohmi (present Shiga Prefecture). His father was bright and multi-talented and studied medicine in Edo, later serving the Lord Honda of Zeze Domain as his doctor. He practiced waka, renga and haikai. Kikaku also studied medicine. Like his father, he was multi-talented and was good at Chinese classics and Confucius (jugaku), Chinese poetry (kanshi), Zen, calligraphy, art, among other things. Kikaku became Basho's disciple in 1 Enpoh (1673) at the age of 13 (another theory says it was 5 Enpoh, i.e. 1677, age 17), becoming one of his most important disciples. He is said to have made his living out of haikai, founding the Edo-za School which later produced Buson. He was a man of the town and loved drinking, being on the verge of alcoholism. He died in 4 Hohei (1707), aged 47.

At this point, I refer to an interesting piece of knowledge that Kikaku reportedly capped a wakiku to the frog pond, which may indicate that there was some kind of a renku meeting apart from the Kawazu Awase meeting mentioned above. Kikaku's wakiku goes:

ashi no wakaba ni kakaru kumo no su

a cobweb hanging
among the new leaves of reeds


This wakiku can be found in Haikai Fumyoja by Etsujin. It can be contrasted to Kawazu Awase which recorded the frog haiku as top of the selection (left) and placed Senka'a own stanza next to it (right), which means that these two hokku were mochi (draw). Senka's hokku goes:

itaike ni kawazu tsukubau ukiha kana

prettily
a toad squatting...
a floating leaf


(Note: the kanji for kawazu is kaba which means a toad rather than a frog, but because of the kuawase meeting on a single theme it is artificially pronounced as kawazu)

In August of the same year, the famous Haru no Hi was published under Kakei as editor. Three haiku by Basho were included in the anthology, including the frog haiku. However, in the case of Haru no Hi, Basho was not involved in renku. Basho's three haiku were in the hokku no bu (or the hokku section.)

There are two more anthologies which carry the frog haiku. One is Iori-Zakura, edited by Saigin and published late in March of 3 Jokyo (1686). This is an especially important anthology because the frog haiku published therein is drastically different from the standard version published in Haru no Hi. It goes:

furuike ya kawazu tondaru mizu no oto


This does not affect English translations in a rough sense, but in the original, it makes a world of difference. It can be seen in the verb jump: tobikomu is used in the Haru no Hi version, while tondaru is used in this Iori-Zakura version. The version in the Iori-Zakura anthology is believed to have been composed slightly earlier than the tobikomu version in Haru no Hi, and thus is held to be the first (known) version of the frog haiku. Saigin belonged to the school of Ihara Saikaku, and thus was a member of the Osaka Danrin School. This means that the frog haiku in the earlier version was already known in the Osaka haiku community. It also seems to support my view that Basho was mulling over the idea of the frog haiku for a considerable amount of time.

From the viewpoint of writing style, tondaru is more colloquial, informal and plebeian (what is called haigon, or haikai terminology) than tobikomu which is formal, neutral and factual (more suitable for waka). Tondaru also has a lot of sense of humour and gaiety, exaggerating the motion of a frog or frogs jumping in a humorous manner into the water.

Another source carrying the frog haiku is called Gyozan-shu, which was a textbook of renku of the Teitoku School written by Hozan in 12 Genroku (1699) and published the following year. In this book, the frog haiku is quoted most curiously having the yamabuki ya (mountain rose) as the first five moji:

yamabuki ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto

mountain rose...
frogs leaping, the sound
of water


Thirdly, let us look at one more document before ending what is now beginning to resemble a detective work. What is related in the document is arguably most famous and widely accepted, and has coloured all the interpretations of Basho's frog haiku to this day. It is Kuzu no Matsu-bara which is one of the earliest introductory books on Shofu (The Way of the Basho School) written in 5 Genroku (1692) by Shiko, one of Basho's disciples. As it was written two years before Basho died, and about 6 to 9 years after the time when the frog haiku could have been composed, it can be said to be highly reliable, at least important. In this Kuzu no Matsu-bara, there is a passage which talks about the situation leading to the composition of the frog haiku. To quote it by Ueda Makoto's translation:


Master Basho was at his riverside hut in the north of Edo that spring. Through the soft patter of rain came the throaty cooing of doves. The wind was gentle, and the blossoms lingered. Late in the third month, he often heard the sound of a frog leaping into the water. Finally an indescribable sentiment floated into his mind and formed itself into two phrases:

kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto

a frog jumps in,
water's sound


Kikaku, who was by his side, was forward enough to suggest the words "the mountain roses" for the poem's beginning phrase, but the Master decided on "the old pond". If I may offer an opinion, I think that although "the mountain roses" sounds poetic and lovely, "the old pond" has simplicity and substance.


The passage does not mention when exactly this episode took place. Some scholars doubt the credibility of it. Yamamoto Kenkichi quotes this same passage in his book on Basho but refers to this passage as a 'legend'.

Fourthly, none of the above accounts provides a definite answer to the exact date or correct interpretation of the frog haiku. Future studies may establish it. However, they indicate very strongly, at least to me, that the received and well-established interpretation of this famous haiku can be mistaken, and needs a critical review and rethinking. The three components (phrases) of the haiku were considered, mulled over and revised independently, as it were, over a period of time. Of the three, the last two (7-5) were less of a problem relatively speaking, albeit going through a drastic revision.

It was therefore the first phrase (top 5) which was most agonising. Eventually, Basho rejected yamabuki ya (mountain rose) in favour of the now most famous furuike ya (old pond) which revolutionised Shofu, and more widely, haiku, itself. However, whether this old pond actually existed and where, or whether it was really old is, relatively speaking, immaterial. Notwithstanding, the idea was in Basho's imagination and creative faculty for a considerable amount of time and the important thing is that it was thus being developed in his mind. The furuike ya phrase can be said to be Basho's invention in the sense that I have explained in some detail in this article. That is the most important point. The frog haiku may well have been as much the product of his imaginative power as the product of his acute observation. This is where Basho's genius is found. At the very least, it was not the product of the 'Haiku Moment'.

Note: Hiroaki Sato, One Hundred Frogs: From Matsuo Basho to Allen Ginsberg (Paperback), 127 pages, Weatherhill; 1st ed edition (May 1, 1995), ISBN: 0834803356



[based on a paper formerly given at the University of Oxford]

http://www.worldhaikureview.org/5-1/whch/essay_takiguchi_dreams.htm



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Imagination in Haiku

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