Tag Archives: haiku

Sutejo, Tsuki no katsura

I’ve been spending a lot of time reading texts related to Sutejo. Since she became a very active and serious nun after her husband died, most of it is full of Buddhist terms I don’t understand well at all.

Anyway, here’s a verse:

it’s made the the leaves drop
from moon’s sweet-olive tree —
winter rains

tsuki no katsura fuyugaresasuru shigure kana
月のかつら冬がれさする時雨かな

While katsura is typically translated as “cassia” (Cinnamomum cassia), the tree on the moon is what they call in the American South “sweet-olive,” otherwise known as osmanthus (Osmanthus fragrans), an evergreen plant which blooms in the autumn with a distinctive, heady scent. It’s associated with the legend of Wu Gang 吳剛, whose arrogance was punished by setting him the task of chopping down the sweet-olive tree on the moon. Sadly for Wu Gang, the tree there is self-repairing, so whenever he finishes, he has to start all over again.

Print by Japanese artist Yoshitoshi, showing the legendary woodcutter Wu Gang pointing at the moon.

In Sutejo’s verse, the speaker conjectures that the clouds of winter’s intermittent rain (shigure) now covering the moon have surely also caused the tree to lose its leaves. This comes from a belief that shigure caused leaves to change color.

Print by Yoshitoshi, late 19th c. Public domain.

 

Sutejo, Nure iro ya

Another Sutejo hokku:

glittering with jewels —
rain drops 
on the princess azalea 

nure iro ya ame no shita teru hime tsutsuji 

ぬれ色やあめのしたてる姫つゝじ

 

Like the previous verse, this is from Kitamura Kigin’s anthology. I have been looking around for “hime tsutsuji” (what I’ve translated as Princess Azalea) but beyond descriptions of it being small and dainty, I don’t know what it’s called in English, or Latin for that matter.

There is word play here — “shita teru” to fall, as of rain or dew, can be read together with “hime” to recall the name of the divinity Shitateru-hime, who is mentioned in Kojiki.

Teimon haikai used a lot of word play, especially with homonyms. They tended to be a bit intellectual, like this one.

 

Sutejo, Mizu kagami

Today–a hokku by Sutejo 捨女 (1634-1698).

gazing into mirroring water,
eyebrows drawn gracefully —
riverside willow

mizu kagami mite ya mayu kaku kawa yanagi
水鏡見てやまゆかく川柳

Is the one gazing into the water a human speaker, or is it an anthropomorphized willow tree?

In Tang China, the eyebrows of beautiful women were described as having  the shape of willow leaves. Willow  trees in general were associated with desirable women, as the supple shape of their branches suggest pliability and modesty. Sutejo’s verse alludes to this analogy.

In “Song of Everlasting Regret” 長恨歌, the Bo Juyi 白居易 poem that was much admired in premodern Japan, the Emperor is reminded of his beloved by lotus blossoms and willows:

the lotus [blossoms] were like her face, the willow [leaves] were like her eyebrows
芙蓉如面柳如眉

I wasn’t aware of the “willow leaf” ideal. I had heard of the “moth antennae” analogy, but the willow leaf shape is considerably different; a lot closer to modern beauty standards.

Letters 1: Buson 1751

The first in an occasional series of translations of letters. Let’s start with some practice. This is review, but I read it such a long time ago it’s like looking at it for the first time.

To: OOya Yohachi, OO Sawaragichô, Kyoto.

Kindly use the above address. Paste this letter on your wall. Do not forget.

Please get some works of calligraphy by Hirabayashi [Seisai] 平林静斎: either as single phrases, or as two or three couplets. I would like to hang them in the studio here. Other than that,  I have had an urgent request from a person of taste. I hope that, thanks to you, one way or another I may get two or three of these. It is a once-in-a-lifetime request. Please permit me to send as a token of gratitude a painting of Daikoku. I have gone for sightseeing to various places all around Kyoto, and spent a pretty interesting time. Some time ago I visited Fushimi and stayed there for a while.

When I think of you going out for night dancing I laugh to myself. I write haikai occasionally. I am still pretty busy, and there hasn’t been any time to pause.  For the next a couple of years as I become more familiar with the place, if there is anything interesting I will let you know, so please look forward to it. More than anything, without fail, I ask your help with Hirabayashi’s work. I really, really can’t wait to receive it.

Watching mandarin ducks

all the glamor has been used up
by the mandarin ducks —
winter trees

oshidori ni bi wo tsukushite ya fuyukodachi
をし鳥に美をつくしてや冬木立

     There is a lot more to say, but I omit it here. How is Denkô 田洪 in Yûki? I miss the place.

Second day of the eleventh month (1751? to 桃彦?)

Tricky epistolary forms:

御登可被下候 おのぼせくださるべくそうろう Please send [to the capital]
被差置  さしおかれ [Please] affix it
御もらひ可被下候 Please get/receive
申度候 I want [to do something]
拝裁奉願候 はいたいねがいたてまつりそうろう I humbly ask to benefit from you doing [this]
相下可申候 あいくだしもうすべくそうろう Please allow me to [do something]
仕候 つかまつり I do/make [whatever]
罷有候 まかりありそうろう [just plain old] ある
奉頼候 たのみたてまつり I humbly ask
相待申候 あいまちもうし I am awaiting/looking forward to

The source is Buson no tegami 蕪村の手紙, Tomotsugu Muramatsu 村松友次, Taishūkan Shoten, 1997, ISBN-13 9784469220780

I also used this nice webpage from ブログ俳諧鑑賞, http://yahantei.blogspot.com.

Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness,” II

Continuing on from the previous post. I found this paragraph also quite in line with what haiku aims for:

The task of making a home in nature is what Wendell Berry has called “the forever unfinished lifework of our species.” “The only thing we have to preserve nature with” he writes, “is culture; the only thing we have to preserve wildness with is domesticity.”  Calling a place home inevitably means that we will use the nature we find in it, for there can be no escape from manipulating and working and even killing some parts of nature to make our home. But if we acknowledge the autonomy and otherness of the things and creatures around us—an autonomy our culture has taught us to label with the word “wild”—then we will at least think carefully about the uses to which we put them, and even ask if we should use them at all. just so can we still join Thoreau in declaring that “in Wildness is the preservation of the World,” for wildness (as opposed to wilderness) can be found anywhere: in the seemingly tame fields and woodlots of Massachusetts, in the cracks of a Manhattan sidewalk, even in the cells of our own bodies. As Gary Snyder has wisely said, “A person with a clear heart and open mind can experience the wilderness anywhere on earth. It is a quality of one’s own consciousness. The planet is a wild place and always will be.” To think ourselves capable of causing “the end of nature” is an act of great hubris, for it means forgetting the wildness that dwells everywhere within and around us.

Unfamiliar with Berry and Snyder? Both are American writers and environmental activists. Berry’s side job is farming; Snyder is a bit of a wandering poet-scholar-saint, or is certainly inspired by such people.
I am pleased that Cronon calls attention to nature as something that is inescapable, not somewhere apart or somewhere to go. At their finest, haiku poets would agree, and indeed many, I imagine, find solace in linking their subjective, emotional experiences with the moods and shifts exterior to themselves. Haiku doesn’t let you forget that there is nothing pristine and untouched. (Sorry about the double negative.)
This leads off in various directions–poetic and not. I’ll stop here, though. It’s just some ideas.

(Wendell Berry, Home Economics (San Francisco, California: North Point, 1987), pp. 138, 143. Gary Snyder: New York Times, “Week in Review,” 18 September 1994, p. 6.)