Category: Haiku and Beyond

It seems ironic to me that a book like John M. Rosenfield’s Mynah Birds and Flying Rocks: Word and Image in the Art of Yosa Buson can simultaneously symbolize the internet’s strength and weakness. After reading some recent comments on Buson in an earlier blog entry, I decided to find a book that would cover both Buson’s haiku and art. Thanks to the internet, I found Rosenfield’s book. After receiving it, though, I realized that if I had had the chance to browse it I wouldn’t have purchased it, for nearly half this short book (96 pages) is devoted to footnotes and glossaries, leaving far too little actual content to justify the thirty six dollars I paid for it.

The greatest strength, and, perhaps, weakness, of this book is its in-depth coverage of Buson’s art and the author’s attempts to place Buson’s art and poetry in a particular context.

If I hadn’t read this book I doubt I would have ever learned:

Buson and the Scholar-Amateur School

Ironically, by adopting techniques of the Nagasaki school (especially its quasi-realism and its use of expensive materials), Buson violated fundamental precepts of the Scholar-Amateur movement with which he had become increasingly identified. This was not, however, the only such ease. Buson was interested in the Zhe school, the most active of the later “Northern” schools of Chinese painting, and often emulated works by artists such as Zhang Lu [fig. 13] 42 Admittedly Buson nowhere referred to himself as a Southern School painter, but – as seen in his essay translated in Appendix A – he was fully aware of the school’s basic principles and, on occasion (as I show below), proudly demonstrated his mastery. Those principles can be summarized as follows:”

Throughout their history Scholar-Amateur painters sought to convey not the surface appearance of a subject but its essence or inner meaning, its vital spirit. Artists avoided rich materials and bright colors; they shunned finesse in brushwork and composition. Decorative opulence and displays of virtuoso technique were signs of vulgarity, because silk and colors could be bought and technique could be acquired through practice.

Superficial visual appeal distracted both artist and viewer from penetrating into the moral and metaphysical heart of a subject. Painters and calligraphers were urged to strive for the aesthetic quality called pingdan tianzhi’n (J: heitan tensliin), which may be loosely translated as ease, naturalness, innocence, and blandness – qualities thought to reflect the Scholar-Amateurs’ nobility of mind and character. Paintings were often small in scale, deceptively simple, and even artless; calligraphies were often self-consciously awkward or distorted.

This kind of background information obviously gives a depth to Buson’s haiku that I had previously been unaware of, leading to an even greater appreciation of his poetry.

Ironically, while providing a more complete background for Buson’s poems, Rosenfield also makes it clear that it is probably impossible for this western reader to ever fully appreciate Japanese haiku because I lack the cultural context these compact poems are written in:

If Matsuo Basho brought haiga to its mature prominence, Yosa Buson wrought his own powerful changes. A classic example by Buson is a seemingly cheerful and uncomplicated picture of a mountain cuckoo (hototogisu) soaring over a flowering hydrangea (ajisal) [plate 2]6 The verse, however, adds a scenario that darkens the scene:

Iwakura no kyco –
Koi seyo
Hototogisu
BS 463;BZ-1 1052

Mad woman of Iwakura
Make love!
Hototogisu.

When this poem was published in an anthology in 1777, Buson added a brief headnote explaining that madness could be cured by bathing in a waterfall at a Buddhist temple at Iwakura (then some distance from the northern outskirts of Kvoto). Further checking reveals that the temple was called Daiun-ji, that its monks cultivated hydrangeas, and that in popular legend the consort of Emperor Reizei (950-1011) was cured of mental illness by drinking from a waterfall there. Buson’s verse thus wove a complex network of topics into a seemingly simple picture: the cuckoo, which Japanese poets often considered a messenger of love;’ a crazed woman, with the implication that she was lovelorn; the hydrangea, symbol of the temple where madness was cured; and the and cultural context evoked by the single word ‘Iwakura.’ The highly literate people for whom he painted this work probably recognized the allusion; those who did not missed the full range of Buson’s meaning.

It’s a little disheartening to realize I will probably always miss “the full range of Buson’s meaning” because I will never acquire this kind of cultural context.

Of course this doesn’t come as a complete revelation. Previous reading has made me realize that I did not fully understand or appreciate concepts like “season words” or understand why recognizing them should be critical to appreciating haiku. Worse, my relatively superficial understanding of Zen Buddhism, while perhaps more extensive than the average American’s understanding, probably also causes me to miss much of the meaning in these poems.

In other words, my appreciation of these poems probably reveals more about me and my current feelings about poetry than it does about the quality of the poems themselves.

As I read through 250 of Basho’s haiku as chosen by translator Sam Hamill for Narrow Road to the Interior, I began to realize why I like haibun and haiga.

Simply put, they isolate a haiku from other haiku. And, to be most effective, I think I haiku must stand alone. Read as a group, they tend to lose their effectiveness.

In fact, I think the perfect way to present haiku might be as a screensaver, when a single haiku would show up for a whole day, allowing the reader enough time to really meditate on what has been said.

Alternatively, of course, despite what
Arete might say, haiku might serve as the perfect cross-stichery project.

With that disclaimer, I’ll list a few of may favorite Basho haiku, from Hamill’s selection, keeping in mind that I might well choose entirely different selections if I were to read them later.

This one, makes me long for high mountain ridges still inaccessible because of snow cover:

Your song caresses
the depths of loneliness,
high mountain bird.

as does this one

Traveling this high
mountain trail, delighted
by wild violets.

Of course, anyone who knows my loves would not be surprised to learn that discovering this haiku was worth the price of the entire work:

After reading the shorter travel diaries, I really think translator Sam Hamill would have been wiser to have presented them before Narrow Road to the Interior because, despite some excellent haiku, they came as somewhat of disappointment, though they might have seemed more innovative and stimulating if they had been presented before Basho’s masterpiece. To make matters worse, the second best work Travelogue of Weather Beaten Bones is presented second, and the other two journals drop off rapidly after that.

The most powerful section in Travelogue of Weather Beaten Bones was also, for me at least, a most disturbing one:

On the bank of the Fuji River, we came upon an abandoned child, about age two, its sobs stirring our pity. The child’s parents must have been crushed by the waves of this floating world to have left him here beside the rushing river to pass like dew. I thought the harsh autumn winds would surely scatter the bush clover blossoms in the night or wither them ” and him ” in the frosty dew of dawn. I left him what food I could.
Hearing the monkey’s cries “
what of the child abandoned
to the autumn wind?
How can this happen? Did his father despise him? Did his mother neglect him? I think not. This must be the will of heaven. We mourn his fate.

I’d like to think that we live in a very different time and under very different conditions. But even now reading these words is painful, almost too painful. It reminds me that such conditions still exist in other less fortunate parts of the world, and that some people are still faced with painful dilemmas that force them to rationalize their decisions. But, whether or not I live under “the will of heaven,” I’m glad that I don’t have to see the world this way.

The Knapsack Notebook, the second journal, strings together a series of beautiful haiku united by a narrative thread, but I was disappointed that there was little that actually seemed like modern-day haibun.

One of my favorite haiku reminds me of springs I’ve loved on long-trodden hikes:

I saw a beautiful clear stream pouring from a crack in a moss-covered stone:

A fresh spring rain
must have passed through all the leaves
to nourish this spring.

Unfortunately, the final journal, Sarashina Travelogue, was a mere four pages long, too short to ever really engage me.

The Narrow Road to the Interior is a surprisingly short book, barely 30 pages long as translated by Sam Hamill. It’s actually rather hard to write anything meaningful about it because, despite my first assumptions, there is no one pattern to the entries, though many entries consist of a short prose passage followed by a final haiku. Some of the most interesting entries, though, contain multiple haiku written by more than one author, and even entries that contain no haiku seem quite “poetic.”

Any commentary is complicated by the fact that I really can’t think of anything comparable that I have read, though if I were still in college I might be tempted to compare it to Thoreau’s Walden, though Thoreau’s writing is certainly much more discursive. If I had access to some of Emily Dickinson’s letters where she included it poems that I’ve heard mentioned, but not read, it would be interesting to see if they are comparable.

As it is, I am limited to citing two of my favorite passages to indicate the general flavor of this journal, though it is difficult to limit myself to just two citations because this journal contains some of Basho’s most famous haiku.

Personally, I’m fondest of the format where a short prose passage is ended by a haiku. Of those entries, this one may well be my favorite, though I suspect that it is the haiku, more than the prose entry that I love:

In Yamagata Province, the ancient temple founded by Jikaku Daishi in 86o, Ryushaku Temple is stone quiet, perfectly tidy. Everyone told us to see it. It meant a few miles extra, doubling back toward Obanazawa to find shelter. Monks at the foot of the mountain offered rooms, then we climbed the ridge to the temple, scrambling up through ancient gnarled pine and oak, gray smooth stones and moss. The temple doors, built on rocks, were bolted. I crawled among boulders to make my bows at shrines. The silence was profound. I sat, feeling my heart begin to open.

Lonely stillness-
a single cicada’s cry
sinking into stone

It’s hard to decide whether the last prose lines, “The silence was profound. I sat, feeling my heart begin to open.” or the beautiful haiku is more poetic. Both seem profoundly true to me.

What may well be my favorite prose entry contains no haiku at all:

We paid homage at Gongen Shrine on the fifth. The first shrine on the mountain, it was built by Nojo, no one knows exactly when, The Engi Ceremonies calls it Ushusato Mountain, Feather Province Village Mountain, but calligraphers’ errors got it changed to Feather Black Mountain, The province is called Dewa, Feather Tribute, dating from an eighth-century custom whereby feather down from this region was used as payment of tribute. Together with Moon Mountain and Bath Mountain, Feather Black Mountain completes the Dewa Sanzan, or Three Holy Mountains of Dewa. This temple is Tendai sect, like the one in Edo on Toei Hill. Both follow the doctrine of shikaxaztz, ‘deep-sitting concentration and insight,” a way of enlightenment as transparent as moonlight, its light infinitely increasing, spreading from hermitage to mountaintop and back, reverence and compassion shining in everything it touches. Its blessing flows down from these mountains, enriching all our lives.

One wonders whether Basho, as I do, felt that the final lines of this entry were so poetic that it would have been redundant to include a final haiku.

If I had been exposed to this journal earlier in my life, I would have been sorely tempted to use this technique to record week-long hikes I’ve spent in the mountains. As it is, I will continue practice writing haiku, and occasionally slipping them into my blog entries in hopes that I can continue to develop my skills as a writer.

Thinking back, at one point in my retirement, I’d hoped to use a technique very like this to create a hiking weblog with a friend. Certainly my week-long hike in the North Cascades with the Sierra Club, accompanied by delightful companions from throughout the world, would have provided some great material for such an effort.