Shiki - Symbiotic Hope

Centenary of the Death of Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902)

Symbiotic Hope

Eiko Yachimoto

Yokosuka, JP

One Sunday I took a train to Tokyo to attend a series of talks given by haiku scholars. Under the cloudy sky, falling leaves of gingko trees led me to the campus. As I ate manju and drank tea, I learned one great thing: Poetry is the writing capable of making the dead stand up and walk. Oh, when will I become capable of this? Let me only write a letter to Shiki today . . .

Dear Shiki,

Would you mind proof-reading the following speech for me? I am given the opportunity to introduce Japanese renku to spouses of engineers and scientists coming to Japan to attend their Grand Conference. I prepared the following text, but I am less than 100 per cent sure if this will do.

I was the one in that reading group who admired you as the most democratic poet of Japan -- the one conducted in the newly opened Women Center in Yokosuka in 1996. Let me add a symbiotic poem "we" -- you and I, created and published on LYNX (1) to help you remember me . . .

Shiki - eiko

Yokosuka - winter forest.....only of masts

...a dry dock from Meiji...solid masonry

jazz of the new century....swirls....colorful people

...and yet exists.....a language divide

warm rain falling -..the beige brown field....of withered grass

...do you still hear..."the scissors cutting May roses"?.......(e & S)

homecoming --...every way I turn....mountains laugh

...through falling petals...the last ALBATROSS

conflicts and changes...woven with the immutable...the Danube flows

...a moon out of...quality paper

cold and itchy....Hekigotoh....longing to see us

...purple color reaching black...the depth of the grapes

(---to be continued)

The Speech Text:

Renku in the rich tradition of Japanese poetry

About one hundred years ago, one Westerner whose name was Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), came to Japan dispatched by an American newspaper company. He fell in love with Japan and wrote the following:

Poetry is as universal as air in Japan. It's impossible to spend a day without hearing or seeing a poem.

He went on to say:

To find a village where no one composes a poem is unthinkable.

Let's see if his observation is still true today. What is the name of the huge room for the Center's major programs? Yes, it is Manyo. Manyo, or "ten thousand leaves," is the name of the oldest collection of 4500 poems. Those were the poems chosen in eighth century, and Manyo poets include ancient emperors and farmer-soldiers with no known names.

Now I skip more than one thousand years to talk about another room in this hotel. Across the hallway from here is a room named Fujinami, which means "waves of wisteria." I hope you have a chance to see the purple clusters of wisteria hanging from the pergolas of many parks, or purple tufts flowing gorgeously amid myriad greens of the mountains. Fujinami has been a traditional art theme, but I can't help thinking of one young man every time I see wisteria flowers. Let me introduce two tanka composed by him 100 years ago:

The poet, Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902), was dying of a painful illness, and he was intensely gazing at the wisteria from his futon on the tatami-matted floor of a Japanese room. He could not even turn his body without his sister's help. He died one year later. Yet amazingly, from his sick bed, this man in his thirties had vigorously fought and won the battle to renovate Japanese poetry. He fought the rigid determinism of the Poetry Bureau of the Imperial Household Agency. He fought scholars of theories and secret rules because he believed that they put the wrong emphasis on a poetry of cliché, formalism and restriction. He preached from a newspaper everyday, admonishing poets not to blindly follow authoritarian rules. He advocated Manyo style poetry, because ancient Manyo poets freely sang about the reality of their lives and the true emotion of the people.

He was a man of 100 years ago, when poetry was as universal as air. He certainly had a broad audience. He was also determined to save the spirit of poetry from the mediocre renku masters in town. As much as I love Shiki, he is known as a person who declared that only the starting verse (hokku) of renku deserves to be called poetry; it was he who established the hokku as the now famous haiku. I don't think Shiki denied renku altogether. I would rather like to think that he wanted to correct some money-oriented renku masters of his time. Japanese haiku poets now consider Shiki a big, big name, and surprisingly, the irony is that some of them blindly follow his criticism on renku.

Now, let me come back to the thousand years which I had skipped before. I feel really lucky to be given this room for the conference because it is named Chitose, an elegant way of saying one thousand years!!! Needless to say, much happened between 900 to 1900 which has contributed to the formation of Japanese aesthetics, and maybe to Japanese formalism, too. One phenomenon, unique to Japan, is that poetry had been in the center of its cultural values, and often used by the government as the source of its authority. An emperor often edited, or took initiative to assign editors, the compilation of a tanka anthology for his reign. In this situation, poetry matters could become political, and one genius, called Fujiwara no Teika(1162-1241), left us Hyakunin-Isshu (One Poems by 100 Poets), a very well-known collection. Another set of 101 tanka, written after Teika's original anthology manuscript was found in our time, in 1951. Many researchers studied the enigma of his twin anthologies. A couple of researchers reached the conclusion that Teika needed two anthologies to secretly hide his sympathy for emperor-poet Gotoba who died in exile in Oki island as a political criminal. It seems that the different numbers which Teika had assigned to identical poems were keys to decipher his puzzle. It also seems that he chose some of the tanka, not because they were great as poetry, but because he needed the words in them to complete a rather mathematical puzzle which he had prepared for our future generations. Again, this seems to be the reason why he used a separate card for each poem rather than the normal book binding.Hyakunin-Isshu has become the most popular anthology of all times. The set of 100 cards was once a "must" item for a bride.

We also have the game of Hyakunin-Isshu, in which athletic talent as well as memory is needed to win a tournament. My point here is, that for over one thousand years, Japanese poets have written poetry, approaching from all angles of emotion and intelligence. We had neither the Greco-Roman tradition of philosophy nor Christian theology. Our ancestors seem to have expressed their philosophies of life in poetic form through poetry writing. They engaged in poetry in which they light-heartedly developed a taste for enjoying all kinds of word play such as anagrams, pangrams, game-like poetry contests, card-winning tournaments and renku poetry, composed collaboratively. It seems to me, it is in renku that poets uniquely tried to reflect as many aspects of the actual world from many angles, using all faculties of brain and language, even including mathematics and geometry.

Let me introduce one cute episode. When asked to compose a haiku that included a square, a triangle and a circle, the poet-nun Chiyo (1703-1775), composed this right away:

I have said that poetry was in the center of cultural values; poetry, indeed, was the center of life and art. In fact, poems were traditionally composed in social gatherings as elegant greetings or precious presents. In most of those gatherings, people liked to sit on the floor in a circle, sharing the feel of the same ground. In the circle, people enjoyed building up sincere and long-lasting relationships through making poetry. And today, all of you are invited to this renku workshop where you sit with us right in the circle! In addition to playfulness, the fondness of people and a sense of community have been cultivated for one thousand years.

Basho (1644 - 1694), the great poet of the 17 century, is now respected worldwide, and his haiku are listed in the general poetry text books used in America. He, himself, never even thought of publishing his own book of poetry, though. He instead, rather took such toil to edit the kasen renku on which he and his disciples collaborated. He took pride in his ability to understand other poets' verses. He excelled in writing a link. He took care of his disciples in such a way that his disciples loved him for the rest of their lives. Last year, Ms Makiko Besho published a short novel on Basho titled, Is the snow falling this year too? This title is taken from his verse found in a letter to his disciples.

A sense of community is certainly one good feature of renku. However, too much emphasis on the socializing aspect and group spirit can cause deterioration of poetry itself. On the path of Japanese poetry, there were times when things became stagnant. Those were the times when several poetic geniuses emerged. They could not help but stand tall, breaking away from the existing circle. Masaoka Shiki, of the wisteria waves, and Basho, of the frog jumping into a pond, were like that, and they both succeeded in establishing new circles on their own.

Where on earth did they get such energy? Shiki grew up taking private classic Chinese lessons taught by his grandfather, and then he entered a university where he was greatly influenced by Western literature. How excited he must have been when he found a similarity between ancient Manyo poems and English poems! Speaking of foreign influences, Basho studied and loved Chinese poems. Their souls must have been replenished by the individualistic literature from abroad.

In concluding this speech, I would like to share with you the image of a pendulum. On one pole of the pendulum, I see the solitude, the quiet and the individual. On the other pole, I see a blossoming party filled with various voices doing renku. The rich tradition of Japanese poetry teaches us that we need both. I personally see that the pendulum is now moving toward collaboration and networking, and I feel very honored to use this room,"1000," to hold our very first public workshop today. And we are, ourselves, AIR, the Association of International Renku.

Thank you.

Now Shiki, What do you say? Am I sounding too proud of Japan's tradition? Would you be worried that the audience from abroad might be turning their backs? Or am I introducing these deep mysteries rather sensationally when precise scholastic examination is needed? Should I have compared various civilizations before the talk?

In fact, emphasizing Japan as a nation was not my intention at all. Let me confirm that when I said "Japan," my image was the islands, or the geographic area and the natives speaking the language. For that matter, our group's name, "Association for International Renku," might better be changed into "Association for Inter-language Renku." When you denounced renku, you were a young man of a very young modern nation. The 20th century was still very young, as well. Gaining recognition from the world was the goal of this young nation that had believed in linear progress. On the other hand, I am living in a post modern Japan where we face floods of "cut and dried" phrases being spread through TVs and convenience stores. The voice of the language, the organic plasticity and the quiet of the language, and even the joy of language, all of which pertain to the life and charm of any language, are especially dwindling in Japan. I hope you understand my naive excitement in discovering so many ways in which our ancestors touched secrets of the word. Without utilizing any visual media, they expressed themselves in the word alone; they explored and developed the potentials of the language in all directions. Such imagination!

It is not my place to report to you the current haiku scenes of Japan. Allow me to point out one simple fact. In my speech draft, I said that one of the reasons that you denounced renku was the attitude of many renku masters making money as they taught or evaluated people's renku. What an irony it is that haiku in Japan is now sponsored by many commercial entities including such media giants as NHK, the major Broadcasting station of Japan and the three Newspaper companies, all with enormous financial resources, whereas renku is supported purely by individuals who love this form of symbiotic poetry.

Shiki, let me convince you that you would not have denounced renku had you been my contemporary. You wanted poetry - the poetry of individuals - freed from the stagnant authorities of your time. You envisioned the beauty of ancient tradition in full revival as you pictured the colorful cities outside of Japan. You were so open-minded. You always believed in being an individual fired with spirit, and you made your honest existence public through your writings. That should be the way citizens behave if we want a decent society. Didn't you think that way? Your priority was placed on encouraging individuality and the leaders of a young nation whose goal was to catch up with the Western world with flourishing literature. You were a natural collaborator as well. Everybody remembers you as a pleasant young man, so great to become friends with. No wonder you loved the teamwork of baseball. Haven't you been fascinated by the baseball rules which you translated into Japanese? Having full understanding of renku rules, you must have enjoyed comparing rules. Did that, too, have some little influence over your conclusion that renku was only a pastime?

Well, with even much more resemblance to a baseball game, renku's lack of pursuing one serious theme must have bothered you. I remember that you were so anxious to become a modern novelist at one time. Your orthodox concept of literature could not embrace the entertaining playfulness of renku. . .This is how you boldly declared that renku does not deserve to be called literature. However, you would be appalled, could you feel the texture of Japanese society today. Transformation is tremendous. Wide spread observation among writers and poets now, is that the Japanese language is on the verge of crisis. During the process of industrialization, the language that holds every inflection of mother nature in her ever-changing seasonal flow, keeps losing its tie with the world. During the process of modernization, the communal bond which was fostered in all kinds of face to face collaboration, including symbiotic poetry composition around a table, has almost disappeared. . .Japanese people seem not to place as much confidence in words as they once did. Shiki, you would agree with me when I say the urgent agenda for us now, is to rediscover the primordial power of language with its uniqueness, to create time and space shared by people.

Can we return to Edo when haikai was the way of life, not only of poets and monks, but also of merchants, samurai and women of the town? Having neither Greco-Roman tradition of philosophy, nor Christian theology, haikai was the way in which we Japanese explored life's secrets. In those olden days, many people practiced their calligraphy skills when submitting a verse as a link for renku.

Masaoka-san, I believe that inter-language renku is realistic for our time. It reflects the reality of the present world in a way that no other literary form can do. When we collaborate on renku using two (or more) different languages, you feel the primordial power of the language. There are questions and laughter, criss-crossing poets from various backgrounds. Translation is not a shadow here, but an artery to carry the essence of each verse. Poetry is polished by going through different grammars and linguistic features. Cut up montages, created through link after link of verses, all depend on the most important aspect of the language, i.e., IMAGINATION. Renku, not having one theme, but many, opens up possibilities. The world now needs to learn how to coexist without losing identity. Shiki, renku with its cosmology and flow of shared time has every good reason to exist in this cracking world of ours. Let me end right here, because I have heard your voice asking me to stop and . . .

I will be looking for you . . .

Yours sincerely,

Eiko Yachimoto

(1) LYNX, a Journal for Linking Poets, Symbiotic Poetry, Volume XV1, 02-01, AHA! Poetry at Ahapoetry.com