One Hundred Haijin

January 2015

ONE HUNDRED HAIJIN AFTER SHIKI

By

Susumu Takiguchi

PART TWO

Natsume Soseki (1)

Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) famously predicted that haiku could become extinct by the end of the Meiji Era (1868-1912). How wrong he was! And how delighted we are that he was wrong, without being unkind to him! This is indeed a cause for celebration.

One way of celebrating it could be to choose at random one hundred Japanese haiku poets who have helped to prove him wrong. If we chose one hundred best the case would be strong. But if we chose randomly, and not necessarily the best, one hundred from among, say, about five hundred who have been leading figures in the modern history of haiku in Japan, the case would be even stronger.

With this in mind, I would like to serialise my narratives in World Haiku Review about the one hundred Japanese haijin whom I shall choose at random and talk about. There is no particular reason why the number should be one hundred. It could be two hundred or fifty. Just over one hundred years have passed since the end of the Meiji Era, and a little bit longer since Shiki died. So, the number one hundred would not be bad. To write about more than one hundred haijin could be exhausting. If the number was fifty, the endeavour could be unsatisfactory and frustrating as more would surely be desired to be introduced. One thing which is certain is that it is not really intended to follow the fashion to use the number one hundred in haiku books, originally emanating from the ancient waka anthology Hyaku-Nin-Isshu (one poem each by one hundred poets). Being a heso-magari (contrarian) I would in fact have liked to avoid this cliché.

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Natsume Soseki (1867~1916)

In this issue we shall look at Natsume (surname) Soseki (pen name). He is best known as a novelist. However, he also wrote many good haiku. For more reasons than one he should be regarded as one of the most important haijin after Shiki.

Soseki and Shiki were good pals. They were born in the same year. They both liked rakugocomedy. They first met each other in 1889 at a higher middle school in Tokyo through the school’s literary circle. Shiki was astounded by the extraordinary quality of Soseki’s writings in classical Chinese, most notably his kanshi (poems in Chinese). He first caught sight of them in the magazine of the circle which he edited and got in touch with Soseki. They became bosom friends until the death of Shiki 13 years later. Soseki learned haiku from Shiki in the same year and thus became one of the earliest practitioners in this genre after Shiki reformed it into a proper branch of modern literature. He adopted Soseki as his haigo (haiku penname) and used it for the first time this year. It later became his general penname, especially for his novels. Incidentally, the penname Shiki was created also in the same year. In other words, the two glittering haiku names made their debut in 1889.

Soseki’s first recorded haiku appeared in his letter to Shiki dated 13 May 1889 in which he wrote two haiku to console the friend who had just coughed out blood because of pulmonary tuberculosis. Until his death in 1916 Soseki wrote 2426 haiku in total (some say it is 2600). One of the two haiku in the said letter goes:

帰ろふと泣かずに笑へ時鳥 1889, M 22

kaero to naka zu ni warae hototogisu

home…/laugh, not cry/cuckoo

Soseki wrote 3 years later another haiku having cuckoo as kigo

鳴くならば満月になけほととぎす 1892, M 25

naku nara ba mangetsu ni nake hototogisu

if you want to sing/sing under the full moon/cuckoo

This haiku was written in Soseki’s reply to Shiki’s letter of 1892 which said that he (Shiki) intended to give up on his schooling because he failed the year-end examination. Soseki’s haiku was of course to plead with Shiki to change his mind. The full moon meant the completion of Shiki’s study at the University. In both haiku hototogisu (cuckoo) is the kigo. However, hototogisuis written in many different ways in terms of kanji, or Chinese characters. One way is the same as Shiki’s name was written. In other words, hototogisu in these haiku meant Shiki himself to whom Soseki was addressing.

Soseki was an Edokko (a diminutive way of calling those who were born and bred in Tokyo and thus claim to be genuine Tokyo people as opposed to those who only moved to live there from various provinces for reasons which were mainly to get a job). Edokko have a sense of humour and Soseki definitely had plenty of it. He also studied and was fond of gesakusha, or literati in the mid to late Edo period who specialised in writing popular novels, often humorous, erotic and ribald. His earlier novels were of comic and satirical nature. This was reflected on his haiku, which goes to show that he must have easily captured one of the essential ingredients of haiku: sense of humour.

One such example is:

叩かれて昼の蚊を吐く木魚哉 1895, M 28

tatakare te hiru no ka wo haku mokugyo kana

being hit/the mokugyo exhales/an afternoon mosquito

Mokugyo is a wooden instrument for Buddhist ritual, shaped like a slightly flattened Japanesesuzu bell, or a round, fat fish (mokugyo literally means a wooden fish). A priest would use a special drum stick (mallet) which has a bulged, ball-shaped tip covered with cloth. He beats it to “accompany” his sutra-chanting and that of other monks present. It produces a sort of muffled xylophone-like but un-pitched sound which is familiar to every Japanese person. In the modern time when Buddhism has become somewhat irrelevant to most of the Japanese daily life many features of Buddhist rituals are something which people look at in amusement. Soseki’s haiku accentuates the humorous contrast between the seriousness with which a priest beats the mokugyo and the accidental but still comical scene of a mosquito making an appearance from its “mouth”.

耳の穴掘って貰いぬ春の風

mimi no ana hotte morai nu haru no kaze

my ear/is getting picked/spring wind

(literal translation: my ear hole/getting dug up/spring wind)

Soseki’s output in haiku was not a steady flow but something like “wax and wane” or “hot and cold”. He wrote a lot of haiku in some years and only a small number of haiku in other years. The prolific years were 1895 (463 haiku), 96 (495), 97 (265), 99 (330), 1907 (132), 1910 (146) and 1914 (122). The style, contents and topics also varied depending on what he was doing, his health, circumstances and the events of the time.

His earliest works were dull. This is mainly because modern haiku was still in its embryonic stage of development so much so that its father, i.e. Shiki himself, had not yet advanced his haiku reform programme very far and his own haiku were not particularly brilliant either. They were no more than rehash of so-called tsukinami haiku which is the very thing Shiki was later intent upon condemning and destroying. The term tsukinami itself was coined by Shiki to mean inferior haiku into which the genre deteriorated in the last stage of the Edo period (1603-1867) and drifted into the Meiji era (1868-1912). This mere fact goes to show how difficult but incredibly important it was for the genre to be reformed. Let us look at a few of Soseki’s earliest haiku.

東風吹くや山一ぱいの雲の影

kochi fuku ya yama ippai o kumo no kage

east wind’s blowing/over the whole mountain/the shadows of clouds

Soseki composed this haiku one year after he took to the genre. It was commented on as becoming something like a proper haiku. Be it as it may the poem is still banal and imitative. Kochi is one of the few words to mean spring wind in Japanese in the same way as there are different words to describe different aspects of the same thing as in snow, rain, moon or heat. In the Manyo-shu period the word ayu-no-kaze was used to mean this soft but still a bit chilly wind in early spring. Kage means both a shadow and a figure or image. One would have thought that Soseki was witnessing many moving clouds casting moving shadows on the mountain – a moving picture.

今日よりは誰に見立ん秋の月

kyo yori wa tare ni mitate’n aki no tsuki

from today/to whom shall I compare to/autumn moon

Here is another example. This one was written a year after the last one we just looked at. It is more interesting though enigmatic and obscure as to what he actually meant. There is an author’s note which says shinki seichou, or (my) heart and spirit are clean and serene, which, instead of helping us, adds to the mystery. The third line is interesting in that the word “autumn” is redundant as moon is an autumn kigo. Whether Soseki did not know this as he was still a novice in haiku is difficult to say. Being one of the most erudite, knowledgeable and well-read intellectuals of the time (one could say of all time) it requires a brave person to claim that Soseki did not know this, that or the other. One thing is clear: He wanted to emphasise the fact that the season was autumn when not only the moon became bright and clear but the air, landscape and almost everything became clear and lucid.

Soseki was a diligent and fast learner. It was therefore not long before his haiku started to show depth, originality and newness.

病む人の炬燵離れて雪見かな 1892, M 25

yamu hito no kotatsu hanare te yukimi kana

a sick person/leaving kotatsu stove/views the snow

The sick person was Shiki and this haiku was included in Soseki’s letter to him dated 15 December 1892. The friendship between the two was intense and the poem reflects Soseki’s deep concern and kind feelings towards his friend. Shiki emphasised the importance of shasei (sketch from life) in haiku. In this poem Soseki is leaning towards emotions and intricacies of human affairs, a beginning of two different styles emerging between them.

何となう死に来た世の惜まるる 1894, M 27

nan to no shini ni kita yo no oshimaruru

somehow/having come to this world to die/I miss it

Soseki was 27 years old when he wrote this haiku in 1894. Even if Meiji men may have been much more mature and advanced than us of the 21st century he sounds like somebody whose days in this world are numbered. It is held that he was seriously worried that he may have contracted tuberculosis in the lung, which happened to be true. Besides, Soseki suffered from pessimistic view of life, negative world view and depression due to tragic circumstances of his family and his own difficulties in life. For him haiku was in a way an outlet to release his frustration and unhappiness.

初夢や金も拾はず死にもせず 1895, M 28

hatsu-yume ya kane mo hirowazu shini mo sezu

first dream of the year/not finding money on the road/not dying either

In this haiku of 1895 one detects unmistakable similarity in sentiment to Kobayashi Issa. If we were to divide us human beings into two camps, one of the establishment and pro-establishment and the other anti-establishment, Soseki belonged to the latter. In other words, he was a free thinker and intrinsically independent-minded. He was an intellectual elite. Therefore he could not be completely on the same level as men in the street like Issa even though he was sympathetic with the feelings of common men. Thus he did not belong either to what may be termed as the general ruling class (governments, big business etc.) or to the general public. He needed his own space or niche, namely the third universe, to breathe freely and to find his position in this world. He wished to “rise above” preoccupation of running a nation, or leading the industry, or controlling a great mass of people. He also wished to “transcend” the culture of ordinary people. He lived in the cultural, academic and intellectual cocoon of his own making. In that cocoon he struggled to raise and solve big questions of the time, such as the question of the ego of modern man, and tried to relate his answers in his novels, haiku and Chinese writings apart from his academic works and teaching in English literature.

So his haiku had multiple motives. Sometimes it was to express his deep thoughts and feelings in a short and light-hearted manner. Other times it was a means to escape from hurly-burly of life. And of course he also wrote haiku for its own sake, i.e. efforts to study the essence of haiku and to create good, better and best haiku. An example of the third category is a famous one:

あんかうや孕み女の釣るし斬り 1895, M 28

anko ya harami onna no tsurushi-giri

monkfish/a pregnant woman/chops it dangling

Hanging a monkfish with a string and cutting it is a traditional way of dealing with the fish as it would be too difficult to cut it like other fish because of its size and weight and also as it being slippery and slimy. In some places in Japan such as a hotel in Oarai of Ibaragi prefecture such a way of cutting monkfish is shown to the public for publicity as it is quite a dramatic and somewhat gruesome sight to behold. In Soseki’s haiku the scene is all the more striking as the person who is doing the job is a pregnant woman.

The year 1895 actually proved to be a turning point of Soseki’s journey of haiku as well as his career and circumstances. In April he got a new job of teaching at a middle school in Matsuyama for one year. In December he was engaged to a daughter of an eminent parliamentarian (and married the following year). From the point of view of Soseki’s haiku he decided to take it up more seriously and his output became profuse. In his letter to Shiki who was in hospital in Kobe, dated 28 May 1895 he told his friend that he decided to enter the haimon (haiku gate), meaning he wanted to do it properly. He was a bit bored living alone in a provincial town without interesting people to learn from or talk to. He told Shiki that he could not bear it unless he chose to do one of the three things, getting married, drain the cup of pleasure to the dregs, or indulging in wild reading. As it happened Shiki came home to Matsuyama for recuperation and stayed in the house which Soseki had rented for two months. This unexpected turn of event for Soseki to live with Shiki gave an extra impetus to study and write haiku in earnest. In the same year, Soseki used his other haiku name, Gudabutsu, for the first time.

凩や海に夕日を吹き落す 1896, M 29

kogarashi ya umi ni yuhi wo fuki otosu

bitter winter wind/blows the evening sun/down into the sea

Written in the following 1896 when Soseki was 29, this haiku compares well with the best ones of the best haijin, especially Matsuo Basho as it has Basho-like feel about it. Indeed, had it not been for the greatest haiku master ever lived, it could have come to be considered one of the best haiku ever written. It is a big picture. Three strong and vast elements, the wind, the sea and the sun, play a dynamic drama with the violent act of the winter wind. Apart from the quality of the work as haiku, it may reflect Soseki’s wonder and awe towards the frightening but ferocious winter wind.

The following year, 1897, saw the famous violet haiku and many other masterpieces.

菫程な小さき人に生れたし 1897, M 30

sumire hodo na chiisaki hito ni umare tashi

wishing/to be born as small a person/as a violet

This is arguably the most famous of Soseki’s haiku. It is generally highly praised for depicting the modesty of the author’s sentiment which led to noticing the beauty in such a small and insignificant flower as a wild violet. It certainly reflects the change of Soseki’s view about himself and the world around him. In the same year he wrote another haiku reflecting his self-effacing and self-deprecating frame of mind at the time:

木瓜咲くや漱石拙を守るべく 1897, M 30

boke saku ya Soseki setsu wo mamoru beku

japonica blossoms/Soseki should hold on/to being poor and unskilled

This haiku has the sentiment in line with the last one. He was looking at the Japonica flowers and in his recent reflective mood realised that he was not even worthy of them. In one of his famous novels, Kusamakura, he wrote that some people in this world were said to guard their being poor and unskilled and they would turn into Japonica flowers and that the hero of the novel wished to become a Japonica flower. Soseki was tired of those who boasted of being clever, good at everything and tried to beat everybody else. It was a competitive time when every young man was expected to excel, seek his fortune and to rise to eminence in whatever field he chose to pursue.

In May 1900 Soseki was notified by the Japanese government to have been appointed to study in England. He was assigned to do research into the methods of teaching English in the education system. He set off on 8 September from Yokohama Port. On this occasion he wrote a haiku:

秋風の一人をふくや海の上 1900, M 33

akikaze no hitori wo fuku ya umi no ue

autumn wind/blows against a single soul/over the ocean

Soseki was all alone on the boat and was destined to spend a lonely time in England for the next two years. During the journey he sent postcards from different ports with a haiku. On 28 Octoberhe arrived in London.

空狭き都に住むや神無月 1900, M 33

sora semaki miyako ni sumu ya kannazuki

narrow sky/I am to live in this capital/october

Soseki’s output diminished significantly in England. One of the few haiku he managed in London reads:

三階に独り寐に行く寒かな 1902, M 35

sannkai ni hitori ne ni yuku samusa kana

to the second floor/alone I go upstairs to bed/cold night

While staying in London Soseki was lonely, depressed and resentful. At an early stage he was writing to his friend back in Japan that he was already finding England something to be disliked. He found lectures not worth his attending and sought and found private tutorials from renowned scholars of his choice. He complained about a paltry sum he was receiving for his living expenses from the Japanese government (this was the biggest practical problem causing his frustration, anxiety and unhappiness). He was obliged to change the lodgings as many as five times for cheaper rent. His knowledge of written English was at such a high level as to be equalled by few other contemporary academics or even by those today, but alas his spoken English was deplorable. This means that it is unlikely that he was having even a normal level of conversation with local English people, making himself shut out from the daily lives of the community of which he happened to become associated with, if not part of, let alone enjoying usual kind of socialisation, friendship, or even kind hearts who would listen to his woes. Besides, the country he was “officially ordered” to come and study in was still the most powerful nation in the world whereas his homeland was merely a new emerging nation state, barely coming out of its historical obscurity into the world scene. British sense of superiority and Japanese sense of inferiority cannot have played little part in creating his unhappiness. While he was staying in London Shiki, arguably his greatest friend, died in the early hours of 19 September 1902. This was a huge shock and terrible loss for Soseki in itself but he suffered from an added agony because he was not there to see Shiki go or to look after him in his final days. His sentiment was expressed in five haiku which he penned in his letter to Takahama Kyoshi, another follower of Shiki and a close friend of Soseki’s, dated 1 December 1902. The first of these goes:

筒袖や秋の柩にしたがはず 1902, M 35

tsutsusode ya aki no hitsugi ni shitagawazu

western clothes/autumn coffin/not following

Most Japanese still wore kimono around this time though such people as civil servants, businessmen or military personnel wore yofuku, or western clothes, while on duty or at work. Soseki was in England and essentially had no alternative but to wear western clothe. So, the first line refers to himself, which means that the poem is about him not having been able to attend Shiki’s funeral, apart from his sorrow of losing the best friend.

(Natsume Soseki, to be continued)

Natsume Soseki (1867-1916)

The Meiji Era (1868~1912) started its dynamic, dramatic and tumultuous journey of modernisation, industrialisation and Westernisation fourteen years after Japan ended over two centuries isolationist policy. The aim was to create a strong, prosperous and respectable modern nation in all aspects after the fashion of Western powers. It was Western political, industrial and cultural revolutions spanning over many centuries all put in one and executed in one fell swoop within a very short period of time. Soseki was one of the most influential leaders in academic, intellectual, literary and cultural fields. He was a good-looking man and was admired as a foremost modern gentleman when he wore Western clothes like Victorian gentlemen in Great Britain. His image was used for Japanese bank note of one thousand yen from 1984 to 2004.

This photo was taken on the day of the funeral of Meiji Emperor, 13 September 1912 when Soseki was 45, only four years before his own death. The black band on his left forearm signifies official mourning. He must have been contemplating the end of an era when he spent most of his life and wondering what the future held for him and for his nation. This is to me one of the best and most moving portrait photographs of all. It shows his deep inner thoughts, feelings and humanity.

Soseki’s grave can be found in the Zoshigaya Cemetery of Toshima-ku, Tokyo. Considering Soseki’s prominence and importance, it was decided the day after his death to perform an autopsy on his body. Especial attention was paid on his brains as he was endowed with such a brilliant mind. They weighed 1425 grams. You can still see them if you wanted as they are stored at the Medical Department of Tokyo University in a glass container steeped in ethanol.

Since young, Soseki was afflicted with illnesses of one sort or another, pulmonary tuberculosis, depression, piles, diabetes, smallpox, eye disease, gastric ulcer, you name it. The last one assaulted him six times in a very serious way and killed him in the end, closing his 49 years and 10 months’ illustrious life. Just before he died he bared his bed clothe, revealing his chest, and said, “Pour water here lest I should die”, according to a certain witness. Then his fourth daughter started to cry, when his wife scolded her and told her to stop crying. Soseki is said to have responded to this tenderly and consoled the child by saying, “It’s all right. Don’t worry. You may cry now”. These are said to be Soseki’s final words.

Soseki used the experiences of his illnesses in different novels. He also wrote haiku about them. One such goes:

秋風やひびの入りたる胃の袋

aki-kaze ya hibi no iri-taru i no fukuro

autumn wind/cracks have appeared…/my poor stomach

He was a teetotaler, which was good from his health point of view. However, he loved eating “heavy” foods such as beefsteaks and oily Chinese meals which were not easy to digest, and other not-so-recommendable foods like jam or ice cream. There is a short essay he once wrote about yokan, bean-based sweet, which was one of his most favourite foods.