Kyorai Mukai, part 6

December 2012

SPECIAL COMMEMORATIVE KEY-NOTE PUBLIC LECTURE

AT WORLD HAIKU FESTIVAL 2010 IN NAGASAKI

BY

SUSUMU TAKIGUCHI

CHAIRMAN, THE WORLD HAIKU CLUB

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Kyorai Mukai (1651－1704):

PART SIX

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It is possible that Kyorai began to practice haikai shortly before the compilation of Ichiro-Fu in the summer of 1685. A year before that, namely the first year of Jokyo (1684), Kikaku came up to Kyoto and stayed there for some time during which he had kukai meetings with local haikai poets. This resulted in the compilation of the anthologyShimi-Shu. Kyorai’s name was not yet found in it.

If Kyorai had already started the way of haikai before the compilation of the anthology then he would most probably have met Kikaku as one of the local haikai poets of Kyoto and Kikaku would have had no hesitation in engineering to include Kyorai in the anthology. The two poets got on splendidly well with each other.

As we have already seen Kyorai appeared as an established haikai poet in a proper anthology the following year, which seems to indicate that he entered the world of haikai only recently and made a rapid progress. In other words either Kyorai was not yet practicing haikai in 1684 or he was such a beginner that he was not yet good enough to be included in an anthology. It may well be that he met Kikaku who was visiting Kyoto and was persuaded to begin haikai on the latter’s strong insistence.

The second year of Jokyo (1685) was very important for Kyorai in another way. That is to say that in this year Kyorai had a second home built in Saga area of Western Kyoto. This was the detached house which was to become Rakushi-Sha (Falling Persimons Pavillion) when in 2 Genroku (1689) Kyorai came back from his visit to Nagasaki. There were as many as forty persimmon trees in this second house which indicates that it was quite a sizable estate.

Kyorai’s main house is said to have been situated near Shogo-in inOkazaki. He must have been a man of substance if in addition to this main house he could afford to buy a large estate even if it was in the countryside. There were forest lands in Shogo-in. The area where Kyorai’s main house was located is held to have been called OkazakiVillage. Kyorai’s family was a rich family with successful medical doctors. However, Kyorai was not a doctor himself and quite how he amassed wealth is a moot point.

Shogo-in in Okazaki still exists today, having Kyoto University in the immediate North and the Heian Shrine and Okazaki Park in the immediate South. In South-East is Higashi-yama. Okazaki was a favourite district for many of the members of the Imperial family and aristocrats to live in the Heian Period (794~1185). After that the district reverted back to agricultural lands. It is a long way away from Saga even by today’s standards. How much more so it must have been in Kyorai’s time. Saga must have looked to him and his contemporaries as if it were distant countryside. Kyorai’s family cemetery is located in the Shin-nyo Doh Temple which is a short distance to the North-East from Shogo-in.

A number of reasons have been pointed out why Kyorai entered haikai so late. As was mentioned before Kyorai was of a samurai family and it was customary for a samurai family to prefer waka to haikai, which explains why he did not take up haikai for a long time. Of course there were exceptions such as Morikawa Kyoriku, a samurai of the Hikone Domain, who was a famous haikai poet under the Basho school. I would mention Hori Jakuo, who once was a retainer of the Omura Domain and who enjoyed haikai. Basho himself was of a samurai stock, serving Todo Yoshitada (haiku name: Sengin) who was the lord of Iga Ueno province.

However, generally speaking it was traditionally one of the accomplishments for a samurai to be good at waka composition. Kyorai was no exception. He was conversant with waka and haikai was something foreign to him. It may be that he just did not have any opportunity to be introduced to haikai. His enthusiasm for waka can be seen in the description of his interests in Rakushi Sensei Gyojo:”…(Kyorai) was interested in Fuga no Michi (the way of poetry) and left not a few waka poems…”

Moreover, Kyorai a straightforward, upright and proud person. To put it more simply, he was a very serious person and a bit rigid in his approach to things. He followed serious and difficult learning and discipline. Thus, a sense of play, decadent taste, plebeian pastime, humour, or vulgarity of haikai were perhaps all remote from his life’s philosophy. Kyorai’s father was also an intellectual, hobnobbing among the courtiers and high aristocrats. Close to him, Kyorai was also associated with the high society, which may mean that he was removed from the populace and its culture such as haikai.

(To be continued)