SARUMINO Linked Poetry of the Basho School with Haiku Selections S8.95 In 1690 the haiku master Basho and other poets of his school wrote four long poems that have been be­ loved by the Japanese people ever since. Originally published in 1691 in an anthology called Sarumino (Monkey’s Raincoat), these poems arc presented here in a lively English translation that brings across what Basho called the “high and low” of the haiku world in all its transcendent power. The four poems, one for each of the four seasons, are each written in a linkcd-verse form known as the renga. One poet sets down a three-line verse on the season chosen for that poem. A second poet follows with a two-line verse, somehow related to the first verse. A third poet follows with a verse related to the econd, and so on. The unexpected twists and turns ? ordinary happenings, affectionate humor, quiddi- s of the natural world, profundities of religion and lilosophy, the elegance of the court and court poetry—these disparities are set side by side in the renga in what appears to be random selection but is in fact a careful ordering. How the somewhat hidden structure of these poems—the linking techniques, renga rules, and means of creating tempo—results in a satisfying wholeness, a true poetry of experience, is explored by the translator in her Introduction. Readers will find that her confidence and delight in the ancient art of linked verse lead them to a new level of under­ standing. In addition to the four renga, the translator has (continued on back flap) I >. •*. ■ m. HT y - i . - ■ - Tm —v. ■ 3p§ "‘J'H J- ". 3 • . §giV'.-.> X*- - MONKEY'S RAINCOAT Calligraphy by Yakushiji Soseki of Basho’s poem (p. 50). m ±±t MONKEY’S M RAINCOAT SARUMINO Linked Poetry of the Basho School with Haiku Selections translated by LENORE MAYHEW CHARLES E. TUTTLE COMPANY Rutland • Vermont / Tokyo • Japan m REPRESENTATIVES Kk\ For Continental Europe: Boxerbooks, Inc., Zurich For the British Isles: vsii Prcnticc-Hall International, Inc., London For Australasia: - 3 Book Wise (Australia) Pty. Ltd. 3S I Jeanes Street, Beverly 5009, South Australia *38 ! & Published by the Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc. of Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo, Japan with editorial offices at Suido 1-chome, 2-6, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo Copyright in Japan, 1985 by Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 85-051629 International Standard Book No. 0-8048 1500-3 First printing, 1985 Printed in Japan & - ... i TABLE OF CONTENTS page 7 List of Illustrations 9 Acknowledgments 11 Introduction Historical Background / 11 The Four Kasen of Monkey's Raincoat / 13 Structure in Renga / 17 The Haiku of Monkey's Raincoat / 42 Notes on Translation / 46 51 Biographies 61 The Kasen Winter Rain (Hatsnshigure) / 63 Summer Moon (Natsu no Tsuki) / 77 6 I TABLE OF CONTENTS I Autumn Cricket (Kirigiristi) / 91 Grass and Plum (Umc Wakana) I 105 119 Haiku Selections Sequence 1/121 life ;V#i Sequence 2/133 <3 145 Notes to the Poems 149 Bibliography . 151 Index of Poets V p LIS T OF ILL US TRA TIONS (Frontispiece). Calligraphy by Yakushiji Soscki 1. “A Poetic Gathering,” by Matsumura Goshun 60 2. “The Deserted Fields,” by Sengai Gibon 63 3. “The Toad,” by Sengai Gibon 77 4. “Chrysanthemum,” by Sengai Gibon 91 5. “Bamboos,” by Sengai Gibon 105 6. “The Shrine of Tcnjin,” by Eto Reigen 118 19 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My thanks to William McNaughton, sinologist, and to Ronald ]. DiCenzo, professor of History and East Asian Studies at Oberliti College, for their generous guidance through troublesome areas in the text. If inaccuracies or misinterpretations remain, I alone am responsible. I would also like to thank the following for providing illustrative materials: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund; the Kurt and Millie Gitter Collection; the Idemitsu Museum of Arts; and Master Yakushiji Soseki, who wrote the calligraphy for the frontispiece. m V t k-: sss 1 . S3 £ Note: Throughout the book, Japanese names are given in traditional order, that is, surname followed by given name. Where a single -• ..- name appears, this is the name by which the poet is commonly known, generally the given name or a pseudonym. ‘.•I Romanization of Japanese follows the Hepburn system; macrons, , signifying a long vowel, are included in the romanized version of 0 the poems, to show the correct syllable count, and in the text only s' 1 when a term or proper name appears with Chinese characters. £5 r- 1 H Ill INTRODUCTION HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The four long poems in this book are in a Japanese poetic form known as the renga or “linked poem.” Briefly, a renga is a series of alternating three- and two-line verses of set syllabic structure composed by a group of people working together. Except for the medieval troubadour’s tensons and partimens, or “verse debates,” such a genre of poetry is virtually unknown in the Western world. This sort of group exercise might seem to Western minds less original and less worthy than work by one person, but the Japanese feel differently about it. Indeed, poetry everywhere in the Far East is as much a social as a private pursuit. Reciting, discussing, or writing poems is often a pleasant pastime at parties. The renga is, in fact, a game, but that does not, in the minds of the players, detract from its seriousness. \2 I INTRODUCTION As early as the twelfth century, Japanese courtiers were writing renga. In the fifteenth century, as samurai i!j and merchants began to have leisure time, they, too, played the game. Their poem sequences were called haikai no renga or simply haikai In these exchanges elegance, charm, and decorum were ignored. The new values were wit, satire, word play, eroticism, freshness. Haikai no renga, while lively and entertaining, were sometimes not what courtiers would have called poetry. Some were, in fact, vulgar doggerel, like the party poems of Robert Bums or certain unpublished work of T. S. Eliot. In the sixteenth century, dissatisfaction with haikai no renga led to the establishment of new schools of renga to defend the older, more aristocratic values. The school of Matsunaga Teitoku (1571-1653) was for a time successful in reasserting elegance; but with the establishment of the Danrin school, founded by Nishiyama Soin (1605-82), rules were relaxed and renga again became primarily comic. It was Basho (1644-94) who saw possibilities in the renga form beyond the sterile polish of court poetry and the vulgar dazzle of comic verses. At first a member of the Danrin school, Basho gradually de­ veloped a poetry and a theory of poetry that were founded on neither form nor wit, but on the use of i! form and wit to express the reality of experience. Like THE FOUR KASEN \ 13 the Chinese poets he admired, Basho wrote poetry of the moment, poetry that captured the particularity of whatever he was speaking about. His object was to show us the miraculous in the ordinary. One of his aesthetic principles is kakcri a word which means “pcnetratingly,” “shrewdly,” “cleverly to make your point.” Basho seems to use the word to describe his way of cutting through the usual perception of things, an idea not unlike that of the young Bertolt Brecht when he exclaims in his diary, “Oh, God, please let my sight cut through the crust, pierce it.” Basho’s method of cutting, reflected in his famous dictum “Learn of the pine from the pine, of the bam­ boo from the bamboo,” was to set aside all used-up phrases, literary notions, ideas current and traditional and to go to the thing itself. Molded by Basho, renga, in its origin almost a game and still, on the surface, often light-hearted, came to be a profound and seri­ ous art. THE FOUR KASEN OF MONKEYS RAINCOAT Renga are written as follows. One person composes a hokku ^§6}, or “opening verse,” the three lines of this poem containing seventeen syllables distributed in the pattern 5-7-5. This poem must be complete in itself, but the next step is that some other person an- i 14 I INTRODUCTION ;4| swers it with a two-line fourteen-syllable poem ar­ ranged in the pattern 7-7. Then a third person responds i to the 7-7 with another 5-7-5, and next a fourth per­ "11 son (or the first poet if only three are writing) responds m again with a 7-7. This 5-7-5 / 7-7 / 5-7-5 / 7-7 . pattern can be repeated until there arc a thousand ! verses, but writing a hundred was much more usual. ■■ In Basho’s day the kasen Refill, a renga of thirty-six verses, became standard. The term “kasen” translates as “singing sennin,” referring to the Thirty-six Im­ mortal Poets,* and thus indirectly to the number of verses in this type of renga. In the first month of 1690, Basho was in Otsu, near i Lake Biwa, and his friend, student, and supporter Otokuni was about to set out for Edo (present-day Tokyo). To celebrate this trip, these two and six other poets (one of them Otokuni’s mother, Chigetsu) started to compose a kasen. Basho was the host and wrote the opening verse. Otokuni followed with the *sennin: often translated “hermit,” this term refers to one who lives secluded from the world, for example, in a mountain hut. The Thirty-six Immortal Poets (Sanjurokkasen) were a group of Pi thirty-six prominent poets chosen by the government official and : poet Fujiwara-no-Kinto (966-1041), who collected poems from each of them for an anthology.