遅き日や雉子の下りゐる橋の上
Osoki hi ya Kiji no ori wiru hashi no ue
The long spring twilight sun!
A pheasant
is gliding down over
a bridge.
There is a double kigo here because pheasant “kiji is also a reference to spring.
The are two characteristics about Japanese pheasants relative to this haiku. Sunlight flashes off the up side of their wings, noticeably during flight, because, being ground birds, they aren’t the world’s best aviators and have to flap quite a bit when airborne, and another extension of this poor flying ability is that when they want to land they simply stop flapping and with outstretched wings glide down to a landing. This descent is usually a much longer protracted glide in contrast with other birds.
Here’ s a great video of a pheasant taking off and landing.
It’s easy enough to understand the tenor of the kigo and the vehicle of the aloft pheasant that carries it once you understand how to imagine the image after the break. Plus, the flash in a pheasant wings as it flies also ties into a metaphor of the sun. Anyone in the world understands the experience of the longer days in spring and how the sunlight can simply linger and linger until the dusk finally fades away.
Every Japanese commentator I’ve ever read comments on how beautiful this imagery is, and I find it so beautiful that it is hard to move past the imagery to flesh out the inherent metaphor buried in it. That’s how great of a poet Buson was.
My first impulse was too see the pheasant fly straight down the course of a river and be over a bridge now, but since a landing would be so protracted it’s probably unlikely that a pheasant would dare to come above a bridge parallel to the water. So, it’s direction must be crossing over a bridge from bank to bank. Since the pheasant is coming down and is over the bridge, then it is going to land on side of the river it is facing. Does it face you or face away from you? Facing away completes the metaphor, doesn’t it?
Cranes migrate from the colder climes in Northern China and Siberia to spend the winter in Japan. Their arrival are considered a sign of the start of winter weather. The fall of the first frost makes Buson realize that the cranes will soon be arriving.
There is no real future verb tense in the Japanese language and the dictionary form of verbs are often simply used to imply it, especially for the near future. The use of the exclamative kireji prioritizes the first frost in Buson mind, which means the later verb is to be meant to be read as a future action.
If he had placed the ‘ya’ at the end of the phrase about the cranes seen afar, then you could read the haiku as stating that the cranes come on the same day as the first frost.
It is interesting that Buson used the adjective “worn and suffering” to sketch out the image of the cranes clearly. I think that this haggard condition of the cranes would be more noticeable after they have completed migration and are spending more time on the ground than in the air, so Buson must be sketching from prior observations of the cranes. It’s almost impossible to see the actual physical condition of birds while they are upon wing.
I find Buson’s ability to mix personal memories into the scenes he writes about makes him a very unique poet. It allows him to create haiku with a spacial and temporal range that other poets can’t match. He was a man who not only saw the world around him, he reacted to it in a way that was vital and alive within it.
Art work by Akemi Karkoski, translation by James Karkoski
紅梅の落花燃らむ馬の糞 与謝蕪村
Koubai no rakka moyuramu uma no fun Yosa Buson
Probably it’s
what’s making the fallen red
plum petals blaze:
horse shit.
The two interesting things from a writing standpoint is the use of the verb ending “ramu” with no actual kireji employed by Buson.
“Ramu” is a conjugation that expresses speculation about the something in the present,
Buson is wondering about why the fallen petals seem redder and the explanation he finds is that the horse excrement they have fallen to makes them stand out more. Fresh horse droppings are a solid dark dung pile and things that land on top of them usually stand out with depth. I like to imagine that it was Buson’s own horse that has left the now adorned poop he is admiring.
It has been argued that any letter in the Japanese syllabary can be used by as a kireji because voicing can make cuts without any of the established kireji used. We can end any phrase or sentence with any letter of our language depending on the context or grammatical pattern the final word is used in, so can the Japanese. Indeed, all of the self proclaimed puncuation-less haiku in English is proof of this being true.
I contend that the “moyuramu” followed by “uma” makes a “mu - um” voicing that forces a slight pause between the two sounds and this is just enough a cut in the phrasing to call it one. If you don’t agree with this assessment, then your translation of the haiku would move “horse shit” to being placed right before “what’s” to get the uninterrupted flow of having no break.
I think having the break is the whole poetry in this haiku because I have to work through a line of thought before I can see the main image of the blazing red petals. After I reading the haiku, I must to stop and first see the dark horse shit in my own mind before I can move on to
see how it’s making the petals seem brighter, a process that in the end leads me to see the redness of the petals in sharper definition. In my mind, this sharpness is lost if you decide to ignore the break. The power of the break is what makes haiku poetry.
Needless to say, the fresh invention of using the disparaging image of dung to bring out the beauty of the red petals has made this a very memorable haiku.
うぐいす の啼くやちひさき口明て 与謝蕪村
Uguisu no naku ya Chihisaki kuchi aite Yosa Buson
The bush warbler
will let
loose it’s call!
It’s mouth is slightly opening …
The first thing to notice about this haiku is that ‘ya’ is placed at the the eighth counting spot, breaking the haiku in an unusual spot.
‘Ya’ is an interjectory particle that functions, to quote Haruo Shirane, “as a light exclamation that creates overtones.” Here it functions to alert the reader that Buson is excited about his realization about what the bush warbler is about to do.
‘Ya’ can be used at any break in a sentence and in haiku and it is usually used in the 5th counting spot to highlight the kigo or placed at the ending of phrasing at 12 to bring attention to the description there within.
“Kana”, the other exclamatory often used, is an ending particle that always occupies the 16th and 17th spots in haiku. It carries a little more emotional weight that ‘ya’ does, and since it is always is placed last it gives the poet a anchor of sound to write the syntax of the rest against.
Having the written the above I’ll add, “ya” represents an intellectual reaction to something whereas “kana” shows a deeper emotionally charged state of mind.
This is a famous haiku that shows all the qualities of Masaoka’s Shiki’s ideas about ’shasei’ sketching from life style of writing that could be found in haiku history, making Buson a poet whose brilliance Shiki brought to the modern world’s attention. It is also argued that all the ‘i’ sounds that are in the phrasing after the break are a harkening back to Matsuo Basho’s keen and clear aesthetical style of poetry in contrast to what was being written before Shiki’s influence.
As for the meaning, well, any bird must open its mouth before it sings, but if you check out any video on-line of Japanese bush warblers singing in the wild, you’ll notice that these birds will always slightly open their mouths, pause, and then open wide to belt out with their notes. I’d imagine they first open up to gulp air into their lungs, enabling them to get the unusual volume of sound they produce. Buson must have had caged warblers and have spent time watching them, which is why he gets excited when one first breaks its beaks, he knows it is building up for a song!
This haiku is a great example how the kireji of ‘kana’ as an exclamation works for poetic effect.
The first thing to understand about the ‘kana’ in haiku is that the usage is different from contemporary spoken usage in Japan as the exclamation of doubt that on-line dictionaries will give as its definition. Rather, the ‘kana’ of haiku comes from the historical usage of it since the Heinan period as an exclamatory final particle that combines the use of “ka”, another classical Japanese exclamation used in antiquity, with the particle of “na” which is still spoken as an exclamation today. So in haiku, it’s an exclamation mark.
Exclamation marks are big part of haiku history because it allows the writer to highlight one part of the haiku that then works meaning back over the break into the other part of the haiku, which is the famous coming over and back across the cut the kireji cause in the haiku.
I wouldn’t say that this is one of Buson’s great haikus, but its simplicity shows how the exclamation mark works back across the break. The open two lines give an image, well not exactly an image but rather a quick video clip of a warbler losing it’s footing, but the exclamation on the last line of it being the first warbler song of the season Buson hears makes the reader return to ponder why hearing this first sound made Buson exclaim about it.
Warblers in the wild are hard to pin down, mainly because their cries project so well that judging where they exactly are is difficult, especially since they are small birds that tend to stay along the cool secluded edges of valleys. So the situation of Buson actually seeing a warbler slip is problematic, unless he had a caged one which was common when he was alive. But, the fact of this being the first one of the year heard does preclude it being a captured one.
Warbler is an apt description of what the Japanese species sounds like. Adult ones are able to keep up a steady air flow when sliding their voices up and down, but the younger birds can have trouble keeping their sounds constant and fall off the register quite a bit before they master projecting their voices.
This is where “kana” leads us, to reading the haiku as direct comparison between the idea of a warbler losing its footing as it sings and the faltering efforts of the young one Buson first hears, because it leads into recognizing that a simile is being established here. Similes in English are always stated outright but in Japanese they often can be implied, like pronouns etc.. are, because it is a language where the speaker can omit obvious statement when the subject and object is clear.
This is where the effect of the “kigo” comes into play because they are pre-determined tropes that automatically provide either the tenor or the vehicle depending on where the writer wants to place their emotional emphasis. ‘Hatsune’ is the kigo here that presents the trope of hearing the first bird of whatever season they might appear in, and Buson is using it to be the tenor to a vehicle that humorously, and aptly, describes it. With this being seventeen syllables, I’d categorize it as an epic simile.
This is not to say that every exclamation mark used in haiku means a simile or metaphor is being made, just that Japanese haiku poets did, and still do, make them just like poets in other languages have done and will do. That’s why haiku is such a revered poetic form, great writers working their language to its fullest effect in a determined verse form, no different than the rest of the world.
Artwork by Akemi Karkoski, translation by James Karkoski
Buson’s verb use lets us into the world where he contrasts a scene against a scene in his memory, making this a haiku which traverses time in a way that most haiku don’t. We’ve all had the experience of the changing seasons affecting the natural lighting around us, so the visual imagery of the haiku isn’t striking per se, but what does stand out is the exclamation he ends the first line with, which turns the haiku from just a statement about the faltering light into a metaphoric image of what the feeling of the coming autumn is like. The exclamation softens the image and lets us absorb it into our memory and draw out from own experinces the first soft appoach of fall weather. This is also a good example of how Buson is able to present a wider visual spacial image than other haiku writers, he is master at giving space and time to the reader to contemplate. Art work by Akemi Karkoski, translation by James Karkoski.
The Haiku Experiment 