False Optics: Keiko’s Haiku Rules (Part Two)

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Now that we have an understanding of how Keiko Imaoka only had a basic grasp of English grammar, it's time to turn to her statement of how "17 English syllables convey a deal more information than 17 Japanese syllables.”

She also relates how "many bilingual poets and translators in the mainstream North American haiku scene agree that something in the vicinity of 11 English is a suitable approximation of 17 syllables, in order to convey the same amount of information".

The problem with these statements is that there is no written article that shows how this true. So it is a hypothesis that really has no proof to back it up. It shows how haiku scholarship in the west has a history of taking things at face value, especially if it is a native Japanese who espouses them. 

By saying "bilingual poets and translators" I think it is probably a safe bet that she means native Japanese speakers who were active in English language haiku circles. It's all well and good to listen what a native Japanese has to say about haiku written in the English language, but it's another thing to simply take what they have said without critically judging it.

Having gotten the grammatical explanation of English quite wrong, it's very possible "the translators" could have gotten the syllabic equivalency part wrong as well. As far as I know, there isn't anything in print that explains the how and whys of English haiku needing to be shorter than 17 syllables. 

So for now, the only thing to do is to look at the way Keiko Imaoka translated from the Japanese into English to see if we can discover the process which shows the reason why for shortened syllable counts.

The statement of "convey a deal more information" is an extremely difficult one to prove unless you go through a dictionary. The problem with taking things out of a dictionary is that you don't get direct translations, you get the equivalent in English, which is a different thing. 

Every language has it strategies and thought processes in putting thoughts and emotions into language, including different ways to express the same things, i.e. polite language, slang, implied language etc..and as varied as these can be in your own language, they will be doubly so when translating from another language where cultural differences are thrown into the mix.

Cultural differences usually mean different ways of seeing things and the translations that Imaoka uses to show how 5-7 structure is a natural act for Japanese speakers clearly shows this. The first example she gives is a slogan used during World War II to show how the populace at home is willing to accept sacrifices for the war effort:

hoshigarimasen(7) katsumadewa(5) : "we want nothing till we win (the war)"

Leaving the horrid grammar of this translation aside, slogans in English tend to be short, snappy and rhythmical in nature to catch our attention: "Want not, 'til victory's got"  So yes, we naturally shorten thoughts to make it catchy and easy to remember, but this isn't so for Japanese speakers where elegant phrasing is what makes it memorable and pleasing to the ear: "We don't want anything until it has been won." 

So, by using proper grammar to translate trying to catch the manner in which the Japanese actually express this sentiment, it ends up with the syllable count that only doesn't match the original because I've used a contraction in making the negative part of this statement. 

Other cultures react to different language cues because words have overtones that express implications that are imbedded in native speakers. 

kono dote-ni(5) noboru-bekarazu(7) keishichou(5) : "Do Not Climb This Levee - The Police Department"

The word "bekarazu" shows that the order posted on this sign is stated by an authority that has the right to issue it. So, a translation that tries to incorporate that would be something along the lines of :

"You must not climb upon this embankment: The Metropolitan Police Department"

where we end up with 21 syllables.Of course, posted signs in English never are written like this because short, direct, pithy statements are commands which we naturally expect: "Posted Property","No Entrance","No Trespassing" etc…

Aphorisms and proverbs can have the same meaning but the way of stating them are different. Because of Shakespeare we are familiar with this:

owariyokereba(7) subete yoshi(5) : "All's well that ends well"

But the sentiment in Japanese is expressed a little differently:

"If the ending comes out as you like, everything is well," which is 2 syllables more syllables than the Japanese. 

This suffers from a lack of articles:

hotaru-no hikari(7) mado-no yuki(5) : "the light of fireflies, snow by the window"

"The lights of the fireflies, the snow by the window" which counts to 13 syllables.

Turning to Imaoka's haiku translations:

yuku haru-ya (5) tori naki uo-no me-ni namida (12) - Basho
spring passing -
birds cry, tears in the eyes of fish 

"The passing of Spring! The birds cry, tears are in the eyes of the fish." Which is 16 syllables. 


neko-no meshi shoubansuru-ya (12) suzume-no-ko (5) - Issa
sampling the cat's food -
a baby sparrow

The Japanese verb of "shoubansuru" doesn't mean "sampling" as translated above, it means "accompanying a main guest at a meal or a feast and be treated with hospitality," which usually means it's for free.

"Accompanying for free the cat at its meal! A baby sparrow."  17 syllables. 

This translation seems to me to be childlike in its construction, so let's put into an adult like phrasing:

ware-to kite asobe-ya (9) oya-no nai suzume (8) - Issa
come play with me -
you motherless sparrow

"Come along and play with me! A sparrow without any mother." 16 syllables.

uguisu-no naku-ya (8) chiisaki kuchi akete (9) - Buson
uguisu singing - (uguisu : a nightingale-like bird)
with the small mouth open

"The bush warbler shall sing! Its tiny mouth is opening….”

Base verbs usually indicate the future tense in Japanese, which is why I used "shall" in the above. 14 syllables. I could have went with "is going to sing" which would have made it 17 syllables as well and would make it more poetic in tone.

dou owaretemo (7) hitozato-o (5) watari-dori (5) - Issa
hunted mercilessly
migrating birds still
fly over towns. 15

"Even though hunted they still come where humans are, the migrating birds”which is 17 syllables.


Looking at these examples, it is hard to see anything that supports the contention that 17 syllables in Japanese amounts to around 11 syllables of information in English. 

Of course, it's easy to compact down the English language down to fewer syllables because we often use condensed language for effect, but that doesn't mean English is inherently shorter than Japanese because we can express the same amount of information in longer sentences as well. 

Native Japanese speakers tend to have trouble with articles on nouns in English as well as with assonance and tone because their language doesn't have these tools of expression in it. Although their language does have a conjugation system for verbs that works similar to our use of auxiliary verbs, they often have problems with the implications that come when we use them. Just because the use of such things make English seem "longer" for them doesn't really mean that it really is.

Putting things into proper sentences, using articles on nouns and various auxiliary verb usages doesn't make English inherently longer, it means it just has different strategies to present and share information and emotional responses to this information. Proper use of language also means elegant expression.

This whole "too much information" argument really isn't about difference between the language, it's is about the use of "minimal" language in English language haiku because it makes it easier for Japanese people like Imaoka to digest and experience what they are reading.

The question of Minimalism has always been around in English language haiku. It plays a big part in the reason why Keiko Imaoka's article has gained credence in the haiku community which I'll discuss more about in the third part of this essay.

False Optics: Keiko’s Haiku Rules (Part One)

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False Optics: Keiko's Haiku Rules (Part One)

In the mid-1990s Keiko Imako wrote an essay that has been influencing haiku written in English since. It is the document that informs the style of haiku that you'll find in any mainstream haiku publication either in print or on-line.Imaoka is a surprising candidate for being the intellectual leader of haiku in the west. She tells us that she had to learn Japanese literature in school, begrudgingly so, to borrow her own phrase, and since traditional Japanese were verse forms seemed boring and irrelevant she could never imagine herself ever writing in them.

 Her interest in haiku started after she came to America where she found that "There was no specialized vocabulary, no archaic grammar to contented with in English haiku; just simple and plain language that even grade-school kids could understand." So, how does someone with minimal training in Japanese haiku become the voice of how it should be written in the English language?

She did it by comparing the abilities of both languages and arguing that Japanese is a much more grammatically flexible than the English language because it's grammatical particles make it possible to for word units to be rearranged in many ways "without altering its core message." This "remarkable malleability and redundancy of the Japanese language…allows for a multiple of options in expressing a single thought. In languages such as English and its relatives whose grammar are heavily dependent on word order, haiku must and will take a much different form from that in Japanese.”

This "remarkable malleability" stands in contrast to the English language which "owes much of its grammatical simplicity to the fact that the word order plays a major role in determining the relationships between words and phrases (subject, object, etc.). In such a language, words and phrases cannot be moved about freely without changing the meaning of a sentence.”

The reason why the Japanese language has this malleability is "because of grammatical particles (joshi) that are suffixed to nouns and mark their syntactic relationships, word units become independent and can be moved about more freely without altering it's core message." 

Ok, but doesn't the English language have things that attach "to nouns and mark their syntactic relationships" too? We call them articles though, and we what we call particles can not only relate to nouns but with verbs as well. And we also have pronouns that mark relationships. These are part and parcel of our grammatical structure, so how does having particles (joshi) make Japanese more malleable than English?

Imaoka gives this statement sentence as an example, "Mother gave it to the kitten" and states that these "words cannot be rearranged without altering the meaning," and follows up by giving six examples of how you can do that with this sentence when it is in Japanese.  But, isn't the idea that in English this sentence can't be rearranged a bit preposterous?

Mother gave it to the kitten.
Mother, to the kitten, gave it.
To the kitten, mother gave it.

The core meaning hasn't been changed at all. We can change things around because the particle, the article and the pronoun in this sentence mark out relationships that make units which can be moved, the exact same thing that Imaoka tells us that the Japanese particles do.

As for the number of ways you can change this sentence, the English language has more articles than the Japanese so if you replace "the" with an "a" in the above you' ve now reached six ways of stating the sentence. "It" is a pronoun that can be changed because the Japanese word of "sore" (it) which Imaoka used can also be translated as the pronoun of "that," so between using the two articles and two pronouns it's now up to at least twelve ways of rearranging and maybe more because using "that" means they are more ways to rearrange the grammar than there is with "it”. 

I came to Japan in late 1990, which is in the same time frame as when Imaoka wrote this article, and it was weird the way the learned class over here saw the English language. They all had studied it from junior high school through university, in same cases still after, and for some reason that gave them the confidence that they understood English as well as they understood their own native language. The general consensus was that English wasn't as sublime as the Japanese language, which is what Imaoka is really telling you when in the article she writes "more flexible", "grammatical simplicity", "more freedom", "further flexibility", and "a multitude of options in expressing a single thought.”

At first, back then I would bristle at some of that inane comments about the English language that were made by some Japanese interested in English, but in time I just started laughing at the farcical nature of it. It is very presumptuous for a speaker of a second language to instruct a native speaker about the grammatical structure of their birth language.

Of course, this was over thirty years ago and Japanese ideas about how their language is more tactful than English have disappeared and the acknowledgment that English is as sublime as their own language is widely accepted now, but this article, which still has relevancy to how haiku is perceived and written, was written back in time when there were certain attitudes that colored Japanese people's minds about the English language. The only way to react to the statement by Imaoka of "the available options in English would be "Mother gave it to the kitten yesterday," and "Yesterday, mother gave it to the kitten," is to understand it as being nothing more than a rudimentary understanding of English grammar.

The Japanese school system spends a lot time drilling formal English grammar into the students because the verb in Japanese is always at the end of the sentence, making English, where the verb is in the middle, a difficult language for the Japanese to learn. Imaoka writing that English is "heavily dependent on word order" is a symptom of this. 

Having a strict "word order" makes it easier for her understand our language but native English speakers don't need as much "ordering" as she does and can and do break the rules to speak intelligently and convey meaning to others. Colloquial language and poetic license are a huge part of the way we converse and create expression with a multiplicity of meanings, things which Imaoka was limited in using. 

Plus, Japanese speakers have a lot of trouble with intonation, which is how a native speaker expresses emotion into words, a thing that is naturally brought out when we invert grammar, which is the "multitude of options in expressing a single thought" that Imaoka states as our language intrinsically lacking in comparison to her own native tongue.

She also told us that "17 English syllables convey a deal more information than 17 Japanese syllables," a statement which will be examined in another essay. But, the point of this first essay should be clear enough: Keiko Imaoka didn't understand English grammar well enough to write authoritatively about it.

BUSON – THE HAZE

指南車を胡地に引去ル霞かな

Shinansha wo kochi ni hiki saru kasumi kana

The south pointing chariot 
leaves into
Northern hinterlands: 
the haze!!


Buson studied Chinese poetry and history and wrote many haiku that have allusions to scenes from famous Chinese poems. This haiku is built around an allusion to the Battle of Zhuolu which is recorded as having been fought in Northern China in the 26th century BC.


The battle at Zhuolu happened because a warlord from the east, named Chi You, decided to conquer the lands of Huangd Di, The Yellow Emperor. The mythology surrounding this battle is that as the soldiers of The Yellow Emperor started to finally turn the tide of the battle, Chi You magically produced a sandstorm, and then haze, which stopped the advancing enemy army in its tracks and kept it at bay.


To counter this a divine vision came to the Yellow Emperor with the design of the south pointing chariot, a cart that has a statue of man on it whose finger, because of a complicated set of gears, always points south no matter what direction the cart is pulled. This vehicle enabled the Yellow Emperor to maneuver his troops through the haze to defeat Chi You.


I have a book titled “Haiku Taikan” (A Comprehensive Survey of Haiku) which writes that the kigo of “kasumi” is well used here. “Kasumi” translates as mist, or haze, and as a kigo is defined as the atmospheric condition where enough water droplets are in the air to impede visibility. 


The book argues that the kigo combined with the act of the chariot leaving, this gives the expanded time frame of a chariot being pulled by people disappearing into the haze, as well as the the width of the hinterlands it is disappearing into, and how wide and far reaching this haze must be.


As interesting as this argument is, you have to perform quite a few mental gymnastics to get yourself into a position that lets you read Buson as giving you an bird’s-eye account of something that happened more than 4000 years before he was alive.


The only way to truly get Buson’s eyes into this haiku is to acknowledge that he has pulled the allusion of the south pointing chariot out of the mists of history to make an unstated epic simile (literally) for the haze he now finds himself in.


I’m not sure how much haze it takes to stop an advancing army in its tracks, but I think Buson once found it enough in his daily life to stop him and transmitted it to the world in an unforgettable way. 


Haze accented with an exclamation works back across the break and links to the part of the allusion that didn’t need to be restated because it is the kigo.

BUSON ー TWILIGHT SUN

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?

BUSON – FIRST FROST

Hatsushima ya Wazurafu tsuru wo tooku miru

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

Buson – Fallen Plum Petals

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.

Buson – Warbler Mouth Opening

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!

Buson – First Warbler

Uguisu no eda fumi hazusu hatsune kana

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: Farther Lights

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.

A Famous Buson Haiku: Is It ‘Kite’ or ‘Kites’?

One of the peculiarities of the Japanese language is that while it’s does have a plural form for nouns it almost never gets used, mainly because the context that speaker is in dictates if they mean more than one of something. This gets a little tricky when it comes to reading haiku because the reader isn’t in the same physically present context as the speaker. And this haiku by Yosano Buson is a good example of it:

几巾きのふの空の有り所
Ikanobori/ kinou no sora no aridokoro

Kites Yesterday’s sky’s having place.

Kites have been in Japan since the 600s when the were imported from China and in the past they were used in many ways as symbols of good luck and talismans for good fortune. Nowadays, we tend to think of kites as something children enjoy, but in the Edo era adults enjoyed them as well. Besides flying them as omens, kite fighting was something that people pursed with enthusiasm as well. Kites became so popular that the Edo government finally banned them except during the o-shougatsu holiday (the few days before and after New Years Day).

The banning of kites caused a problem for haiku. Kites as a “kigo” (season word) were listed as something done in spring, but with what is the now metropolis of Tokyo having forced the flying of them into the New Years’ holiday, the “kigo” had to accommodate that as well. Any seasonal reference books for haiku (‘Saijiki”) are in five volumes, four for the seasons and the extra one for the New Years period which is the most important religious holiday of the Japanese calendar. The old “Saijiki” I have has a double listing for kites, one in spring and the other for the New Year. However, the practice now is to only have kites listed as something done in spring.

Understanding the history of kites in Japan is important in the context of reading plurals into this haiku because, as anyone who lives long enough in Japan learns, there is a right date and a wrong date for everything. My wedding, for example, ending up being on a Tuesday instead of the more preferable Saturday because of it being a more auspicious day, or as it got explained to me “Saturday is no good because it is a bad Buddha day.”

Having good days and bad days makes religious things a bit more communal because people will always do things on good days. So, if someone wants to fly a kite as an omen of something then they would necessarily do it on a good day and not a bad one, meaning that there will be more than one person out flying kites on the good days. Since kites could only be flown during a short period of the year in Edo, probably not longer than a week, then there will be hordes of people out flying them before the ban kicks in again,

The point I am trying to make is that it is hard to read this haiku and not think of there being more than one kite up in the sky and that Buson was actually implying the plural here. The Nihon Daisaijiki, a large full color “saijiki” published about ten years ago, discusses this haiku and states this about the number of kites:

必ずしも大空の全体を指していうのではない。一つまたはたぶん数個の凧を背景とした空の一部分を示す。
This doesn’t have to necessarily refer to the whole of the sky. It indicates the scene of a part of the sky that has one, or more likely, several kites in it.

Above is the picture that is included in this book under the heading of kites. Because is a wood block print, you can’t say that it is of the whole sky, but it is a part of the sky that has several kites floating in it.

Even when a commentator wants to you read this as being about only one kite, they have to couch it in terms of other kites in the sky. A book titled “Haiku Daikan” published by Meiji Shoin explains it like this:

空にあがっている凧の数は多くはない。少なくともその凧の付近には他の凧はなく、それをはっきり指示できるように、ぽつんと一つ浮かんでいるのである。
There aren’t a large number of kites flying in the sky. In the very least, there are no other kites nearby this one, to follow this instruction to its obvious conclusion, there is a solitary one afloat.

Asking the reader to follow this instruction is a dead give away that the writer automatically assumes that the reader is reading the plural for kites.

I don’t find the argument for a single, or actually separated, kite very compelling because it makes the image a very personal one, which is exactly how at the end this commentator reads the symbolism of the kites:

人生の寂寥がこの凧に暗示されているように思えて、悲しさと同時に一種の懐かしさの感じられる句である。
It seems that the loneliness of human existence is suggested with this kite, sadness and at the same time a kind of fond remembrance is to be felt in this expression.

Whenever we feel fondness and sadness at the same time it means we are becoming nostalgic about something. It’s easy to understand how Buson would get nostalgic about his childhood from a kite, but I’d argue that the experience of flying a kite rather than watching one is what would more likely trigger the flood of emotion that would bring the bittersweet memories argued for above. I think it is next to impossible to read that Buson is flying this kite because I don’t think he would be able to make the topographical description of them being in the same spot as they were yesterday if he was.

The commentator in the Daisaijiki makes this conclusion about the haiku

万事が平穏無事、いかにも、のどかな春の気分が濃厚である。それをを眺めとり、感じとった人の心も同様であろう。
Everything is calm and peaceful, indeed, there is a deepness to the feeling of the mild spring. Getting that as a scene, the impression in a person’s mind too will surely be similar.

This reading has the scene influencing the feelings in the writer, it’s a lovely spring day and people are enjoying it by going out with their kites and the scene has Buson feeing relaxed and secure about life. The immediate problem with this reading is that there aren’t any emotional markers in the haiku to expresses the “feeling” that the commentator mentions. In haiku, particles of speech are how the writer attaches personal emotions onto images, but in this haiku Buson didn’t use any. If he was feeling the mild spring so deeply you’d expect that there would be a particle used somewhere to express it.

Japanese is my second language, and, so sure, there might be a nuance in this haiku that I am unable to catch because I’m not a native speaker, but for me the lack of a particle shows that Buson is being intellectual rather than emotional here. Saying that the kites are in the same spot as yesterday is not a visceral reaction to the scene, rather it is a measured logical one.

Therefore, the symbolism for me becomes a little more generic and less personal. Instead of being a privatized experience, I tend to see this as a universal one. Everyone has flown a kite or watched kites in flight sometime during their life. Besides the universality, kite flying is also a timeless enterprise. How long have people been flying them? Although the popularity of kites wane, somebody somewhere still enjoys flying them. The kite designs are timeless as well, kites patterned after those made in the Edo era still fly as true today as they did back then, and I’m sure that the even older designs will still be able take to the air.

So, with ‘timelessness’ as the optimum idea in my mind:

Kites....
    in the spot
        of sky 
           they were  
               in yesterday.

The problem with this literal translation is that the Japanese language doesn’t need adjectives to fill scenes for the reader because connotations between words implies scenes that don’t need to be openly stated. Unfortunately, in English, we need adjectives to paint the scene, and since we use sound as a way to imply emotions, adjectives are also the means of achieving syntax as well.

Kites aloft....
      in the same exact 
              spot of 
                clear sky 
            they wafted in yesterday.

All I have done is put in some adjectives around the images and use a verb that adds a descriptive element rather than a nondescript one. I don’t think I have impinged in on what is in the original is by doing this.