Issa’s poems reveal a deep engagement with the teachings of Zen, as well as with the Way of Haiku advocated by Bashō, and it is probably for these strengths of character, including his unabashed honesty, that he was admired by almost everyone regardless of social rank.
Japan has a long history of revering its poets—posthumously for the most part. There are many “Issa sites” and “haiku stones” with his poems engraved for posterity; his old homestead in Kashiwabara has been preserved. And, thanks to his only surviving child, his lineage continues.
In translating Issa’s poems, I have held in my ear the sound of the original, the assonance and consonance, rhyme and slant rhyme that provides the foundation of the music of the original. Haiku grew out of the 5–7–5–7–7 syllabic structure of waka (later called tanka), which means simply “Japanese poem.” Sounded out in the original, the “song” of haiku often includes a pregnant pause created by use of a “cutting word” (kakekotoba). Haiku was the first Japanese poetry (except that in the folk song tradition) to be written in the vernacular rather than in the highly refined language of the court. With its roots in the lyric tradition, it is meant to be heard.
Much of what passes for haiku, or the translation of haiku in American English, is not really either. Issa’s poems have often been reduced to fragmentary English bearing little resemblance to the music, meaning or syntax of the original. I have sometimes made use of interpolation to fill out the music of these translations (American English tends to use fewer syllables than Japanese). But I have not made a Procrustean bed of syllabic structure. Sometimes a variation of a syllable or two suffices, especially when a long or heavy syllable is involved or when there is a sustained pause. My primary concern is to say what the poet says without rearranging the original order of perception.
Most of these poems are translated from Issa Haikaishu (Iwanami Shoten, 1990); others come from various sources, all checked for accuracy against the standard scholarly “complete works” Issa Zenshu (Shinamo Mainichi Shimbun-sha). Special thanks are due to my friend Keida Yusuke for his tireless efforts in helping “Obaka-san” bring the Japanese into Romaji (transliterated Japanese) and for his close reading of and helpful commentary on my translations. His generosity is evident on nearly every page. Nine bows.
SAM HAMILL
Kage-an, 1995–96
The Spring of My Life
ONE
Long ago, in Fuko Temple in Tango Province, there was a devout priest who made up his mind to celebrate New Year’s Day to the fullest. So he wrote a letter on New Year’s Eve, gave it to his novice with instructions to deliver it to him first thing the following morning, and sent him off to spend the night in the main hall.
With first light and the first crow caws, the novice rose in the long shadows and went to knock at the priest’s door. He heard the priest’s voice from deep within, asking who was calling. “A messenger,” he replied, “sent from Amida, Buddha of the Pure Land, bearing seasonal greetings.”
The door was thrust open and the still barefoot priest motioned his novice to take the seat of honor. He grabbed the letter and opened it quickly, reading aloud, “Give up the world of suffering! Come to the Pure Land. I will meet you along the way with a host of bodhisattvas!”
Tears rolled down the old priest’s cheeks until they soaked his sleeves.
This story may at a glance seem terribly strange. After all, who would want to celebrate New Year’s Day in sleeves soaked with tears, tears that were self-induced? Nevertheless, the priest’s way was righteous: his principle duty was to bring the Buddha’s teaching to this world. What better way to celebrate New Year’s Day?
Still clothed in the dust of this suffering world, I celebrate the first day in my own way. And yet I am like the priest, for I too shun trite popular seasonal congratulations. The commonplace “crane” and “tortoise” echo like empty words, like the actors who come begging on New Year’s Eve with empty wishes for prosperity. The customary New Year pine will not stand beside my door. I won’t even sweep my dusty house, living as I do in a tiny hermitage constantly threatening to collapse under harsh north winds. I leave it all to the Buddha, as in the ancient story.
The way ahead may be dangerous, steep as snowy trails winding through high mountains. Nevertheless I welcome the New Year just as I am.
New Year greeting-time:
I feel about average
welcoming my spring
Although she was born only last May, I gave my little daughter a bowl of soup and a whole rice cake for New Year’s breakfast, saying:
Laughing, crawling, you’re
exploring—already two1
years old this morning
NEW YEAR’S DAY, 1819
No servant to draw wakamizu, New Year’s “first water,”
But look: Deputy
Crow arrives to enjoy
the first New Year’s bath
Springtime beside a lake:
Under such a calm
spring moon, even the tortoise
crows this season?
As if from the gods,
spring moonlight illuminates
the hillside flower thief
Entering Zenkō Temple on a festival day:
A gray pussy willow
sold as a Buddha flower—
proud among colors
This old cherry tree
was loved famously when it
was—ah—so young
Full cherry blossoms—
his old hip tentative under
tucked-up kimono
Written to celebrate Inari, the mythical trickster fox, on his festival day:
From among the flowers,
indifferent to the world,
foxes bark and cry
Second day, second month—
burning moxa with the cat,
quietly at home2
Emerging brightly,
beautifully from the bushes,
a new butterfly!
Ueno Hill in the distance:
Above the blather,
those broad walls remain at ease,
white in misty air
All the garden this
poor house can afford: one plot
of budding green rice
In cherry blossom
shadows, no one, really, is
a stranger now
Written on Buddha’s Death Day [March 15, 1819]:
Aloof and silent
like the Buddha, I lie still—
still troubled by flowers
Even as he sleeps,
Buddha smilingly accepts
flowers and money
Full of play, the kitten
climbs up on the scale
to weigh itself
Along the Tama River:
Dyers’ white cloth strips
luff in the breeze, brightening
the white mists of spring
TWO
On a beautiful spring morning, a young monk-in-training named Takamaru, still a child at eleven, left Myōsen Temple with a big monk named Kanryō. They planned to pick herbs and flowers in Araizaka, but the boy slipped on an old bridge and plunged into the icy, roaring river, which was swollen with snowmelt and runoff from Iizuna Mountain.
Hearing the boy’s screams for help, Kanryō dashed down the bank, but there was nothing he could do. Takamaru’s head bobbed up, then disappeared. A hand rose above the raging water. But soon his cries grew as faint as the high buzz of mosquitoes, and the young monk vanished in the river, nothing left but his image engraved forever on Kanryō’s eyes.
On into the evening, torches flared along the bank as people searched for Takamaru. Finally, he was found, his body wedged between boulders, too late for anyone to help.
When someone found a handful of young butterburs in the dead boy’s pocket, probably a gift for his parents, even those who seldom weep began to soak their sleeves. They lifted his body onto a bamboo palanquin and carried him home.
&nb
sp; It was late evening when his parents ran out to see his body, their bitter tears observed by everyone. True, as followers of the Way, they had always preached transcendence of this life’s miseries, but who could act otherwise? Their all-too-human hearts were shattered by undying love for their child. When the boy had left at dawn, he had been alive and laughing.
The young monk lay still and cold in the evening. Two days later, joining the funeral procession at his cremation, I wrote this tanka:
Not once did I think
I’d throw these fresh spring blossoms
into this dense smoke
and stand back to watch it rise
and vanish into the sky.
As much as Takamaru’s parents, flowers too must weep to know they may be hacked down and burned on any day just as they open their faces to warm spring sun after months of winter snow. Don’t flowers have a life? Won’t they, as much as we, realize nirvana in the end?
During meditation:
He glares back at me
with an ugly, surly face,
this old pond frog
A bright moon lights
the plum blossoms. Am I
also tempted to steal them?
High over the dark
shadows of Pine Islands, a
skylark breaks into song
Teasingly, the big cat
wags its long tail, toying with
a small butterfly
Written in Hoshina village on a spring Kannon3 festival day:
Wind-strewn blossoms—
Buddha gathers secret coins
in a shady nook
The gentle willow,
pliant as a woman, tempts me
into the garden
Belly full of rice cake,
to digest, I go out and
graft another tree
THREE
Several people told me a story about some folks who heard heavenly music at two in the morning on New Year’s Day. Furthermore, they all said, these people have heard it again every eighth day since. They described exactly when and where each hearing occurred.
Some people laughed it off as the trickeries of the wind, but I was reluctant to accept or dismiss the story without evidence. Heaven and earth are home to many mysteries. We all know the stories of dancing girls who pour the morning dew from high above. Perhaps the spirits who observe from the corridors of the heavens, seeing a peaceful world, called for music to rejoice. And perhaps we who failed to hear it were deafened by our own suffering.
I invited a few friends to visit my hermitage the morning of March 19th, and we spent the whole night listening. By the time first light broke in the east, we’d heard nothing. Then, suddenly, we heard singing from the plum tree outside a window.
Just a bush warbler
to sing morning Lotus Sutra
to this suffering world
Wanting to welcome
the visiting bush warbler,
I swept the garden
In falling spring rain
the innkeeper assigns rooms,
even to the horse
O little sparrows!
Mind your place! Be careful there!
Lord Horse passes through!
In hazy spring mist,
sitting inside the great hall,
not a hint of sound
Horses pass by, each
with its rider—and behind them,
the skylarks follow
At Shimabara, Kyoto:
The friendly barker calls—
even the willow’s tempted,
bending to a geisha
This rural village
overrun with bamboo shrub—
lucky to see plum
With laughter all day
and nighttime’s moons and flowers—
happy new year tides
Countless tea houses
and blossoming cherries all
flower overnight
Hakuhi wrote:
The cherry blossoms
are truly cherry blossoms
only while we wait
I mark passing time
beating straw to weave beneath
this cool summer moon
Composed on Buddha’s Birthday anniversary [April 8, 1819]:
Sweet tea and sweet tears
flow wetly over Buddha
through the whole spring day
It must certainly
be a holiday today
even for the rain
After an illness:
I, too, made of dust—
thin and light as the paper
mosquito curtain
With a splish! a splat!
a few raindrops splash down:
rainy season’s done
On the street corner
the blind musician dances,
fan held high overhead
Playing together,
these little baby sparrows
among bamboo shoots
Now the rains have gone,
two neighboring houses
enjoy spring cleaning
On a high, narrow suspension bridge of vine, looking down into a deep valley:
On hands and knees on
a shaky bridge: a cuckoo
cries far below
Summer’s first melon
lies firmly hugged to the breast
of a sleeping child
From Ningyō-chō—“Doll Street”—in Edo [Tokyo]:
I thank the doll that serves
my tea, and sit, enjoying
the summer evening breeze
How fortunate! I’m not
punished for dozing behind
the mosquito net
Only just a few
mosquitoes buzzing about—
old people’s season!
Hurry now, my flies!
You too may share the riches
of this fine harvest
The small shrine stands
alone, almost lost among
saxifrage blossoms
The quiet life:
Bending, stretching out,
the little worm inches along
my foundation wall
A poem expressing sympathy for a woman recently widowed and who must now make do for herself:
Where will you wander
in your straw hat once this village
rice is planted?
Sing hosanna! What
a beautiful bamboo has
sprouted overnight!
Fan tucked politely
under her collar: hands busy
picking flowers
Buzzing noisily
by my ear, the mosquito
must know I’m old
Togakure Mountain poems:
Clear icy water
races straight down the mountain
and into my tub
Whose small hermitage
lies just beyond this spring so
overgrown with moss?
One small mosquito
bites hard, again and again,
attacking in silence
Passing through the gate,
watch your head: you’re enjoying
a summer yukata4
Lacking a thresher,
I beat the summer wheat
against my house
Poem for a woman peddler in Echigo:
After wheat harvest,
infant on her back, she cries,
“Sardines! Sardines!”
A cut bamboo sprout—
were it not for hungry men
it would have blossomed
A little shady
spot of grass in summertime—
sanctuary
Even this mountain
moss grows flowers all its own—
thus nature bestows
One small mosquito
larva has climbed to where
the new moon shines
Composed at the home of my friend Dokurakubō:
Whi
te saxifrage flowers
all around my bedroom bring
me lasting light
In the old temple,
even the snake has shed
his worldly skin
FOUR
I finally decided to visit the far north country, thinking it would be good for my haiku.5 When I’d filled my pack and shouldered it over my monk’s robe, and slipped my beggar’s bag around my neck, I was astonished to see that my shadow looked exactly like the image of the eminent recluse and Zen poet Saigyō [1118—1190]. This observation shamed me when I thought how different his mind from mine: he was fresh, pure, and white as snow, whereas my mind is still dark and windblown as my sleeves.
I departed my old hermitage April 16th, walking stick in hand, but traveled only a few miles when I suddenly realized that I am almost sixty. Like the moon sinking in the western mountains, my life too approaches its final hours.
The Spring of My Life Page 2
