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n 1867, the year that Masaoka Shiki was born, Japanese literature was at one of its lowest points. The quality of all varieties of literature had steadily declined, though readers were not necessarily aware of this unfortunate change. A half dozen writers, all that were left of the group of novelists who had flourished half a century earlier, provided readers with endless variations on the plots of old stories. On the surface, it might seem that poetry was thriving. Many self-appointed masters of the haiku made a living by correcting poems written by disciples and by transmitting to them (in return for suitable fees) the secrets of composing haiku in the style of BashĹ?. A very large number of haiku were turned out by such teachers and disciples, but not a single poem of this period is remembered today except by specialists. A similar situation prevailed among poets of the tanka, the other major poetic form. The dismal condition in poetry was saved by one man, Masaoka Shiki, whose poetry and criticism of poetry, at first known mainly in the provincial town of Matsuyama, before long were read and imitated in all parts of the country. Matsuyama was a strange place for a literary revolution
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to begin. As Shiki himself admitted, nothing of literary importance had ever been written in the town or fiefdom, though it was not totally without culture. There were in fact local poets of haiku and tanka who gave Shiki, still a young man, rudimentary instruction in poetic composition, but nothing they taught him would be of use when he initiated his revolution in poetry. Shiki’s first poems were probably composed in classical Chinese as part of his basic education. At the school he attended, for boys of the samurai class, he was required to compose poetry in Chinese, rather as students at many European schools were expected to compose poetry in Latin, mainly as a duty of persons belonging to a superior class. During the rest of his life Shiki would continue to write poems in Chinese, generally when he wished to express observations or sentiments that did not easily fit into the seventeen syllables of a haiku or the thirty-one syllables of a tanka. Shiki did not begin to compose haiku until he was in his early twenties. A haiku composed in the summer of 1891 (when he was twenty-four) is notable not only for its sensitivity to nature and the seasons, typical of Japanese poetry, but also for its unusual combination of imagery: ajisai ya kabe no kuzure wo shibuku ame
Hydrangeas— and rain beating down on a crumbled wall1
The rain gives the hydrangeas their fresh beauty but at the same time beats down mercilessly on the dead wall. Other poems of interest are scattered among Shiki’s early haiku, but most of the haiku for which he is known today were composed later on, after he had developed his characteristic style, known as shasei (sketching from nature). The ideal of shasei as found in Shiki’s haiku owed much to Nakamura Fusetsu, a mediocre painter who, after studying European paintings, had reached the conclusion that art of any kind must faithfully reflect
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whatever it portrays. This variety of realism contrasted markedly with the ideals of Japanese painters of the time, who made it their practice to imitate closely the works of their teachers, painting the same “poetic” landscapes, not feeling any need to discover fresh scenes or viewpoints of their own. The paintings they produced—mountains in the mist, men crossing flimsy bridges over gorges, and so on—were pleasing to the eye but lacked both originality and fidelity to any actual landscape. During the discussions between Shiki and Fusetsu that began soon after they met in 1895, Shiki at first defended traditional Japanese painting, preferring its artistry to European realism; but Fusetsu eventually convinced Shiki that shasei was essential not only in painting but in the haiku. Once convinced, Shiki made up his mind that his haiku would treat the experiences of daily life, and he turned his back on cherry blossoms and colored autumn leaves, the hackneyed subjects of Japanese poetry. He would write instead about what he himself had seen or felt, regardless of whether or not it was conventionally beautiful. Although Shiki was determined to write in a style unlike that of his predecessors, he was by no means indifferent to their poetry. For years he poured over old books of haiku, classifying each of them and searching for anything that might benefit his own poetry. He insisted that his disciples also study the history of the haiku no less diligently than himself. When his most trusted disciple, Takahama Kyoshi, refused to devote himself single-mindedly to study, Shiki resignedly broke with him. Shiki, though well read in the poetry of the past, by no means worshipped it unconditionally. He greatly admired the Man’yōshū and at times borrowed words in his tanka from this classic of the ninth century, but he denounced the tenth-century Kokinshū, considered by many to be the supreme anthology of tanka poetry, calling it boring and even silly. He did not hesitate to declare that Ki no Tsurayuki, the compiler of the Kokinshū, was a bad poet. He even criticized the great Bashō, the sacrosanct saint of haiku, saying that not one in ten of Bashō’s haiku lived up to his reputation. Shiki was often harsh when evaluating the
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celebrated poets of the past, but he was happy to make discoveries. Buson’s poetry had been completely ignored until Shiki published a superb essay establishing Buson as a great poet. He went so far as to express greater admiration for Buson than for Bashō, an example of the sometimes startling independence of his opinions. Shiki’s criticism, at times marked by intemperate condemnation of what he disliked, was the weapon with which he demolished the prevalent worship of the poetry of the past. He demanded the creation of a new poetry that embodied the poet’s experiences and perceptions and was not simply a restatement of well-known “poetic” themes. He was remarkably successful in persuading other poets to accept these controversial views. Hototogisu, the magazine founded by his disciples in 1897, quickly established itself as the outstanding haiku journal, though it was at first published in Matsuyama, far from the center of culture. It remains a force in the world of haiku even today, over a hundred years later; one can say that no haiku poet is without a debt to Shiki. The creed of Hototogisu was shasei, the outlook on art that Nakamura Fusetsu had taught Shiki. Shiki’s belief in shasei led him to conclude that haiku poetry must include the ordinary and even ugly elements of daily life. The shasei realism in his haiku sometimes startles by the ordinariness of its subjects, as in an 1896 haiku: aki kaze ni koborete akashi hamigakiko
As it spills over In the autumn breeze, how red it looks— My tooth powder!
Autumn breezes were, of course, frequent in Japanese poetry, but “tooth powder” marks this as a poem of the Meiji era. This insistence on modernity was shared by Shiki’s chief poetic rivals, the poets of the shintaishi (modern-style poetry). Shiki has little to say about the competition he faced from the poets of the shintaishi school, who first became prominent with the publication in 1882 of Shintaishi shō (Selection of
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Poems in the Modern Style), a collection of nineteen poems translated from the English, including “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard� and soliloquies from Hamlet. These translations were mocked from the start for their lack of poetic beauty. This was not surprising considering that the translators were scholars who had studied science abroad and had learned English in the process but had little training in literature. The collection, despite its faults, exerted extraordinary influence on Japanese poets because it was their first experience of European poetry. Many poems were written in Japanese along the lines of the content and style of the translated European poetry. The poets were delighted not to be bound by traditional restrictions on the length and subjects of poetry and, ignoring the established poetical diction, wrote their poems not in classical Japanese, the language that continued to be used for haiku and tanka, but in easily understood modern Japanese. The translators of Selection of Poems in the Modern Style declared that poems composed in the Meiji era must be distinctly of that era, a prescription that Shiki followed when he began writing shasei haiku fifteen years later.2 The modern-style poets for a time dominated new poetic composition. Shiki mentions gatherings at which crowds assembled to hear modern-style poets read their poetry aloud, a novelty, and he was carried away by the enthusiasm of the young poets. It would not have been surprising if he had abandoned the haiku and joined a movement with which he shared many ideals and whose members included some of the most famous poets of the Meiji era. However, Shiki, far from abandoning the haiku, became the instrument of its salvation by making it relevant to contemporary life. He did not explain in his criticism why, despite his desire to be modern, he had chosen to adhere to the haiku, a traditional form of poetry, instead of taking advantage of the freedom enjoyed by poets of the modern style. Perhaps his readings of poems in English had disillusioned him with poetry created by writers who, not bound by any regulations, could compose poems that were as long as they liked. He recognized the beauty found in many English poems, but
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their length and the unchanging meter bored him. A haiku could be perfect from beginning to end, but a long poem inevitably contains passages of lesser interest; the second stanza of a poem is rarely as memorable as the first. A striking defense of the brevity of the Japanese traditional poem was given by a near contemporary of Shiki’s, Ishikawa Takuboku. He wrote, A poem should be a strict report of events taking place in one’s emotional life (for want of a better term)—a straightforward diary. This means it has to be fragmentary, it can’t have unity or coherence. . . . People say the tanka is too short to work with. But I think that is precisely its advantage. Isn’t it so? A small poem, that doesn’t take time, is best—it’s practical. It’s the best thing that ever happened to the Japanese, having this tanka form.3 Takuboku was a tanka poet, but his comments held true, to an even greater extent, for the haiku. Shiki may also have been dismayed by the political or intellectual content of many early shintaishi. “On the Principles of Sociology,” by Toyama Chuzan, one of the compilers of Selection of Poems in the Modern Style, was an extreme example. This long poem opens, The characteristics the parents possess Are transmitted by heredity to the children; The fit go on flourishing, The unfit perish. The theories of Darwin and Herbert Spencer, even when cast in alternating phrases in seven and five syllables, do not make for poetry. Chuzan attempted to sweeten the lesson he was teaching by inserting conventionally poetic passages:
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In the present world, all that exists— Bellflowers, pampas grass, the wild valerian, Plum blossoms and cherry blossoms, clover and peonies, And, associated with peonies, the Chinese lion-dog . . . This profusion of botanical attractions could not have impressed Shiki. Other shintaishi were obvious imitations of Shelley and Browning. A poem by Susukida Kyūkin, inspired by Browning, opens, Oh, to be in Yamato Now that November’s there! It is easy to make fun of these attempts to write modern poetry in the European manner, but it should be remembered that during the long period of Japan’s isolation from most of the world that preceded the Meiji era, Japanese poetry, lacking stimulus from the literature of other countries, had been completely on its own. Isolation had at first been beneficial, leading to the development not only of poetry in traditional forms but also of fiction and drama, but by the end of the Tokugawa period the gold of the old traditions had been fully mined. When, with the Meiji Restoration, the isolation of two hundred fifty years ended, foreigners and their literature freely entered Japan. In the excitement of the discovery of a rich and exciting world, traditional Japanese poetry was all but forgotten by the shintaishi poets. Shiki also wrote shintaishi occasionally, when he felt that a particular subject demanded full statement as well as suggestion. His shintaishi have seldom been discussed, but they contain aspects of his life not found in his other poems, and some are deeply moving. Shiki, like some shintaishi poets, also experimented with rhyming in the European style. His experiments were not successful if only because rhyme is so easy in Japanese as to be hardly noticeable. If noticed, it may produce a comic effect. However, for all his experiments, Shiki almost always exactly
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obeyed the traditional five-seven-five rhythm of the haiku. His rare departures were sometimes caused by proper nouns that could not be squeezed into the allotted number of syllables, as in this example: jūnisōrō gosō atari ni natsu no Fuji
The twelve-story building— Fuji in summertime looks A mere five stories high.
Jūnisōrō, the popular name of the tallest building in Tokyo (constructed in 1890), contains seven rather than the normal five syllables. The point of the haiku, written in 1896, is that from Shiki’s vantage point at the top of a lofty tower even Fuji seems small. This lightweight haiku is an example of Shiki at his most up-to-date. A much better haiku uses a place-name to achieve a superb effect: kaki kueba kane naru nari Hōryūji
As I eat a persimmon The temple bell tolls at Hōryūji.
This haiku bears a prefatory note stating it was composed at a teahouse near Hōryū-ji, the oldest and most impressive temple in Nara. However, it is probable that the last line was originally Tōdai-ji, another great temple in Nara. Mention of either temple conveyed an effect of contrast: even as Shiki eats a persimmon—a quite ordinary, soon forgotten moment of pleasure—he hears the solemn boom of a bell that has tolled for centuries. Perhaps Shiki even had the momentary illusion that biting into the persimmon has made the bell boom. But why should he have changed Tōdai-ji to Hōryū-ji? Most likely it was because of the sound. Hōryū-ji has a far deeper, more prolonged resonance than Tōdai-ji and makes a more powerful contrast with the lightness of Shiki’s biting into the persimmon. The
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lightness is transmitted by the staccato sounds of ka, ki, and ku at the opening. Although Shiki advised students about many aspects of haiku composition, giving specific instructions about the language, he did not discuss the role of sound. He may have considered that the sounds of a haiku come intuitively to the poet and could not be taught. Strange as it may seem, to this day most haiku poets, unlike tanka poets, remain indifferent to the sound.4 The influence of Shiki’s haiku and haiku criticism was immense. In a sense, he changed the reasons for the composition of haiku. The haiku of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were most often display pieces that revealed the poet’s skill at playing with words. Later, the glory of cherry blossoms and autumn leaves took first place in the haiku poet’s attention. Such standbys of the past either disappeared after Shiki’s revolution or became ironic. Understatement was more typical, requiring readers to consider what lay behind the prosaic words and unremarkable events: aru tsukiyo kotogotoku kago no mushi wo hanatsu
One moonlit night I released every last bug From its cage.
In this haiku the repeated k and o sounds in kotogotoku may suggest freed insects rustling as they make their escape from the cage. Shiki does not say why he released the insects, nor how he felt afterward. Releasing the insects, like releasing doves after a ceremony today, may have been a gesture of mercy, but perhaps Shiki merely wanted the insects to share in the beauty of the moonlight. In shasei terms, the haiku on the escape of the insects was an event that Shiki witnessed and recorded without comment. The reader can interpret the haiku as he pleases, but he will not forget the rustling of the escaping insects. The strength of Shiki’s haiku often came from the overtones of the last line, as in this 1895 haiku:
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kumo korosu ato no sabishiki yosamu kana
After killing The spider, what loneliness— The cold of night.
Killing a spider was not a subject mentioned in traditional poetry, but Shiki makes us sense how this unpoetic and even horrifying act affected him. The haiku encapsulates his reactions in an absolute minimum of words. Shiki is also known as a seminal practitioner of the modern tanka. As might be expected of him, Shiki rejected the dead weight of tanka tradition and was severe on the professional “masters” of the art who imposed stereotyped rules on their disciples. Both his haiku and tanka of his last years suffered because all of nature that Shiki could see from his sickbed was a corner of his garden, visible through a window, and nature was his chief subject. In 1900 Shiki wrote a tanka about seeing in the garden a small flower with the auspicious name fukujusō (happiness and long life plant): itatsuki no neya no garasu no mado no uchi ni fuyu no hi sashite sachikusa sakinu
Through the glass window in my sickroom winter sun streams in— my good luck plant is blooming5
Perhaps irony was involved in citing the plant’s name: nothing else in his life at this time suggested that he was happy or would enjoy long life, but all the same, the pale winter sun and the little flower blooming in the cold gave him hope. Shiki’s last years were spent in his sickbed, suffering from a prolonged and extremely painful caries of the spine that reduced him to virtual immobility; he was unable even to sit or turn in his bed. He continued nevertheless to write, not only poetry but also daily essays
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(zuihitsu) for the newspaper Nippon, diaries, and criticism. It is amazing that in his condition he could keep at this daily obligation, never missing an episode, even though, being unable to leave his bed, he seems at times to have had trouble finding interesting subjects to discuss in his articles. Shiki left behind a staggering amount of writing, especially considering that he died at thirty-five; his zenshū (complete works) consists of twentytwo volumes of small print, each over five hundred pages. Most of his best works were written during the last seven years before his death in 1902. Among the poems of his last years, a ten-poem tanka sequence on the pot of wisteria in his sickroom, written the year before he died, is famous. The sequence opens, kame ni sasu fuji no hanabusa mijikakereba tatami no ue ni todokazarikeri
The sprays of wisteria arranged in the vase are so short they don’t reach to the tatami6
At first reading, this tanka seems little more than a statement that consists of a single sentence; but if the reader is aware that at the time Shiki composed the poem he was lying immobile in a sickbed, unable to touch the wisteria because it did not reach as far as the tatami, the poem becomes unforgettably poignant. The unadorned plainness of the expression adds to the strength; this is not so much a poem as a cry. The remainder of the sequence is mainly in the same vein. Readers who do not know Japanese may find the sequence among the most difficult of Shiki’s poems to appreciate fully, even with Burton Watson’s excellent translation to assist them. The bareness of expression is likely to seem prosaic, but with time, as is true of minimalist music, the bareness may seem the essence of poetry.
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On the last day of his life, Shiki called for a brush and paper. His sister held a sheet of paper over his head and, with great difficulty, Shiki wrote three haiku that were his farewell to the world. He knew he was dying, but there is a humorous touch in these poems, as if Shiki remembered that the haiku had originally been a comic genre. He had long hoped for death as a relief from incessant pain, but wishing it or not, he had kept living, much longer than anyone expected, though he died so young. The influence of Shiki’s haiku and haiku criticism was immense and long lasting. It is hard to imagine any serious haiku poet reverting to the style of haiku prevalent before Shiki’s revolution. For Shiki, as for all modern haiku poets, there was no subject that could not be treated in a poem. The haiku and tanka were all but dead when Shiki began to write his poetry and criticism. The best poets of the time had lost interest in short poems. Shiki and his disciples, finding new possibilities of expression within the traditional forms, preserved them. The millions of Japanese (and many non-Japanese) who compose haiku and tanka today belong to the School of Shiki, and even poets who write entirely different forms of poetry have learned from him. He was the founder of truly modern Japanese poetry.