Hisajo in the Light of English Haikai Movement
Chapter
4 Is a haijin a poet? Is a haiku art?
One
Angle to get the feel of Japanese Haiku World in 2009
I have just finished reading a new “haiku” book from Iwanami
Book Company:
Like a Rolling Stone.
The title is written in kata-kana. The book was reviewed in a
Sunday paper: it is written by the man who awarded me a
beautiful trophy nine years ago. It was not a prestigious
contest and I did not pay attention to who was assigned as a
judge. I was presently surprised when I received a letter from
the organizer. I attended the ceremony and saw and heard the
judge. Vividly, I remember a light and young tone with which
he talked “down” Basho and Kyoshi! I liked him and
acknowledged his name—Imai Sei (1950), the author of
Like a rolling stone.
Unlike many books that fall into the genre of haiku, this
book is fresh just as his speech at the award ceremony was
nine years ago. There are quite a few honest episodes on his
bumpy student days. The afterglow of the student power
movement lingered and he was involved. I was touched by the
chemistry of his family members, from whom he wanted to
escape, also by sweet Kanae-chan, a girl who helped and dated
him. Way before university days his haiku life had started
when he successively won prizes as a junior high student. He
has been writing haiku, the products of “genius” as the young
boy believed back then. This haiku book stands out for its
connection with the reality of life today.
The highlight of the book for me was his real-life sketch of
and actual interaction with much, much older haijin and kajin,
some well-known such as Terayama Shuji, Yamaguchi Seishi, Kato
Shuson and Hirayama Shobin. I wish he could have met Hisajo
who died four years before his birth.
I confirm
that Imai identifies himself as haijin.
Japanese Haiku World in 1946
Let us zip and zoom into the year of 1946 when Hisajo died by
describing the impact of Kuwabara Takeo.
Kuwabara Takeo (1904 - 1988), Professor of French Literature
who achieved a lot in his field, is still associated most
readily with his very short thesis on haiku titled
The Second Art.
written in 1946. He could be a representative of those who say
No to the question in the subject line of this chapter—“Is a
haijin a poet? Is a haiku art?”
Here is my translation of one paragraph of Kuwabara’s thesis:
I
would assume there was, from the beginning, some
recklessness in disconnecting a starting verse from renku
and calling it haiku, a new genre. At any rate, today, it is
difficult to evaluate a haiku writer based on a haiku that
he writes. So the significance of a haiku writer is to be
decided not by his art but by something that has to do with
his social position. Because no open literary criticism is
possible for haiku, what counts as yardsticks are the number
of disciples, the number of distribution of his haiku
magazine or some social power of the leader haijin. Therefore,
making his partisan group becomes mandatory for a haijin.
Furthermore, since the purpose of making a group is to gain
power, it is inevitable that a disciple who becomes powerful
spins out to make his own group
(from Sekai or World, November 1946 issue).
Response to Yamaguchi Seishi,
(Osaka
Mainichi Newspaper
dated 6 January, 1947)
I have received a great number of letters on my
humble thesis on the magazine. Most people who are not haijin
agreed with my opinion. On the other hand many haijin asked me
to write my opinion more in detail for their own haiku
magazines. I do take responsibility for what I wrote, but I
responded to everyone that I would accept any verdict based
solely on that article in Sekai. I am not studying haiku as my
professional goal and my time is limited. Alas, however, a
journalist working for
Osaka Mainichi
came to see me all the way to Sendai city hand-carrying the
galley proof of Yamaguchi Seishi’s text responding to me.
Seeing his tired face after long hours in train in this
post-war confusion, I took up a pen.
Mr.
Yamaguchi was my senior in the high school I went to and the
dormitory song we loved to sing was written by him. Having
recognized and admired his poetic sense, I secretly regretted
the fact that he did not choose Modern literature to make the
most of his talent. But let me put my personal feelings away.
I will be straightforward.
The
reason why I, an outsider, wrote that article is because I
believed we need to examine the mentality running through
haikai tradition coming down from Basho if we are to construct
the Culture of New Japan. Mr. Yamaguchi argued that the thing
to do is not to recollect the past, but to modernize haiku. He
speaks as an established haijin, but I stand on much more
general ground bearing the Culture of Japan in mind.
In my
thesis I think I proved that haiku could never be Modern
literature however hard a haijin tries giving his all. If he
wants to express, say, a workers’ strike, a black market or
the atomic bomb, a haiku, the shortest form of 17 syllables,
cannot fathom into intricate issues involved in such
present-day topics and you only end up lamenting or sketching
each only as a new scene.
Matsurigoto (5) ashiki yo ni ari (7) kingyo miru (5)
Takashi
politics exist
in the world that is bad
I see goldfish
Haiku
is destined to settle into such a sentiment as expressed
above. If one desires to modernize it, one may end up throwing
it away, which does not bother me. What bothers me, I
emphasized, is the intention to place haiku in the center of
public education.
Mr.
Yamaguchi insists, rather aristocratically, to limit the scope
of argument to the work of established haijin, because the
public who write haiku never worry if their haiku is art or
not. Do the pubic agree to this? More importantly it is not
easy to tell an important haijin from an ordinary haiku writer
judging from a haiku he writes. The goldfish haiku above could
have been written by an ordinary haiku lover. (Takashi is
considered one of the important haijin).
Mr.
Yamaguchi admitted the pettiness of those haiku that I chose
to discuss in my thesis. He wrote, “there is no
excuse-making.” I feel relieved to hear that, but this
situation is grave. However fatigued important haijin are,
(who is not fatigued nowadays…), how can they publish in a
general magazine of broad readership those haiku whose
worthlessness is guaranteed by a man like Mr. Yamaguchi? He
says he is not disappointed at these haijin even though he was
disappointed at their haiku chosen by me. I wonder what an
artist is without his art. Here lies the weakness of haiku.
The fact that he avoided responding to my point that today’s
haiku world has still got feudal aspects is significant.
I am
grateful that my rather hasty writing in Sekai now has got a
lining of Mr. Yamaguchi’s response. But I cannot possibly
watch the growth of modern haiku with sympathy to meet Mr.
Yamaguchi‘s wish and expectation. What I will do is only to
cast my cold eyes to “modern haiku” once in a while. Bear
with me.
What a transparent letter! How pleasantly young the writer’s
spirit is! Sixty plus years passed and Kuwabara’s voice still
reverberates if you try to answer why so few young people
write haiku in Japan.
However, most haijin today seem to think that
The Second Art
was an accident in the post-war cultural identity crisis.
Some of them think the enormous haiku population in and
outside of Japan these days is a good proof that Professor
Kuwabara was mistaken.
What happened to Hisajo during the ten years
before her death
Even after Hisajo had to put an end to
Hanagoromo,
her own haiku magazine in 1932, the haiku magazine that she
edited and published, she was the leader of Shiragiku-kai, a
local women’s haiku club. In October, 1936 Kyoshi used one
full page of
Hototogisu
to announce the purge of Hino Sojo, Yoshioka Zenjido and
Sugita Hisajo from the dojin list.
Hisajo was surprised but the immediate effect was that she
completely lost her face. The inclusion of Hisajo to the list
was unexpected because unlike the other two who dared to write
haiku with no season words, she did not deviate from Kyoshi’s
teachings. Her haiku-students had a respect and faith in
Hisajo. Disgraced, she just could not continue teaching.
Strong-willed she continued to send her haiku to
Hototogisu
as an ordinary reader of
Hototogisu,
but hers were rarely chosen after the purge from the dojin
list.
Kyoshi might have assumed that she would join Mizuhara Shuoshi*
(introduced later in this installment) when he purged her from
the dojin list of
Hototogisu.
However,
like those who never left Catholicism in the storm of
Protestantism, Hisajo did not move. In response to requests
from editors, who were her old friends oftentimes, she did
contribute her haiku and essays to their magazines such as
Karitago, Amanogawa, Kareno, Kirara and Ashibi before and
after the purge, but she never considered leaving Kyoshi.
It is said that Hisajo in her isolation eventually expressed
her despair and concern over ambiguous criteria for a good
haiku.
Here are four haiku Hisajo wrote and contributed to Heiku
Kenyku or study of haiku, edited by Yamamoto Kenkichi in
October, 1937:
tatetosu (5) otokogirai no (7) hitoeobi (5)
persistent in….disliking men
my rigid….summer obi
haritosu (5) onna no iji ya(7) aiyukata (5)
the persistence….of a woman
indigo dyed….kimono
oshitosu (5) haikugirai no (7) aotakaze (5)
persistant….in loathing haiku
the green… rice paddy wind
Kyoshi kirai (5) Kanajo kirai no (7) hitoeobi
(5)
Kyoshi, and Kanajo….disliked
a rigid….summer obi
The minimalist poem, like language itself, necessitates the
existence of others. When deprived of the stage on which to
perform, of the kuyu (poem friends) to give critique to each
other’s work, Hisajo gradually became weak. In 1939 she tried
once again to contact Kyoshi to redeem her place in Hototogisu.
A bunch of red roses
From the true heart
Of the poor
Hisajo, 1939
The above is the haiku when she visited Hototogisu
office in front of Tokyo Station. She was not able to see
him.
According to Miyao Sakamoto, the author of the book: Sugita
Hisajo, Hisajo made up her mind to terminate her haiku
career shortly after this incident. In fact Hisajo started to
examine all her haiku and created the manuscript for her
future kushu in sumi calligraphy, which she carried with her
wherever she went in difficult war-time days.
Quite a few psychiatrists have studied Hisajo’s case during
these 60 years and the consensus today is that Hisajo was not
schizophrenic as Kyoshi wanted us to believe. She must have
been suffering either from severe symptoms of menopause or
chronic inflammation of the thyroid gland (Hashimoto disease)
but it must be clearly noted that she became a handful many
years after the purge.
Kyoshi in 1946 and post-war days
In
November 1946 Kyoshi wrote a strange essay in his
Hototogisu.
The essay was a cunning mixture of condolences for Hisajo and
manipulated documentary, or lies if simply put, regarding
Hisajo’s conduct before the purge. Kyoshi developed this
strange essay into a strange novel titled
Kuniko’s Letters
and published it in September, 1948. It was strange because
Kyoshi edited Hisajo’s letters he received over several years
so cunningly that his interpretation text in between letters
could “naturally” lead readers to believe Kuniko, or Hisajo,
to be such an insane woman. Many haijin around Kyoshi,
including Nakamura Teijo, followed Kyoshi in distorting
Hisajo’s true person in their essays.
While Hisajo was alive, he disgraced her without any
explanation and after she died, he took all the trouble of
mixing fiction into fragments of facts. It is ironical that
Hisajo legend got started in the same month when Professor
Kuwabara’s straightforward criticism of haiku appeared in
Sekai.
When asked to comment on Professor Kuwabara’s argument, Kyoshi
gave a Kyoshilike.answer:: “ How nice! We never said haiku was
art. Haiku is now promoted to art.” Here I would like to focus
on what busied Kyoshi’s brain in those post-war years with the
help of Ren Masuda’s book.
Remember Kyoshi’s victory over Hekigotoh, the artist who
advocated free new haiku. Kyoshi was a producer of
Hototogisu
and godfather of the Takahama family. In the nineteen thirties
he was most annoyed and threatened by Mizuhara Shuoshi (1892 -
1981) and the new haiku movement. Shuoshi was a star haijin of
Hototogisu
with another 3S (star haijin whose first name initials were S
including Yamaguchi Seishi) but he became skeptical about
Kyoshi’s objective shasei method and believed in a more
literary approach; he experimented writing a series of haiku
and presenting them as one submission. Kyoshi did not like
Rensaku, a series of haiku in one presentation. Many friends
advised not to, but he gathered all his courage, confronted
Kyoshi. and left
Hototogisu
in 1931. Hisajo, who was respected broadly, was respected by
Shuoshi as well and here comes R. Masuda’s assumption: Kyoshi
might have assumed that she would join Shuoshi if he purged
her from the dojin list. This alone does not explain why he
had to purge her. I am going to report what Ishi Masako found
regarding the incident in 1936 in a later chapter.
Kyoshi was mistaken in his assumption, if he did assume. She
died as a Hototogisu haijin… I support Ren Masuda’s
assumption. Kyoshi, or his sense of guilt, might have felt a
danger approaching from some democratic power based on the
newly planted sense of human right.
One winter day in 1946 he received a letter from Ishi Masako,
the elder daughter of Hisajo, informing him of the death of
his disciple. Masako wanted to be polite and apologized for
any unpleasantness her mother had caused him. Masako was naïve
and wrote that Hisajo died in the special quarter of a
hospital.
Something must have clicked in Kyoshi’s brain then.
Kyoshi
responded in return asking Masako’s permission to “use” her
Mother’s letters. This letter of Kyoshi reached Masako even
before the formal funeral in The Sugita’s ancestral estate in
Aichi prefecture. Most naturally she was in utmost grief and
in utter confusion. She naively answered Yes.
In hindsight it seems as if Kyoshi followed a scheme of
presenting Hisajo to the world as insane and obsessed in three
steps: first in the essay on
Hototogisu,
with limited readership, second in a novel with broader
readership, finally in his introduction for Hisajo’s kushu
published posthumously in 1952.
I cannot tell if he took these complicated measures including
the purge to guarantee Hototogisu the smooth transition from
the new haiku movement and wartime chaos to post-war
prosperity. Hototogisu blossomed and Kyoshi received Bunka
Kunsho, or the Cultural Medal, from the emperor in 1954. One
of his grandchildren is the president of The Association for
Traditional Haiku today.
Hashi Kaiseki, the renkujin
Fall 1946 is also the year when Hashi Kaiseki’s book with 500
pages:
Lectures on Haiku History
was published. He was a professor of English Literature, but
Prof.Hashi was not an outsider, for he was a dedicated
renkujin.of long years of practice. Haiku World should have
asked him to respond to Prof. Kuwabara towards the redemption
of haiku. For that matter if only Hisajo could have lived a
little longer to witness that gigantic wave Prof. Kuwaraba
created in a pond of haiku. I also wish Prof. Hashi could have
covered the Taisho and Showa periods instead of putting down
his pen at the Meiji era.
Prof. Hashi Wrote in the first page of his book:
Essentially speaking, haikai does not make
sense unless renku is included in the genre. Having
struggled all these years to revive and introduce the poetry
of Basho with his school of renku composition, I find it
most regrettable that I could hardly discuss renku to my
heart’s content in this book. I, however, could save one
chapter to explain the long history of Japanese
collaborative poetry.
In his last chapter he writes:
Compared to
strong-willed/intelligent/intellectual Shiki, Hekigotoh was
a haijin richly talented with a detached/sensitive/sensual
grasp of life and nature and thanks to him haiku was
established as art, namely as poetry. Around then Kyoshi
advocated to go back to “quiet and passive” Basho taking
distance from Hekigotoh’s fresh, free and brilliant
movement. Unfortunately Kyoshi, whose small subjectivity and
dilettante-like attitude tend to have him idle about in his
thoughts and writings, was limited in his understanding of
Basho and he misinterpreted Basho’s relentless pursuit for
poetry as “quiet and passive.” Kyoshi’s article on renku
published in
Hototogisu
in September, 1904 reveals how shallow his understanding of
renku was.
Hekigotoh proceeded with the conscience of an artist, and
succeeded in grasping a moment -here and now- with
psychological reality, but unless a poet can connect that
moment to eternity, his poem remains there only
What
was regrettable from today’s viewpoint is that Shiki was not
able to understand Basho deeply enough to reach to the full
appreciation of the art of renku. As a result the shape of
haikai has been distorted long after Shiki’s death. The end of
this war, however, is giving us a chance to rethink our
tradition and the study on renku has taken off finally.
Let us see how things actually turned out during these 60
years. There are quite a few renkujin now as Prof. Hashi
predicted. However, most haijin today have not yet been
reunited to the tradition of collaborative poetry yet. There
is a tremendous wall separating the haiku world with various
social resources from the renku world depending on each
indiviudual’s love of poetry. What is encouraging, though, is
that many haiku poets in the English Haikai Movement compose
renku quite naturally and that is the reason I wanted to write
these installments on Hisajo in the English language.
Is a haijin a poet?
She pursued sheer poetry. She studied the long history of
haikai and even though she did not have a chance to compose
renku, she practiced hard to acquire the soul of traditional
haikai through calligraphy and haiga.
She was very much like many of us, shufu, or housewives of
Japan. Following her husband, she lived in Kokura, the rising
Industrial town with major steel manufacturing. In the age
without free-ways, air-planes or any bullet train, she was
disconnected from all her family members and from the culture
and aesthetics she breathed and grew up in. Unlike
aristocratic literary women in the past she did not have any
servant. Having been brought up by most decent and loving
parents, Hisajo did not learn “social skills” to “swim
through” bumpy human relationships. Her innate love of art
kept living in her thanks to two lifelines: haiku and
daughters. A fresh wind and a serene wave born from the poem
she creates kept on nourishing her soul. She was an achiever
in the strenuous life of the past without today’s appliances
and with many secret obligations regarding hair-do and kimono
codes to name just a few.
She was accused of being a bad wife who did not treat her
husband as a supreme existence, but compared to most of
us—housewives today—she would not stand out as especially
“bad”.
To answer the question in the title of this chapter (Is a
haijin a poet? Is a haiku art?)— I say some are poets, some
are not. And the tragedy of Hisajo was caused by her
aspiration for sheer poetry through the genre of haiku which
was so fragile as art, and through Kyoshi who was an
archetypal haijin...a central figure of a religion-like
organization.
In the next installment I shall translate rensaku haiku, or a
series of haiku, (61 haiku in one presentation!) that Hisajo
wrote in 1934 to prove that she was adamant in her pursuit of
poetry that reaches her soul and resonates with eternity.
Footnotes
*1 Let me, at least, translate the content of Prof. Hashi’s
book with key words for each lecture.
Lecture 1: What is haiku?
17-ji, kireji, kidai, issues on season
words, lingering effect
Lecture 2: How was haiku born?
naming, haikai, renga, history of renga,
history of haikai-no-renga, the starting verse became
independent, Yamazaki Sohkan, Arakida Moritake
Lecture 3: Teimon period
Matsunaga Teitoku, characteristics of Teimon,
seven important haijin, Yasuhara Teishiitsu, Yamamoto Seibu,
Takase Baisei
Lecture 4: Danrin Period
Nisiyama Soin, characteristics of Danrin,
rivalry with Teimon,
Major haijin, Danrin in Osaka, Ihara Saikaku,
forerunners that brings in Shofu (Basho style), Ito Shintoku,
Ikemizu Gonsui, Konishi Raizan, Saimaro, Onitsura
Lecture 5: Shofu Period
Matsuo Basho, characteristics of Shofu, Major
haijin, Kikaku, Ransetsu, Kyorai, Joso, Sanpu, Noba,Etsujin,
Hokushi, Kyoroku, Shiko, Sodo, Boncho, Izen
Lecture 6: Kyoho Period
Kikaku’s Edo school, Senryu, Mino-school,
Chiyoni, Ise school Rogawa,
Kamigata, Matsuki Tantan, Kasazuke,
money-oriented renku game
Lecture 7: Chuko Period
Yosa Buson, Kuroyanagi Shoha, Takai Kitoh,
Yoshiwake Tairo, Tan Taigi, Katoh Gyoudai, Hori Bakusui,
Kaya Shirao, Ohsima Ryota, Fujian Jiryu, Miura Chora,
Matsuoka Seira, Ohtomo Ohemaru, Takakuwa Rankoh
Lecture 8: Kasei Period
Suzuki Michihiko, Takebe Socho, Chosui,
Seifujo, Inoue Shiro, Tagami Kikushani, Kobayashi Issa,
Natsume Seibi
Lecture 9: Tempo Period
Takizawa Bakin, Sakurai Baishitsu, Tayojo,
Houroh, Sohkyu
Lecture 10: Meiji Period
Old schools, Tsukinami, Shiki’s analysis,
Ozaki Koyo, Kakuta Chikurei, Ono Shuchiku, Masaoka Shiki,
New Haiku, Shasei, Naito Meisetsu, Natsume Soseki, After
Shiki, Hekigotoh, Kyoshi, No season word, Soun
*2 As I wrote in the previous installment, Hekigotoh admitted
the retirement from haiku eventuallty
