Showing posts with label Issa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Issa. Show all posts

13 Dec 2014

ISSA - Issa - kasen 1827

LINK
http://edoflourishing.blogspot.jp/2014/12/issa-kasen-1827.html

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. Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 in Edo .




. WKD : New Year (shin-nen, shinnen 新年) .

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The beginning of a kasen renku written on lunar New Year's Day in 1827:

1
New Year's Day --
we, too, bloom in our
blossoming world

元日や我等ぐるめに花の娑婆
ganjitsu ya warera-gurume ni hana no shaba - Issa


2
this our guest book
for all three to sign

sannin-mae o tsukeru reichou - Baijin


3
an east wind
cools the hot sake
perfectly

sake samasu kagen-gokochi ni kochi fuite - Ranchou


4
sideways I swing up
onto the horse

hirari to uma ni yokozama ni noru - Issa


These are the the first four verses of a 36-verse kasen renku written by Issa, his follower Baijin, and Baijin's father Ranchou, also a haikai poet. Issa was staying with them in Nakano, a few miles from his hometown, at lunar New Year's in 1827 -- what turned out to be the last lunar year of Issa's life. Baijin, head of a firm that produced soy sauce and soybean paste, was one of Issa's closest followers in his final years and helped publish a collection of his hokku after his death.

As the visitor, Issa writes the hokku. In it he expresses his warm, ebullient regards and his deep friendship with Baijin. He mentions blossoms, and since this is New Year's, before the cherries have begun to bloom, he must be referring to the friendship and love of haikai that is blossoming and bringing all three people together. And Issa goes farther. He feels they are also part of the larger wave of blossoming humanity that is now enjoying New Year's celebrations and good feelings across the land or perhaps all over the world. Issa writes "blossoming world," but the world (shaba) here refers mainly to the world of humans, to society or humanity.

The word shaba began as a Buddhist term for the samsaric world of imperfect and delusion-filled human life as opposed to other modes of existence, such as animals, fierce shura demons, or hungry ghosts. It is the world into which Buddhas and bodhisattvas are born and teach and the world in which human beings are able to achieve enlightenment and freedom from suffering. Gradually the word also became an ordinary secular Japanese word meaning this world, the human world, the everyday world, this life, human relations, society, the material world, and it came to resemble the phrase "floating world," which had both positive and negative meanings. When Issa writes about suffering in the human world he often uses ku no shaba, the world of suffering, and when he wants to praise the world, he uses a phrase like the blossoming world, as he does here.

Issa's reference in the hokku to the world being filled with blossoming people at New Year's is an expression of praise for his hosts and for all the people in the human world who are trying to find happiness at New Year's. It is not related, however, to the separate concept of the "degenerate latter days of the Dharma" (masse, mappou). This was a belief that became widespread in the medieval period in Japan according to which Buddhism had entered its third and most degenerate age after beginning with the appearance of Buddha in the Age of Correct Dharma, followed by the Age of Semblance Dharma. In the contemporary degenerate age, it was believed, monks and ordinary people were too weak and confused to be able to follow Buddha's original teachings, and society had become thoroughly corrupt. Honen and Shinran, who founded the two main schools of Pure Land Buddhism in Japan, used the doctrine of the age of degenerate Dharma above all as justification for founding their new schools.

The high-ranking clerics of the older Tendai school declared chanting the Buddha's name to be a heresy and exiled both of them, so Honen and Shinran needed the degenerate age doctrine in order to establish their new, simpler schools of Buddhism for ordinary commoners. According to their argument, ordinary humans, including farmers and fishers, were too weak to understand sutras and to do difficult meditation or rituals, and therefore deep, sincere belief in Amida Buddha, the chanting of Buddha's name, and the simplification of Buddhism itself were all necessary in order to give ordinary people access to salvation. Shinran even allowed priests to marry and declared chanting Amida Buddha's name was not necessary but only an expression of thanks. Issa's age was more peaceful and more world-affirming than was Shinran's, and the degenerate age doctrine was mainly quoted not to condemn the contemporary world but to state the basic reason why the Pure Land schools were necessary. Issa's hokku, however, does not refer to degeneration but to the ordinary concept of the impure samsaric human world in general, a world that was believed, following Book 16 of the Lotus Sutra, to be non-separate from and thus overlapped with the Pure Land. Issa seems to imply that at New Year's people's hearts and minds blossom in a way that is reminiscent of Amida Buddha's love, and the world may thus suggest the temporary blossoming of the Pure Land itself in this world.

In verse 2, the wakiku, Baijin responds to Issa's friendly praise and says that all three members writing the renku have signed the visitor's book -- the book of the world. New Year's Day was a busy day, and people went around to other people's homes for brief visits during which they offered their best regards to their friends, relatives, and neighbors and signed the visitor's book at each house they visited. In Baijin's version, the three poets give their best regards not only to each other but to the whole world and to everyone alive. In the verse the visitor's book seems to be the thick paper on which the kasen is being written, which the poets sign (tsukeru) by linking (tsukeru) verses.

In verse 3, the daisan, Ranchou evokes sake drunk to greet a visitor to his house. The sake has been heated and is still too hot to drink, but a fresh spring breeze from the east blows on the sake and cols it until the people are able to toast each other. The verse says that it seems as if the breeze has kindly blown into the house in order to cool the sake for the humans.

In verse 4, the yonku-me, Issa seems to be making a scent link. The sake has been drunk in order to say farewell to someone. After exchanging cups of warm sake, the traveler seems to put one foot in a stirrup and then swings his body upward and sideways over the horse in order to sit on it. His swinging motion is very light, according to the language used, so perhaps, helped by the sake, he feels as if the wind is helping him up onto the horse. From this upward swinging motion begin all the wide-ranging images that fill the kasen, which Issa literally imagines as a journey. It seems possible that Issa's image of leaping sideways up onto a horse is a reference to one of Shinran's most important teachings called ouchou 横超, to pass or cross over sideways -- what The Collected Works of Shinran calls "to transcend crosswise." Simply put, this means that it is possible for some believers, if their trust in and reliance on Amida is total and complete, to rapidly pass over all minor stages and enter directly into the Pure Land with Amida's help. Is the rider in verse 4 setting out for the Pure Land? If so, then the renku paper itself is a sudden opening onto the Pure Land that keeps blossoming with each new verse. There are no commentaries on this kasen, however, and this remains just an hypothesis.

Chris Drake

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. WKD : Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 - Introduction .


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EDO - Edo Cherry Blossoms ISSA

LINK
http://edoflourishing.blogspot.jp/2014/12/edo-cherry-blossoms-issa.html
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. Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 in Edo .


. WKD : Cherry Blossoms (sakura 桜) .

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江戸桜花も銭だけ光る哉
edo sakura hana mo zeni dake hikaru kana

Edo Cherries --
glittering coins outshine
their blossoms

Tr. Chris Drake

This hokku is from the second month (March) in 1820, when Issa was in and around his hometown. "Edo Cherries" (edo-zakura) in the first line is one name for "Somei-Yoshino Cherries," a type of cherry tree artificially created by gardeners in Somei, a village on the edge of Edo, who crossed two traditional types of cherry trees. The Somei nurseries also produced other kinds of new flowers and trees and actively marketed them. Some of these creations became very popular with samurai lords, who generally had very large gardens, and with Edo's merchants, most of whom sought to imitate the warrior class. In Issa's time various nurseries competed to see which could create the most striking or unusual new varieties of flowers and trees. Flower contests became common in the city, and Issa has several hokku about the unnatural shapes of the artificially large and fancy chrysanthemums that became popular in Edo, where the flowers could be amazingly expensive.

Edo Cherries became a choice commodity not long before Issa was sent by his father to Edo to find a job, so he has no doubt seen them in bloom and has compared them with other, more traditional types, such as the wild mountain cherries growing in profusion at Mt. Yoshino. Edo Cherries have bowl-like blossoms that are a strong red at the center when they first bloom, though they gradually turn to a very light pink before they fall, and the blossoms grow fairly close together, covering the whole tree and giving it a rather ostentatious look that many Edoites preferred.

Issa, however, isn't overly impressed by either the blossoms or the tree. He says "even" (mo) the blossoms, so he may refer to the fact that the tree is mainly for show: only very sour cherries or no cherries at all grow on it. And he may feel the overall shape of the tree is a bit unbalanced, since the blossoms bloom before the leaves appear. The tree's main value is commercial, he feels, and in a narrow sense he seems to have been right, since this ornamental type of cherry became even more popular during the period when Japan was modernizing and today is regarded as "traditional," at least in urban areas. It is also popular around the world.

Chris Drake

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「江戸桜ルネッサンス&夜桜うたげ」の魅力
Edo Sakura Renaissance

- source : /mery.jp/15729

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. WKD : Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 - Introduction .


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9 Jul 2014

ISSA about Basho and food

LINK
http://matsuobasho-wkd.blogspot.jp/2012/06/food-haiku.html

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. Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 wrote .

Today I was feeling sorry for myself for being poor simply because I wasn't able to eat a third meal, but when Basho went wandering long ago, he ate only two meals every single day.

三度くふ旅もったいな時雨雲
sando kuu tabi mottaina shigure-gumo

it's outrageous to travel
wanting three meals a day --
winter rain clouds


This hokku is from lunar 10/12 (November 25) in 1803, the lunar-calendar date on which Basho died and on which memorial services for him were held annually at Gichuji Temple near Kyoto, where he is buried, and at many other places by haikai poets. One of the names for Basho's memorial day is shigure-ki, or Cold Rain Memorial, since cold rain showers often fall in late autumn and early winter. The tenth month is the first month of lunar winter, so this is a winter hokku. On this date in 1803 Issa sees dark clouds in the sky. A fast-moving shower is either approaching or passing by a few miles away, and this gives a double meaning to the last line.

The word mottaina, 'wrong, outrageous,' in the second line had a stronger meaning in Issa's time than it does in modern Japanese, and Issa seems genuinely ashamed of his petty desire for more food as he walks along. The last two days he has been staying with his haikai poet friend and wealthy patron Furuta Gessen, with whom he has been discussing both haikai and the ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry (Shijing, in Japanese Shikyou). During Issa's stay, his host Gessen surely treated him well and served him three very nice meals a day, and while he stays in Edo Issa no doubt often eats three meals a day, since he meets many friends, students, and patrons there, although during his years of traveling in western Japan it is likely he usually ate twice a day, a style of eating common among people who aren't wealthy, so this isn't the first time Issa has traveled on only two meals a day.

On the day Issa writes this hokku he is traveling from the town of Fukawa, where Gessen lives, to Tagawa, further east. Both towns are on the northern bank of the Tone River northeast of the city of Edo. His desire for food and his dislike of being poor, both of which seem to have increased after staying with the wealthy Gessen, seem to make Issa feel ashamed of himself when he thinks of Basho on this day, since he reveres Basho and is trying hard to learn from him. He is surely conscious that his own personality, lifestyle, and haikai style are all fairly different from Basho's, yet he feels Basho's emphasis on positively embracing poverty, on enduring hardship, and on minimalistic wabi are worthy goals he also needs to embrace to a certain extent. The dark rain clouds in the hokku may therefore have a third meaning. They may suggest Issa's acute sense of his own of imperfection in the eyes of Basho, who, Issa seems to believe, would stare rather severely at Issa if he were still alive and could read Issa's mind and his haikai. Issa has many hokku about his own imperfection, but the thought of the superego-like Basho seems to make Issa feel his shortcomings even more strongly than usual.

Chris Drake

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. WASHOKU - Japanese Food Saijiki .


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4 Jul 2014

ISSA - Issa and Animals

LINK
http://edoflourishing.blogspot.jp/2014/07/issa-and-animals.html

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. Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 in Edo .

Issa and Animals




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Tr. anc comment by Chris Drake


さをしかやえひしてなめるけさの霜
saoshika ya eishite nameru kesa no shimo

stags stand close
licking morning frost
off each other


This hokku is from the ninth lunar month (October) in 1819, and it is also found toward the end of Year of My Life, Issa's haibun evocation of that year. In the hokku it is late autumn, the mating season, when stags have grown their antlers again and male hormones are flowing. In autumn stags tend to become competitive and assertive, often fighting and sometimes seriously injuring themselves in their desire to imitate the local alpha male, and they also also spend hour after hour plaintively crying out to does. All this assertion and exhibitionism causes the stags to lose many pounds of body weight, and often they are quite haggard, so Issa seems deeply moved by a scene of cooperation, closeness, and friendliness between them early in the morning, before they have become preoccupied with separateness and mating rituals. Frost comes early to the mountainous plateau on which Issa's hometown is located, and for the moment the stags have put away their defenses as they warm up their fellow stags with their tongues.

This harmony and warm spirit of cooperation shown in the midst of fierce competition, even though it is during a temporary period of rest, is obviously important to Issa, who as usual feels animals have much to teach humans. The two hokku preceding this hokku in Year of My Life make this even clearer:

when I was completely lost

night bitterly cold
a neighing horse guides me
to the piss ditch


shoubenjo koko to uma yobu yosamu kana


hey, migrating birds,
no squabbling -- you'll never
make it home alone


kenka su na aimi-tagai no watari-dori

Together the three hokku form a short sequence of related poems that make a strong impression and ask human readers to take them seriously. In the hokku about the horse, Issa seems to have become disoriented after waking up in the middle of the night. Still half asleep and shivering, he has completely forgotten where the ditch for pissing (used by both men and women) is, and he can't see anything in the dark. At that moment a horse in a stall inside one end of the farmhouse hears him moving and makes neighing sounds, allowing Issa to orient himself, since the ditch is just outside the end of the house in which the stall is located.

Issa seems to feel the horse deliberately neighed because it sought to communicate or at least to be harmoniously together with another creature, so he is extremely grateful to the horse for its kind help. Even if the horse was not consciously telling Issa where the ditch was, Issa says the horse 'calls out' (yobu) to him, so he assumes that horses and humans share a basic desire to communicate with each other, even if they do not possess a formal common language. On the other hand, in Issa's time farm horses lived inside the same house the farming family lived in, and Issa may make midnight trips from time to time, so he may feel the horse, a family member, was consciously guiding him.

In the last hokku, some migratory birds who winter in Japan seem to have stopped briefly in Issa's hometown on their way south. They are having a loud quarrel about something, worrying Issa and causing him to offer some advice. He speaks to them as a fellow life-traveler and reminds them they shouldn't quarrel with those they are closest to and on whom they are most dependent for their very survival. In Issa's diary, the hokku before and after this hokku are about singing Amida Buddha's name, so Issa seems to be treating birds and humans in a parallel way, and he surely considers chanting or singing Amida's name in both human and bird languages to be a good way of ending dissension and increasing mutual sympathy.

Following this hokku about birds in Year of My Life is the first hokku translated above about stags. By creating a series consisting of three separately written hokku, in Year of My Life Issa more effectively overcomes superficial conceptual distinctions between humans and other animals, and he may be hinting at Amida's presence as well.

Chris Drake



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Latest updates about Issa on facebook - CLICK to join !



. WKD : Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 - Introduction .


[ . BACK to DARUMA MUSEUM TOP . ]
[ . BACK to WORLDKIGO . TOP . ]

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