helpful. English haiku used for comparison with Japanese haiku are by the following poets: Scott Alexander, Peggy Card, Helen S. Chenoweth, Molly Garling, James Hackett, Barbara Ogden Moraw, Violet Parks, Catherine Neil Paton, Anne Rutherford, Joy Shieman and Georgian Tashijian. Anita Feldman, Paul Marcotte, Frances Kirwan, Nishimura Yoshitaro, Mary O'Shaughnessy, Imaizumi Hinako and Florence Gogins added books and encouragement to perceptive suggestions. Uetani Yoshiko and Omizo Setsuko helped with translations and explanations of Japanese terms. Three librarians, Inoue Eishin, Sato Teruko and Yabuki Mihoko, traced obscure references; Patricia King, Yamano Emiko and Kohata Kiyoko did the tedious work of typing.
While this book was being written the author was on leave of absence from teaching duties at Sakura no Seibo Junior College, Fukushima, Japan. The research was financed by the Congregation de Notre Dame of Montreal, Canada. Thanks are due to these institutions and to the persons mentioned above.
Acknowledgments are due to: Columbia University Press for excerpts from Sources of Japanese Tradition by Ryusaku Tsunoda, Wm. Theodore de Bary and Donald Keene (comps.); Doubleday and Company, Inc. (comps.) for excerpts from Introduction to Haiku by Harold G. Henderson; Grove Press, Inc. for U.S. rights for excerpts from An Introduction to Zen Buddhism by D. T. Suzuki; James Hackett for ten haiku from his book, The Way of Haiku, published by Japan Publications; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. for excerpts from Structural Essentials of English by Harold Whitehall; Hokuseido Press for haiku translations and excerpts from A History of Haiku, Volumes I and II, Haiku, Volumes I to IV and Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics by R. H. Blyth; The Hutchinson Publishing Group, Ltd. for British Commonwealth rights for excerpts from An Introduction to Zen Buddhism by D. T. Suzuki; The Hudson Review for selections from "The Technique of Japanese Poetry," by Earl Miner, reprinted by permission from the Hudson Review, Volume VIII, No. 3 (Autumn, 1955), copyright © 1955 by The Hudson Review, Inc.; Leroy Kanterman for haiku by Molly Garling and Scott Alexander in Haiku West, published by Leroy Kanterman(ed.); the J. B. Lippincott Company for excerpts from the book The Story of Language by Mario Pei, copyright © 1949 by Mario Pei, reprinted by permission of J. B. Lippincott Company; the McGraw-Hill Book Company for excerpts from Twelve Doors to Japan by J. W. Hall and R. K. Beardsley; Penguin Books, Ltd. for excerpts from The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Basho, translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa, and from The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse, translated by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite, published by Penguin Books, Ltd.; the Simon and Schuster Publishing Company for excerpts from Japan: A History in Art by Bradley Smith; Taiseido Press for haiku translations and excerpts from Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern by Miyamori Asataro; the Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc. for selections from Haiku in English by Harold G. Henderson; from Borrowed Water: A Book of American Haiku by the Los Altos Writers Roundtable; from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings by Paul Reps (comp.); and from The Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature, History, and Possibilities in English by Kenneth Yasuda.
THE HAIKU FORM
I THE MEANING OF HAIKU
The great appeal of haiku poems seems to result mainly from two qualities: their dependence on the reader's power of awareness, bringing him closer to simple, elemental truths; and their capacity to grow in meaning as they are read and reread. Before discussing at length the background and elements of haiku, it is interesting to note briefly the origin of the form as it developed from waka, renga and renku. A short history of the growth of haiku may clarify points which follow in later chapters. An introduction to Basho, Buson, Issa and Shiki as the four undisputed masters of haiku and a description of the variation of haiku known as senryu, as well as an overview of developments in English haiku, are necessary preliminaries to any study of the form.
According to Miyazaki Toshiko,1 the word "haiku" comes from haikai renga no hokku (the introductory lines of light linked verse). The name "haiku" was not given to the form until the late nineteenth century, when the poet Shiki, using the Japanese genius for telescoping words, invented it. A haiku is actually the first part of a waka, a highly conventionalized syllabic verse of five lines arranged in a sequence of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables, also known as a tanka or uta; the tanka and uta date back to the eighth-century poetry anthology, the Manyoshu. By the time the Shinkokinshu was written in the Kamakura period (1185-1333), the waka was beginning to decline and the renga was becoming popular.
Renga, or linked verse, is a sort of poetic dialogue, a succession of waka in which the first three lines of 5-7-5 syllables are composed by one person, the next two lines of 7-7 by another person, the following three lines of 5-7-5 by a third person, and so on; in this way, a group of four or five people sometimes composed renga of a hundred verses or so. Of these long composite poems, the first three lines, called hokku, are always the most important and the best known, much in the same way that the first verse and chorus of a popular song are often well known and the other verses ignored except by a very few.
Renga were composed at verse-capping meetings, according to rules reputedly laid down in 1186 by Fujiwara Sadaie (1162-1241) and Fujiwara Sadatake (1139?-1202). Iio Sogi(1421-1502), a poet of the Muro-machi period (1392-1568) is credited with raising haiku to the level of literature by his cultivated and artistic renga. (Sogi is known as "the best composer under heaven.") He, as well as Yamazaki Sokan (1465-1553), Nishiyama Soin (1605-1682) and others rebelled against the conventions of the court renga which followed the stilted waka rules. They began to include words from any type of vocabulary, and to insinuate humor into their poetry. In other words, they retained the renga form, but discarded the waka spirit. This earthier type of linked verse was called renku but the first three lines were still called hokku. The new renku was also known as haikai renga, and gradually the word haikai by itself came to have the same meaning as hokku. Thus, haiku before the time of Shiki (18671902) were known as hokku or haikai.
The best renga and waka teachers had the habit of composing hokku ahead of time to have them ready when they might be needed for a linked-verse party. Hokku were probably among the world's shortest poems, so it was all the more necessary to try very hard to blend artistic content and form. It was Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) who succeeded in raising haikai from mere vers de société to the level of real literature expressing a meaningful reaction to reality beyond simple wit and humor.
Matsuo Basho was born in Iga province (Mie prefecture). As a youth he was the companion of the son of his feudal lord in Kyoto. Here he learned the tea ceremony and studied haikai with the poet Kitamura Kigin (1623-1705). After the death of his young friend and patron, Basho moved to Edo (Tokyo) where he built his "banana-tree (basho) hermitage" in Fukugawa, and worked seriously at writing haikai. Wishing to taste deeply of nature and of human life he observed them carefully, finally finding his own independent voice in a subjective type of haikai which revealed his feelings through sound, form and image. His haikai are noted for their melancholy content (called wabi, a term from the tea ceremony applied to the aesthetic beauty of humble things) and for their quiet tone (called sabi, a term meaning the subdued elegance found in old, worn things).
Basho's style of haikai is called shofu haikai, from sho, the second syllable of his name, and fu (style). The belief that nature is the realm par excellence of poetry is the fundamental tenet of shofu haikai.
Throughout his life, Basho made many journeys in search of material for his haiku, at the same time becoming increasingly aware of nature. Of his many travel diaries, Sarashina Kiko (A Visit to Sarashina Village) and Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North) are important, among other things, for their nature essays and haiku. He is called the Shakespeare of haiku because of his great contribution to the form. After the death of Basho, the art of haikai declined momentarily, but it was renewed and revivified by Buson, Issa and Shiki.
Taniguchi (or Yosano) Buson (1715-1783) was born near Osaka. Little is known of his life, but his love of painting is revealed in his picturesque, objective imagery. In his personal reserve as an artist and in his attention to his craft he might be compared to Alexander Pope, the neoclassical eighteenth-century poet, but in his
