Laughter in Japanese Haiku, page 3

editors' note:

The division into four sections is our own doing to lower download times per page.

Among the disciples of Basho, Takarai Kikaku (1661-1707) was perhaps the most witty. He sometimes provokes loud laughter. In the following poem, for example, he gives a flea bite as evidence of his nightmare:

Kiraretaru yume wa makoto ka nomi no ato

Sword-hewn in my sleep,
Was that vision true indeed?
Trace of a flea bite.

According to Kyorai, Basho was rather critical of this kind of laughter. He once said that Kikaku, like Teika, tended to overexaggerate what was not of itself so very interesting. The following poem by Kikaku, however, modelled on a famous poem by Teika, was highly praised by Basho for its ingenuity:

Kabashira ni yume no ukihashi kakaru nari

A column of midges,
Where the floating bridge of dreams
Hangs for a moment.

The column of midges is always changing its shape — now breaking into two or three columns, now gathering into one again. Here, this ever-changing shape is used effectively to convey the ephemeral quality of dreams.

Another of Basho’s followers who wrote a good number of humorous poems was Hirose Izen (c.1646-1711). His haiku are unique in that we can hear in them the comic tone of a fool:

Ume no hana akai wa akai wa akai wa na

Plum blossoms, they are
Very red, indeed, very red,
Very red they are.

Another example is the poem in which he deplores his temporary separation from his master Basho:

Wakaruru ya kaki kuinagara saka no ue

I say my goodbye,
Eating persimmons, standing
At the top of a slope.

The act of eating persimmons at the time of farewell is not only funny, but also idiotic. Yet somehow this act tells us how deeply the poet was moved, seeing his master moving further and further away. Basho recognized the special talent of Izen, saying that his style would continue to move towards greater ‘lightness’. However, Kyorai was against this kind of humour. He criticized Izen for forgetting Basho’s important teachings on the force and shape of a poem. In other words, Kyorai thought that Izen’s poems lacked force and were somewhat ugly in form.

It is generally accepted that the greatest haiku master after Basho is Yosa Buson (1716-1783). Unlike Basho, Buson was the son of a farmer and by profession a painter.Basho considered himself a wanderer throughout his life. Buson also spent much time travelling, but he chose to live in obscure corners of large towns. They were also different in their attitudes towards poetry. Basho aimed for deep sincerity, but Buson aimed rather for deep aestheticism. If Basho was stoic, Buson was an epicure. It is quite natural, then, to find that Buson’s humour is different from Basho’s. Here is a poem Buson wrote about a swallow:

Otsu-e ni fun otoshi-yuku tsubame kana

A painting for sale —
A swallow lets fall a dropping,
As it flies away.

This poem sounds almost like an imitation of the Basho poem I quoted above, but if we look closely, we find a great deal of difference. In Basho’s poem, a spring warbler defecates on rice cakes, while in Buson’s poem, a swallow does the same on a painting for sale. Basho invites us to laugh for a moment, but somehow, the very next moment, our laughter is frozen. Buson, however, invites us not only to laugh, but also to enjoy laughing. Buson’s poem is a picture, complete in itself. If Basho’s poem is also a picture, we are nevertheless compelled to look beyond it.

Another haiku by Buson, in which we are invited to enjoy a spring scene:

Kumo o nonde hana o haku naru Yoshinoyama

Drinking up the clouds,
It spews out cherry blossoms —
Yoshino Mountain.

This poem was composed when the poet visited Yoshino Mountain, famous for its cherry blossoms. Unfortunately, however, the day was wet and windy. Instead of deploring his bad luck, Buson enjoyed the turmoil of the storm, and invites us to enjoy it, too. In this poem, even the storm is turned into a humorous picture: I think this poem comes very close to ‘mock heroic’.

Here is another humorous poem by Buson:

Saru-dono no yosamu toi-yuku usagi kana

Who goes to visit
Sir Monkey this frozen night —
Only Mr Hare?

We come to feel that there are stories behind many of Buson’s poems, and this is a typical case. With a little imagination, we could easily write an animal story to go with this haiku. Very often, Buson’s humour depends on the unwritten narrative suggested by a poem. In the following haibun, Buson tells an interesting story about a badger that disturbed him at night, so enhancing the narrative quality of the haiku following it:

‘Jou had a villa in the town of Yuki, and appointed an old man to be its keeper. The house was in the middle of the town, but buried deep under trees and overgrown grass, so that it was an ideal place in which to avoid the dust of the world: I thus decided to stay there for a while. The old man had little to do besides cleaning and sweeping. So, one autumn night, he sat alone by a lonely light, telling his beads and lamenting the length of the night. I was sitting alone in the innermost room, trying to compose hokku and reciting the kanshi (Chinese poems) I was writing. Soon, I got tired, however, and covering myself I went to sleep. While I was dozing, I heard a loud noise – the beating of the sliding-door at the other end of the spacious corridor. As this was repeated some twenty or thirty times, I was alarmed, and got up to see what the matter was. I opened the sliding-door, but there was no sign of anything at all. I slipped back into my bed, but then heard the same noise again, a loud beating on the sliding-door. Again I rose and went to the door to see, but not even a shadow was there. By now I was possessed by fear, so I went to the old keeper and told him what had happened. He said at once, "It’s him again, the Badger. When he comes back, open the sliding-door quickly. I will slip out of the back door and hide myself behind the hedge in ambush." I put a rod close to myself in bed, and pretended, just as badgers often do, to be asleep. When I heard the noise again, I promptly opened the door and let out a loud cry, which was answered by the shrill yell of the old keeper. All our efforts were in vain, however, for we saw nothing in the dark. The old keeper became angry, and searched all the obscure corners, but nothing at all could be detected. This went on for five nights in a row, and I was beginning to feel rather disgusted and quite ready to go away, when the head servant of Jou’s household came to me and said, "That thing will not disturb you tonight. Early this morning, a villager shot an old badger in a place called ‘Under the Bushes’. In my opinion, it was this badger that has been alarming you with its noise these past few days. You can sleep in peace tonight." What this servant told me turned out to be true: the noise completely ceased. I detested the animal, of course – but, who knows, he might just have been trying to console me in my loneliness at night. If so, our relationship must go deeper than mere chance encounter. Deploring his death, I visited a priest named Zenkubo, and, making a small offering, asked him to pray for the peaceful repose of the Badger in heaven.

Aki no kure hotoke ni bakeru tanuki kana

Late in the autumn,
Transformed into a Buddha
A badger at night.’

I think this poem is the quintessence of Buson’s humour, in that it is a mixture of fact and fiction, seriousness and playfulness, lyrical impulse and narrative charm.

We find an entirely different kind of humour in the poems of Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827). He was born in a mountain village in the Japan Alps. His mother died when he was only three, and he did not get along well with his stepmother. Throughout his life, he was very poor. His poetry is, therefore, characterized by social satire and sympathizes with the weak. He was especially interested in children and their innocent play. Thus his poetry is a strange combination of the satirical and the pastoral, somewhat akin to the early poetry of William Blake:

Naku neko ni akambei a shite temari kana

At the cat mewing,
She made faces and kept on
Bouncing the ball.

In this poem, a girl’s reaction to the mewing cat is humorously described. On other days, the girl and the cat are very good friends, but on this particular day, the girl is so absorbed in her play that the cat is merely a nuisance. What is important in the poem is the attitude of the poet towards the girl. I think the best way to characterize it is to say that it is a mixture of approval and disapproval. The girl is behaving rather foolishly in the poem, for she is ignoring her good friend, but she is basically innocent because she is true to her own feeling.

Here is another interesting poem by Issa:

Kasumu hi ya sazo tennin no gotaikutsu

What a misty day,
The angels above must be bored
Even unto death.

A spring day is long, and if it is misty, by the end of the day we are bored to death. There is nothing uncommon in this experience. Nor is there anything unusual in the association of heavenly beings with spring mist. It is at least as old as the famous Noh play, ‘Hagoromo’. Instead of exalting the angels, however, Issa brings them down to the human level. Yet he stops short of iconoclasm. We can see this point more clearly if we compare Issa’s poem with the famous stanzas in Sokan’s anthology:

Kasumi no koromo suso wa nure keri

This garment of the spring mist,
Its skirt is soaked in water.

Saohime no haru tachi-nagara shito a shite

The lady of spring
Must have passed water, as she
Got up on her feet.

In this linked verse, the elegant image of a spring day is completely destroyed, but in Issa’s poem, the image of a misty spring day itself is retained, although the angels are once again brought down to human level. The result is not iconoclastic, but humorous.

I should like to give one more example of Issa’s humour, as it refers to Basho:

Basho-sama no sune o kajitte yu-suzumi

My Master Basho —
At the expense of his shanks,
I enjoy the dusk.

‘At the expense of one’s shanks’ is a Japanese idiom for ‘being totally dependent upon someone’. Thus, in this poem, Issa is trying to say that he is completely dependent on his master Basho as a poet, but at the same time, he is trying to say that he does not strive as hard as his master, just sitting down to enjoy the cool evening, while his master wore out his shanks, spending most of his life on the road. The image of the shanks is very effective in conveying this double meaning.

I will now quote a short haibun piece by Issa by way of comparison with Buson’s Badger haibun:

‘There was once a cruel woman who lived in the village of Tatsuta in the province of Yamato. She refused to feed her stepchild for ten days in a row, and when the child was about to die of hunger, she showed him a bowl of rice and said, "Take this, and offer it to the stone statue that stands beside the road, If he eats it, you can have some, too." There was nothing the poor child could do, except to obey. But, as he sat down to pray before the stone image, a great miracle happened: the stone statue opened its gigantic mouth and devoured the rice as greedily as if it had been a starving child. After that, they say, the horns of cruelty dropped from the woman’s brow, and she ceased discriminating between the stepchild and her own children. And, if perchance, you should ever pay a visit to this village, you can still see the very same stone statue, standing where it always has done: and you will never fail to see fresh offerings laid before it.

Botamochi ya yabu no hotoke ma haru no kaze

Huge dumplings offered,
A stone Buddha by the bush
Enjoys the spring wind.’

Obviously, this passage is a reflection of Issa’s own unhappy relationship with his stepmother, but in the haibun he is not simply criticizing the cruelty of the woman. He is telling the tale of a miracle. What makes this passage so humorous is that he seems not completely to believe the story he is telling. The stone image might simply be enjoying the spring wind, but so happy is its expression that we are almost persuaded into believing that he has eaten some of the dumplings offered to him. We have already seen how Buson invites us to indulge ourselves in the narrative world he creates. Issa, however, wants us to bridge fact and fiction by using our imagination and our sympathy. This is why, once again, in this passage too, Issa is offering us a mixture of satirical and pastoral elements.

editors' note:

This essay is being reprinted from Rediscovering Basho - A 300th Anniversary Celebration, Stephen Henry Gill & C. Andrew Gerstle ed., Global Oriental, 1999, ISBN 1-901903-15-X).

We are grateful to Professor Yuasa and to the publisher, Global Books Ltd., for their very kind permission to reprint the essay. Paul Norbury at Global Books was particularly helpful to us.

This is but one part of a collection of essays detailing Basho's effects on haiku today. We hope that you will consider purchasing this book for your own library.

The division into four sections is our own doing to lower download times per page.

page 1 - beginnings - Ihara Saikaku (pre-Basho)
page 2 - Ihara Saikaku - Matsuo Basho (Basho)
page 3 - Takarai Kikaku - Kobayashi Issa (from Basho to Issa)
page 4 - Masaoka Shiki - today (Shiki and beyond)