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. Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 in Edo .
Yoshinoyama 吉野山, the Mountains of Yoshino, has been a spot famous for cherry trees since long ago. After it became the holy tree of Gongen Zao of a Buddhist mountain sect about 1,300 years ago, it continued to be planted as an offering.
The cherry trees of Yoshinoyama were loved by writers and artists from the days of old.
. WKD : Yoshinoyama - 吉野山 Mount Yoshino .
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うつるとも花見虱ぞよしの山
utsuru tomo hanami-jirami zo yoshino yama
they get on you, but hey,
they're blossom-viewing lice --
Mount Yoshino
Tr. Chris Drake
This humorous hokku is from the beginning of the 3rd month in 1811, at the end of March, when the cherry blossoms were at their peak. At this time Issa was living in Edo and doing a lot of renku sequences with Edo poets.
In middle to late spring, around the time cherry blossoms are in full bloom, lice also begin to show what they're made of and crawl in large numbers into and onto people's robes, bodies, and hair, so they are called "blossom-viewing lice" at this time of year. In the hokku Issa declares that fear of lice is no reason to stay home and not go out to view the cherry blossoms. Even lice feel the urge to go view the blossoms, and humans surely appreciate blossoms at least as deeply as lice. Issa suggests that fellowship with lice is an added feature that should make blossom-viewing even more moving, and he stresses his point by implying that viewing blossoms together with lice makes the experience the equal of viewing the cherry blossoms on Mount Yoshino, the most famous place for viewing blossoms in Japan and a symbol of cherry blossom beauty in general.
Mount Yoshino, a mountain sacred to Buddhists, Shinto believers, and Yamabushi mountain ascetics and written about from the days of ancient waka, was in Issa's time nearly covered by thousands of cherry trees, making it a natural wonder. Issa is in Edo, however, far from Mount Yoshino. By implication, he evokes the humans and lice who are now viewing the blossoms on the slopes of distant Mount Yoshino, but the main image in the hokku seems to be based on a comparison: even the blossoms in Edo are surely as beautiful in their own way as those on Mount Yoshino if viewed while close relationships are developing between Edo lice and their human hosts. Perhaps there is the further implication that, for the lice, the human bodies they crawl onto are something just as beautiful as the blossoms of Yoshino are for humans.
Chris Drake
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百尋の雨だれかぶる桜哉
momohiro no amadare kaburu sakura kana
a thousand gallons
shower from the eaves...
cherry blossoms
Tr. Chris Drake
This haiku has the prescript, "Yoshino."
Yoshino is a famous place for viewing the cherry blossoms. Literally, Issa says that the blossoms are "showered by 100 fathoms of eavesdrops," but since most English speakers think of a "fathom" as a unit of ocean depth, this term would be confusing. I substituted "a thousand gallons" for "a hundred fathoms" to express the idea of an enormous amount of water spilling from the eaves. To help me visualize this, Shinji Ogawa sent images of a temple's multi-tiered pagoda. An amadare is an eavesdrop, where water falls from a roof's overhang.
This hokku was written sometime between 1789 and 1809. The hiro unit was used when measuring length (especially of cloth, rope, and fishing line) or depth (of the ocean), and one hiro was of varying lengths in different contexts but was most commonly 5.97 feet, so the raindrops are literally falling about 600 feet, but the number 100 was frequently used to mean a vague large number, a meaning Issa seems to be using here. The most common term for the length Issa mentions was hyaku-hiro, and it was often used metaphorically for something perceived as being very long. Hyakuhiro (Hundred Hiro) Falls, just west of Edo/Tokyo, for instance, actually drops its water not 600 feet but 120 feet.
Issa, however, chooses an old word for a hundred, momo. The old word is even vaguer than hyaku-, a word that was often used to make exact calculations, and momo is appropriate to the hokku's setting, given by Issa in a headnote, since centuries earlier the emperor and Kyoto aristocrats, who normally used the word momo, often made trips to Mt. Yoshino, regarded as a holy mountain, in order to pray and view the many cherry blossoms there. In Issa's time almost the whole mountain was covered with cherry trees, and when they were in bloom the mountain was regarded to be one of the most beautiful places in Japan.
Amadare in the second line can mean rain dripping from the eaves down onto an eavesdrop (amadare-ochi), but it also means simply raindrops. For example, it is used to translate the "Raindrop" in the title of Chopin's "Raindrop" Prelude into Japanese. Issa, too, seems to be talking about raindrops here. Since the length of the raindrops' fall is stressed, perhaps long sheets of slanting rain are falling on Mt. Yoshino just when its thousands of cherry trees are in full bloom. The hard-hitting raindrops will no doubt take most of petals with them to the ground, and the hokku implies that it is a very painful sight to behold.
Chris Drake
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唐の吉野もかくや小夜ぎぬた
morokoshi no yoshino mo kaku ya sayo-ginuta
is even the Yoshino
in China like this?
fulling cloth at night
Tr. Chris Drake
Chris Drake's Comments are here :
. WKD : fulling block .
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鮎迄もわか盛也吉の川
. ayu made mo waka-zakari nari yoshino kawa .
人に喰れし桜咲也みよしの山
hito ni kuwareshi sakura saku nari miyoshino yama
春立やよしのはおろか人の顔
haru tatsu ya yoshino wa oroka hito no kao
川は又山吹咲ぬよしの山
kawa wa mata yamabuki sakinu yoshino yama
小日和やよし野は人を呼子鳥
ko-biyori ya yoshino e hito wo yobu ko tori
衣打槌の下より吉の川
koromo utsu tsuchi no shita yori yoshino-gawa
みよしのへ遊びに行や庵の蜂
miyoshino e asobi ni iku ya io no hachi
みよしのの古き夜さりを砧哉
miyoshino no furuki yosai o kinuta kana
みよしのや寝起も花の雲の上
miyoshino ya neoki mo hana no kumo no ue
唐の吉野へいざと紙子哉
morokoshi no yoshino e iza to kamiko kana
長旅や花も痩せたるよしの山
nagatabi ya hana mo yasetaru yoshino yama
菜の花も一ッ夜明やよしの山
na no hana mo hitotsu yoake ya yoshino yama
菜の花のさし出て咲けりよしの山
na no hana no sashidete saki keri yoshino yama
三文が桜植けり吉野山
san mon ga sakura ue-keri yoshino yama
よしの山変桜もなかりけり
yoshino yama kawari sakura mo nakari keri
- source and translations : David Lanoue - Issa
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. WKD : Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 - Introduction .
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