kaki, kakine - hedge, fence

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kakine 垣根 hedge, fence
kakoi 囲い, saku さく. hei 塀

The main word is KAKI, read ..GAKI in compound words.


ishigaki　石垣　stone wall, stone fence
ikegaki 生け垣 "living fence", hedge
shooen, shirogaki 城垣 castle "hedge", castle wall

. kamigaki 神垣 fence of a shrine .
"Fence of the Gods"
igaki 斎垣 / tamagaki 玉垣 / mizugaki 瑞垣





- quote
kaki　垣
Also read en; also called kakine 垣根.
A generic term for a fence, garden precinct wall, or partition. Some varieties of bamboo take 竹, Japanese bush clover hagi 萩, brush kanboku 潅木, or azalea tsutsuji 躑躅 are used for hedges *ikegaki 生垣. If the fencing material is cut and dried it is referred to as dead material shinigaki 死垣, and can include such things as embedded bamboo posts hottate-no-take 掘立の竹, posts with bark, or bamboo stake and bamboo reeds takeho 竹穂, as for example at Katsura Rikyuu 桂離宮 in Kyoto, specifically known as katsuragaki 桂垣.
Long fences are known as *oogaki 大垣 and short fences as *sodegaki 袖垣.
Light fences used to divide a garden are called shikirigaki 仕切垣.


ikegaki　生垣
Lit. living fence.

A type of hedge made of trees, bamboo or other living plants planted in a row and trimmed so as to form a fence. Ikegaki (called ikekigaki 生木垣 or living tree fence in Edo period) are different than itagaki 板垣 (board fences), *ishigaki 石垣 (stone fences), *takegaki 竹垣 (bamboo fences) and other types of shinigaki 死垣 (dead fences). When composed of thorn bushes they are called ibaragaki 茨垣, when made of bamboo, sasagaki 笹垣, and when created with several kinds of tree, called *mazegaki 交垣.
A large clipped hedge or ookarikomi 大刈込 may be used to block out unwanted views *dankei 断景. Ikegaki around houses often serve as windbreaks, while their use between different people's land serves as a property marker.
Because of the ancient belief that a god kami 神, resided in evergreen plants himorogi 神籬, ikegaki were often used in shrines and temples to divide space. Evergreens such as Japanese cypress hinoki 桧, Chinese black pine maki 槇 and sakaki 榊 are most frequently employed, although deciduous trees may be used.
For protective hedges, thorn bushes are effective, while the dense leaves of Japanese azaleas, satsuki さつき and tsutsuji 躑躅 make them effective when used to block unwanted views.


sodegaki　袖垣
Lit. sleeve fence.

A narrow fence which may serve to screen off some garden element or may be completely ornamental. Commonly found in tea gardens *roji 露路, sodegaki are attached at right angle to the edge of a building. They are generally about two meters high and a meter across. The fence is named for its proportions which resemble those of a kimono 着物 sleeve.
Varieties of sodegaki include *chasengaki 茶筅垣, *ensouhishi sodegaki 円窓菱袖垣, *teppoogaki 鉄砲垣, *nozokigaki 覗垣 and *yaegaki 八重垣 as well as yoroigaki 鎧垣 (armor-pattern fence), *uguisugaki 鶯垣, to name just a few of the many variations.
Sodegaki are contrasted with functional continuous fences, *oogaki 大垣.
- source : JAANUS


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- - - - - We have some kigo with fences and hedges:

kigo in spring

kaki tsukurou 垣繕う (かきつくろう) repairing the hedge
..... kaki teire 垣手入れ（かきていれ）

yukigaki toku 雪垣解く（ゆきがきとく）
taking down the snow guard hedges


konome gaki 木の芽垣（このめがき）
fence of budding trees


ukogigaki 五加垣（うこぎがき）hedge of aralia trees
the leaves can be picked and prepared for tea


kakidooshi 垣通 Glechoma hederacea subsp. grandis
a creeper plant of the mint family


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kigo in summer

bara no hanagaki 茨の花垣（ばらのはながき）
hedge of wild roses


kakoi bune 囲い船 (かこいぶね) fencing ships


unohana gaki 卯の花垣（うのはながき） hedge of deutzia blossoms


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kigo in autumn

shishigaki 鹿垣 (ししがき) fence against wild boars
and other animals


inagaki 稲垣（いながき）fence to protect the rice plants


mukuge gaki 木槿垣（むくげがき）
fence with the rose of Sharon


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kigo in winter



ishigaki ichigo 石垣苺（いしがきいちご）
strawberries grown on stone walls
They are grown in hot houses, to provide strawberries for the Japanese christmas cake.



kazegaki 風垣（かざがき） wind-protecting hedges
yukigaki 雪垣（ゆきがき）snow-protecting hedge


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topics

beech tree hedge

Robin-run-the-hedge / Galium aparine


. Katsuragaki かつらがき【桂垣】Katsura-Hedge
"takehoogaki" 竹穂垣, hoogaki 穂垣
made from the leaves of living bamboo.


. ukogi うこぎ　/ 五加木 kind of aralia tree .
The leaves have been used as food in the Yonezawa area since the Edo period, when the daimyo Naoe Kanetsugu 直江 兼続（なおえ かねつぐ 1560 - 1619） made them plant this trees for fences around the homes and have some food in times of need.




nerihei　練り塀　mud and tile wall or fence, topped with tiles
Stone-wall ("NERIHEI"), nerihei-wall, stonel-mud wall/fence

It helps protect the property from fire and is used in small fishing villages, especially in Iwaishima island in Yamaguchi.





紫陽花や練り塀長き国分寺
ajisai ya nerihei nagaki Kokubunji

hydrangeas -
the long stone-mud-wall
of temple Kokubunji

anonymous
source :　slownet

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. - Temple fences and walls - 塀　 　


. . Japanese Haiku with KAKINE hedge . .

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yaraigaki矢来垣, ootsugaki 大津垣 Otsugaki, Lit. Ootsu fence



- quote -
chousengaki 朝鮮垣, and chousen yarai 朝鮮矢来 (chosen yarai, Korean fence).
A type of simple wooden fence. In 1711 a Korean mission traveling from Ootsu 大津 to Edo attracted so much attention that the government ordered people to erect fences along the road on which the Koreans passed. These fences were made with pieces of uncut bamboo tied on intersecting diagonals between two or three cross bars of split bamboo. Often the projecting bamboo at the top is cut to create a sharp edge.
- source : JAANUS -

. Yaraicho 矢来町 - "Palisade quarter" in Edo .


More Types of hedges in Japan
建仁寺垣 Kenninjigaki / 光悦寺垣 Koetsujigaki / 竜安寺垣 Ryoanjigaki / 網代垣 ajirogaki / ななこ垣 nanakogaki
四つ目垣 Yotsumegaki / 金閣寺垣 Kinkakujigaki / 鉄砲垣 teppogaki / 篠垣 shinogaki / 清水垣 Kiyomizugaki
御簾垣 misugaki / 沼津垣 Numazugaki / 蓑垣 minogaki / 鎧垣 yoroigaki / 桂垣 katsuragaki
竹穂垣 takenohogaki / 時雨垣 shiguregaki / 長穂垣 nagahogaki / 大徳寺垣 Daitokujigaki
茶筅垣 chasengaki / 清水鉄砲 Kiyomizu teppo / 萩鉄砲 Hagi teppo / 松明垣 taimatsugaki
http://homepage3.nifty.com/fuj-takeya/takegaki.htm

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. WKD : Fences and Hedges in Kenya .


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- - - - - H A I K U - - - - -

- - - - - Matsuo Basho - - - - -

蝶の羽のいくたび越ゆる塀の屋根
choo no ha no ikutabi koyuru hei no yane

butterfly's wings -
how many times do they flit
over the roofed wall?
Tr. Ueda

Written in 1690 元禄3年春. Basho stayed with his disciple from Iga, Saboku 乍木. The wall between the homes of Saboku and his neighbour might have been quite tall.

. - choo, chō 蝶 butterfly - and Basho .
butterfly - kigo for spring



桐の木に鶉鳴くなる塀の内　
. kiri no ki ni uzura naku naru hei no uchi .
quails inside the garden wall


. yoku mireba nazuna hana saku kakine kana .
(New Year) sheperd's purse. looking closely. hedge



. Matsuo Basho 松尾芭蕉 - Archives of the WKD .


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- - - - - Yosa Buson - - - - -

冬鴬むかし王維が垣根哉
. fuyu uguisu mukashi Oi ga kakine kana .
the hedge of the Chinese Oi. - Wang Wei 王維 -(699 - 759)


白梅や誰が昔より垣の外　
. shiraume ya taga mukashi yori kaki no soto .
outside the fence

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妹が垣ね三味線草の花咲ぬ
imo ga kakine shamisengusa nohana sakinu

- quote
In the hedge of his girl's
He sees
Shepherd's purses in bloom.

'Kinshin o motte bijin ni idomu': 琴心挑美人
The prefatory note derives from a historical event in old China. In the Haiku the Poet replaces a 'koto' with a 'samisen'.

Prof. Tsutomu Ogata comments that 'he' may have walked by her house very often, hoping to see her; but probably in vain . Anyway, so much time has passed and shepherds' purses are now blooming in the hedge of her house. Little as they are, they look so fresh and vivid. For so much waste of dear time, the white flowers may give him a new hope and he will surely regain strength and try his best to win her heart.
Mr. Takahashi says that we associate a white little flower with a pretty beloved girl. 'He' in the Haiku is not necessarily the Poet himself. Here is clearly read a man's strong devoted love for the girl in his heart.
- source : Shoji Kumano -

- James Karkoski wrote:

Kinshin chō bijin 琴心挑美人
The mind to challenge a beautiful women with a stringed instrument

The women a hedge,
certainly the shepherd's purse flowers
have come in bloom!

This haiku is difficult to translate because the common name for shepherd's purse in Japanese is 'shamisen grass' which alludes to the three stringed instrument that is still popular in Japan today.
This ties in with the maegaki (forward) Kinshin chō bijin 琴心挑美人
that alludes to an episode in the life of the Chinese poet Sima Xiangru that is recorded 'Shiki' (Records of the Grand Historian), a book that has biographies of famous people during the Han Dynasty in China. Xiangru was introduced to the beautiful daughter of a wealthy family who was recently widowed, and he when played a song on a zither in admiration of her beautiful she fell in love with him and they later eloped against her father's wishes.
The reason why it is called 'shamisen grass' is because the way the way the stems of the flowers shake resembles the sound that a shamisen makes, and traditionally children will break off the flowery part of the plant and placing it in one hand will play shamisen by moving it like a plectrum. Commentators note that is recorded that Buson was remembering a lost love around the time he wrote this haiku.
The opening phrase 'Imo ga kakine' is very vague and I have kept to the literal translation of it, although you could play around with the articles if you want. Commentators tend to read it as meaning that the women is at the hedge, and that is plausible as well depending on how you want to read what verb is being implied here.
I think that the allusion to Xiangru's triumph naturally reads the haiku into being about Buson's childish attempts to win this women's heart.
There is another forward that is also attributed to this haiku that translates as 'First folded pocket paper' which no doubt is about Buson passing love poetry on his love, and, hopefully, he didn't use shepherd's purse as the central image to express his affections for this women.This counts as 18.
- source : James Karkoski facebook -


. shamisengusa 三味線草 "Shamisen plant" - sheperd's purse .
kigo for all spring

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垣越しにものうちかたる接木かな
kakigoshi ni mono uchikataru tsugiki kana
(1770)

over the hedge
they exchange stories
while grafting trees . . .

The cut marker KANA is at the end of line 3.

. WKD : tsugiki, tsugi-ki 接木 (つぎき / 接ぎ木) grafting .
kigo for mid-spring


筍や柑子をゝしむ垣の外
takenoko ya kooji o oshimu kaki no soto
(1775)

these bamboo shoots -
outside the hedge that guards
the sweet tangerines


. WKD : take no ko 筍　bamboo shoots .
kigo for summer

. WKD :
yabukooji 藪柑子 (やぶこうじ) Ardisia japonica .


. Yosa Buson 与謝蕪村 in Edo .


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- - - - - Kobayashi Issa - - - - -

笹鳴も手持ぶさたの垣根哉
. sasa naki mo temochi-busata no kakine kana .


来る蝶に鼻を明するかきね哉
kuru choo ni hana o akasuru kakine kana

a fence shows
an amazed butterfly
something very special
Tr. Chris Drake

This spring hokku was written toward the end of the 2nd month (late March or early April) of 1820, when Issa was in and around his hometown. The hokku seems to be about a bamboo (probably lattice) fence or a hedge used as a fence that is being visited by a butterfly (or butterflies) and how the fence wows or "knocks out" the visitor with its unexpected attractions for butterflies. The idiom in the second line is used mainly when a person who is normally in a weak position manages to outperform or beat or grab the attention of someone who is in a stronger position. I take this to mean that Issa is reversing common sense in this hokku and looking at the world from the fence's point of view.

During the winter and early spring the fence wasn't much to look at, and it had no flowers in bloom, but suddenly, at the end of March, the flowers that twine around the bamboo fence posts begin to unfold with attractive flowers and sweet nectar. If it is a hedge, then the hedge has suddenly put out its own flowers. Until now butterflies have been simply flying over the nondescript fence, ignoring it as if it didn't exist, but today a butterfly finally notices the flowers and can't help but stop and drink for a while. No doubt there will be more visitors from now on. Issa may be sharing in the joy he imagines the ignored fence must somehow be feeling at finally being able to impress and attract a beautiful butterfly. The hokku may also be about how humans, like butterflies, tend to overlook plain-looking things until suddenly something happens to stun them into recognition of how important these almost invisible things actually are.

Chris Drake


. Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 in Edo .


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source :　fuuknaag.exblog.jp

露葎より城垣の反り上がる
tsuyu muguro yori shirogaki no soriagaru

from dewy weeds
the castle wall curves
and rises
Tr. Gabi Greve

Kashiwabara Min-u 柏原眠雨


花木槿弓師が垣根夕日さす
内藤鳴雪

桃折れば牛の面出す垣根かな
梅本塵山

洪水名残り照らす垣根の螢かな
金尾梅の門


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. WKD : Fences and Hedges in Kenya .


. Japanese Architecture - cultural keywords used in haiku .


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Kameyama

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Kameyama 亀山 "Turtle Mountain"

There are some places in Japan with this name.

Kameyama shi 亀山市 Kameyama Town in Mie, a station of the old Tokaido 三重県亀山市
. 46. Kameyama-juku 亀山宿 (Kameyama) .


Kameyama Castle (亀山城, Kameyama-jō, Kameyama joo)
is a castle located in Kameoka, Kyoto Prefecture. It guarded the northwest passage into Kyoto for nearly three-hundred years.
In the past, Kameoka was known as Kameyama and served as the provincial capital for Tamba province.
1577 - Under the direction of Nobunaga Oda, Mitsuhide Akechi erected Kameyama Castle.
1869 - Kameyama was renamed Kameoka
©　More in the WIKIPEDIA !


Kameyama dono 亀山殿 a retreat for emperor Saga, also called
Saga dono 嵯峨殿, in the compound of temple Tenryuuji 天竜寺 Tenryu-Ji.

The most famous is probably a mountain in Saga, Kyoto
京都市右京区の嵯峨にある山


source :　e2jin.cocolog-nifty.com
River Katsuragawa and mount Kameyama （大井河（桂川）と亀山）


under construction
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- - - - - H A I K U - - - - -

亀山へ通ふ大工やきじの聲
亀山へ通ふ大工やきじの声
kameyama e kayou daiku ya kiji no koe

the carpenters
commute to Kameyama -
voice of a pheasant
Tr. Gabi Greve

This haiku refers most probably to Kameyama in Kyoto.

An old legend says, when Go Saga Tenno 後嵯峨天皇 (1220 - 1272) had ordered the construction of Kameyama Dono 亀山殿 Kameyama Retreat, the carpenters who had to walk there from Kyoto were afraid of a lot of poisonous snakes on their way. They thought the region was under a curse.
The ministers tried to convince them of the safety of the road, because it was a project for the Honorable Emperor himself, and while they talked, there was the loud cry of a pheasant. Pheasants are known to eat poisonous snakes.
So the spell was broken and the construction could proceed without further delay.

. Yosa Buson 与謝蕪村 in Edo .


. WKD : kiji　雉　pheasant .



Go Saga Tenno 後嵯峨天皇 (1220 - 1272)
- quote
Emperor Go-Saga (後嵯峨天皇 Go-Saga-tennō) (April 1, 1220 – March 17, 1272) was the 88th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. This reign spanned the years 1242 through 1246.



This 13th-century sovereign was named after the 8th-century Emperor Saga and go- (後), translates literally as "later"; and thus, he is sometimes called the "Later Emperor Saga". The Japanese word go has also been translated to mean the "second one;" and in some older sources, this emperor may be identified as "Saga, the second," or as "Saga II."
In 1246 he abdicated to his son, Emperor Go-Fukakusa, beginning his reign as cloistered emperor. In 1259, he compelled Emperor Go-Fukakusa to abdicate to his younger brother, Emperor Kameyama.
Emperor Kameyama (亀山天皇, Kameyama tennō)
(July 9, 1249 – October 4, 1305)
was the 90th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. His reign spanned the years from 1259 through 1274.
©　More in the WIKIPEDIA !

The emperor Gosaga was initiated as Emperor on the 16th day of the 6th month and had food purchased for 16 coins of the Kajo-period.
. WKD : kajoogashi 嘉定菓子）Kajo-cakes .

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. Japanese Architecture - cultural keywords used in haiku .

. daiku　大工 carpenter and legends .

. hana no miyako 花の都 Kyoto　京都 .



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Neo-Confucianism

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. 足利学校 Ashikaga Gakkō, The Ashikaga School .
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Neo-Confucianism in the Edo period

. Confucius 01 .
孔夫子, Kung Tzu, Kung Fu Tzu, Kung Fu Zi, Kǒng fū zǐ.
also called
Sekiten 釈奠 or Sekisai 釈菜

. Confucius - 02 .
MICHAEL HOFFMAN : CONFUCIUS : A man in the soul of Japan
and --- Is Confucius dead?




- quote
CONFUCIANISM IN THE EDO (TOKUGAWA) PERIOD

In Japan, the official guiding philosophy of the Tokugawa period (1603-1867) was Neo-Confucianism. This philosophy profoundly influenced the thought and behaviour of the educated class. The tradition, introduced into Japan from China by Zen Buddhists in the medieval period, provided a heavenly sanction for the existing social order. In the Neo-Confucian view, harmony was maintained by a reciprocal relationship of justice between a superior, who was urged to be benevolent, and a subordinate, who was urged to be obedient and to observe propriety.

The Chinese Neo-Confucian scholar Chu Hsi's (aka Zhu Xi) ideas were the most influential, but they were by no means the only ones studied in the Tokugawa period.

Here are the four main elements of Neo-Confucianism which influenced Japan:

1) Fundamental rationalism
a. stressed objective reason as the basis of learning and conduct
b. pursued the "investigation of thing" as described in The Great Learning.
c. studied the constant laws of nature and human society (as opposed to the ceaseless change and Law of Impermanence stressed by Buddhism).

2) Essential humanism
a. focus on man and his relationships, not the supernatural world
The stress on social order (warrior, farmer, artisans, merchants) was supported by these ideas.
b. also stressed were the five Confucian relationships
c. clearly rejected Buddhism and Taoism, as Hayashi Razan does on p. 357.

3) Historicism
a. like Confucius in the Analects, scholars hearkened to the past for precedents.
b. in the Japanese case, scholars looked not to Chinese history but to Japanese history.

4) Ethnocentrism
a. In China, this meant anti-Buddhist and anti-Mongol/Turkic invaders.
b. In Japan, this meant loyalty to the emperor and intense xenophobia, which worked nicely with the National Learning scholarship of the time. Also contributed to isolationism.

The Edo period was a time of growing commerce, but Confucianism was opposed to it because it held that the fortunes of the government rose and fell with the fortunes of agriculture, not those of commerce. Both commoner and samurai ethics were more dependent on Confucianism than any other system.

Hayashi Razan (1583-1657)
-Advisor to Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616), the first Tokugawa shogun.
-Helped draft almost all edicts promulgated by the early Tokugawa shogun.
-Was also a scholar of Shinto and National Learning

The concept of the shi (Chinese: shih): "knight" or "gentleman," someone with a level of "spiritual/moral development, as well as academic and martial cultivation which is clearly above that of the average person." (Muller)

-the true shi would be both a good soldier and scholarly
Excepts from Neo-confucian texts:

XIII:20 Tzu Kung asked: "What must a man be like to be called a shih?" The Master said, "One who in conducting himself maintains a sense of honor, and who when sent to the four quarters of the world does not disgrace his prince's commission, may be called a shih."

XIII:28 If you are decisive, kind and gentle, you can be called a shih. With friends, the shih is clear but kind. With his brothers he is gentle.

XIV:3 Confucius said: "A shih who is addicted to comfort should not be called a shih."

XV:8 Confucius said: "The determined shih and the man of jen will not save their lives if it requires damaging their jen. They will even sacrifice themselves to consummate their jen."

XIX:1 Tzu Chang said: "The shih who faced with danger can abandon his life...he is worth something."


Hayashi equated the shi with the samurai. In Japan, the shi replaced the chuntze as the ideal.
The samurai was to be learned not just in the art of war, but in the Confucian classics as well.

Yamazaki Ansai (1618-1682)
--Simple doctrine: "Devotion within, righteousness without"
--Devotion: service to the Shinto deities
--Righteousness: proper behavior in society
--Yamazaki tried hard to reconcile Shinto and Confucian philosophies.
In the end, he claimed that man must take some things on faith (which is a Shinto statement).

Gave rise to three major trends of the following two centuries:

1. the popularization of Confucian ethics (see Hosoi Heishu)
2. the revival of Shinto and its development as a coherent system
3. intense nationalism

Yamazaki gave a special focus to education

-"the aim of education...is to clarify human relationships"
-This focus on education was continued through into the modern era.
-Yamazaki found The Great Learning particularly important
-closely associated the five relationships to education

Other Significant Schools or Currenths of Thought:

1. The Oyomei (Chinese: Wang Yang-ming) School:
Also Neo-Confucian, but different from most Chu Hsi schools:

Stressed "Intuition" (shin) over "Reason" (ri)
Stressed Action over Words
Felt that man had an innate knowledge, and it was primarily important for one to cultivate it.

Was theistic, and addressed the existence of God(s)
Man's innate knowledge was closely tied to the "Supreme Ultimate"

In sum scholarly Neo-Confucian studies were widespread and varied. A number of Confucian "academies" (like think tanks) were established, such as the Kaitokudo in Osaka. A so-called "merchant academy," it taught, subtly, that the merchants did have value to society as well and their contribution to the welfare of the realm was significant. Generally, only the samurai class would attend these academies, so this gave merchants a place to send their sons and instill pride in what their families did.
On the popular level, though, people learnedabout their place in society and the importance of loyalty and filial piety through travelling scholars and what was taught in the terakoya or temple schools.

The establishment of Oyomei schools also helped reconcile Shintoism with Neo-Confucianism, because is allowed for supernatural element in a Confucian world.

2. School of Ancient Learning or Kogaku
One of the most significant of these "academies" was Ogyu Sorai's school of Ancient Learning or Kogaku. Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728) considered Zhu Xi's Neo-Confuciansm of the Soung Dynasty to be a distortion of the original teachings of the master. And the version of Neo-Confucianism that the Japanese were getting was third or fourth hand anyway. So he wanted scholars to go back to the origianl Han and pre-Han era documents and meet the ancients on their own terms, try to read the canonic texts as they did. Moreover, he wanted to credit the foundational figures in Confucianism for their genius and initiative in using ideas about how to order society that were rooted not really in eternal principles like li, but grew out of the needs of the times. Ieaysu had done the same exact thing, Sorai believed. This belief was meant to be supportive at the time; but it had subversive potential: if institutions were man made and different times called for different types of institutions, then in the early 1800s, when the Tokugawa system did not seem to be working so well any longer, there could be a rational and legitimate call for political change.

3. School of Native Learning or Kokugaku
[Literally, School of National Learning--as opposed to any kind of Chinese Learning]
Also popular were schools of "Native Studies" or Kokugaku, sometimes also called the School of National Learning. But this school can be called "Native Studies" because it suggests that Japan's own history and literature are every bit as worthy has China's are to study and learn from so they did serious linguistic and historical analysis of books like the Kojiki, the Nihon shoki, and The Tale of Genji. When these scholars looked at Japanese history they saw something not in evidence in China: rule by a single monarachical line that alledgedly goes back to the Sun Goddess Amaterasu and her grandson, Prince Ninigi. Chinese history, by contrast, featured "dynastic cycles" whereby one ruling house propsered and then deteriorated and was replaced by another. So, this focus in its own way could be subversive, too, in the sense that when you looked back to see what Japan's essence was, you could not avoid coming up against the emperor so the role of the Shogun as someone who was temporarily ruling in place of the emperor came to the for. If the Shogun was no longer able to do what he was supposed to do--i.e., subdue the barbarians and keep them at bay, then maybe there needed to be a central role for the emperor once again.
Not all scholars mixed Confucianism with National Learning: some felt that one or the other was superior.

4. Dutch Studies or Rangaku
Begins in earnest after 1970 and Shogun Yoshimune's liberalization of the kind of books that could be imported from abroad. Scholars tended to concentrate on physical and medical sciences" biology, botany, anatomy, opticals, etc. This school came to be associated to openness toward western ideas and learning. Sakuma Shozan (1811-1864) would later coin the phrase "Eastern morals, Western technology" (Touyou doutoku, Seiyou geijutsu); in other words, still rely on Neo-confucianism for moral guidance but accept the fact that the west was the source of superior science, technology and therefore military power.

5. Mitogaku or Mito Historical Studies
Not so much a "school" per se but the Tokugawa commissioned Shimpan Tokugawa House of Mito to undertake the compilation of a multi-volume Dai Nipponshi or the Great History of Japan. What did this mean? Well, a community of scholars turned their attention to all available records of Japanese history and inevitably began to concentrate on the unique aspects of Japan's monarchical institution. Not subject to dynastic cycles as China's was, Japan's monarch featured amazing continuity back to the age of the gods. Since the Japanese emperor was also a chief priest of Shinto, the native religion and native texts were featured. Therefore, Mito became the locus of intense feelings of Japanese superiority and loyalty to the throne. Echoed/interfaced with School of Native Studies.


Adapted and supplemented from a page that is no longer available: http://www.albany.edu/eas/190/tokugawa.htm;


There were also even a few scholars and critics who were able to think "outside the box":
a. Dazai Shundai--commerce essential to the economy so why not develop the economy? Daimyo should take advantage of this resource, commerce
b. Kaiho Seiryo--don't disparage pursuit of profit; whole world rests on the principle of exchange and profit; Han should pursue profit by exporting local products
c. Yamagato Banto-scholar of Osaka Merchant Academy--urged reformers not to fix prices but let scarce goods go where they are needed
d. Honda Toshiaki urged trade and even overseas colonizastion!
e. Sato Nobuhiro argues for a strong, centralized state with a Ministry to to direct all economic activities
- source :www.willamette.edu


jusha 儒者 Confucian scholar


. terakoya 寺子屋 "temple school", private school .

. Nakae Tooju, Nakae Tōju 中江藤樹 Nakae Toju .
(21 April 1608 – 11 October 1648)

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- quote -
Hayashi Razan 林羅山 (1583 – March 7, 1657)
also known as Hayashi Dōshun, was a Japanese Neo-Confucian philosopher, serving as a tutor and an advisor to the first four shoguns of the Tokugawa bakufu. He is also attributed with first listing the Three Views of Japan. Razan was the founder of the Hayashi clan of Confucian scholars.



Razan was an influential scholar, teacher and administrator. Together with his sons and grandsons, he is credited with establishing the official neo-Confucian doctrine of the Tokugawa shogunate. Razan's emphasis on the values inherent in a static conservative perspective provided the intellectual underpinnings for the Edo bakufu. Razan also reinterpreted Shinto, and thus created a foundation for the development of Confucianised Shinto which developed in the 20th century.

The intellectual foundation of Razan's life's work was based on early studies with Fujiwara Seika (1561–1619), the first Japanese scholar who is known for a close study of Confucius and the Confucian commentators. This kuge noble had become a Buddhist priest; but Seika's dissatisfaction with the philosophy and doctrines of Buddhism led him to a study of Confucianism. In due course, Seika drew other similarly motivated scholars to join him in studies which were greatly influenced by the work of Chinese Neo-Confucianist Zhu Xi, a Sung-dynasty savant. Zhu Xi and Seika emphasized the role of the individual as a functionary of a society which naturally settles into a certain hierarchical form.
He separated people into four distinct classes: samurai (ruling class), farmers, artisans and merchants.
..... In 1607, Hayashi was accepted as a political adviser to the second shogun, Tokugawa Hidetada.
..... Razan became the rector of Edo’s Confucian Academy, the Shōhei-kō (afterwards known at the Yushima Seidō) which was built on land provided by the shogun.
..... Razan had the honorific title Daigaku-no-kami, which became hereditary in his family.
..... His son, Hayashi Gahō 林鵞峰 (1618 – 1688)
..... Nihon Ōdai Ichiran - compiled by Gaho
..... Gahō published the 310 volumes of The Comprehensive History of Japan (本朝通鑑 Honchō-tsugan), A General Mirror of Japan.
- - - More in the WIKIPEDIA !

. Yushima Seidoo, Yushima Seidō 湯島聖堂 Yushima Seido .


. gakumonjo 学問所 Academies of Higher Learning - Introduction .

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貧乏な儒者訪ひ来ぬる冬至哉
貧乏な 儒者とひ来（きた）る 冬至哉
binboo na jusha toi-kitaru tooji kana

a poor Confucian scholar
somes to visit
for the winter equinox . . .
Tr. Gabi Greve



腐儒者 韮 の羹 くらひけり
kusare jusha nira no atsumono kurai keri

Corrupt Confucian
Drank a brew of
Hot leek soup.

"... Buson employed the particularly harsh term 'kusare' (rotten, smelly, putrid, corrupt) to characterize a Confucian scholar...

"This hokku refers to an ancient ritual in which Confucians drank a certain kind of soup, but the verse was based on one by Du Fu that attacks false Confucians and not the presigious caste itself. Unflattering or ironic references to the Buddhist clergy appear in some of Buson's verses. More, however, contain expressions of piety and respect."
Tr. and Comment by Rosenfield

. Yosa Buson 与謝蕪村 in Edo .

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[ . BACK to WORLDKIGO . TOP . ]

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ISSA - kojiki beggars

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. Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 in Edo .

monogoi 物ごい / 物乞い beggar, begging
binboonin 貧乏人 Bimbo, "a poor person"
gokutsubushi 穀つぶし, 穀潰し, ごくつぶし a person without a job or income
hoomuresu ホームレス　homeless
kojiki 乞食 beggar (an old word used by Issa)
tsuji no kojiki 辻の乞食 crossroads beggar


初霜や乞食の竈も一ながめ
hatsu shimo ya kojiki no kudo mo hito nagame

first frost--
the beggar stove's too
a sight for sore eyes



乞食も福大黒のつもり哉
konjiki mo fuku Daikoku no tsumori kana

even the beggar
hopes to get rich...
god of wealth singers

Daikoku is a god of wealth.
In Issa's time, the daikokumai were troupes of begging musicians who performed between the 11th day of First Month and the first day of Second Month.



穀つぶし桜の下にくらしけり
gokutsubushi sakura no shita ni kurashi keri

an idler--
under the cherry blossoms
I live


. Issa and Beggar Haiku
Tr. by David Lanoue, more than 50 haiku



boro　ぼろ　tattered cloths, rags

うしろからぼろを笑ふよ梅の花
ushiro kara boro o warau yo ume no hana

behind me
laughter at my rags...
plum blossoms
Tr. David Lanoue




. Deity to bring poverty 貧乏神 binboogami, bimbogami
with Haiku by Kobayashi Issa
bimbô kami

. Poor Monk (dooshinboo 道心坊) .
konjiki, kojiki, kotsujiki 乞食 beggar, Bettelmönch

. WKD - kojiki 乞食 beggar .




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- Translations and comments by Chris Drake -


kojiki no yo 乞食の世　 "A Beggar's world"

I am a madman with no permanent address who wanders around in the east and roams the west. In the morning I ask for a meal in Kazusa Province, and that night I beg for a place to rest in Musashi Province. I am a whitecapped ocean wave that moves always but never reaches any shore, and I am as fragile as the foam that rises from the water only to vanish a moment later. Therefore I call myself Issa-boo ....
Today, on the 26th day of the Third month in the Third year of Kansei [April 28, 1791], I left Edo and set out with more than a little anxiety on a journey. The frogs in the rice paddies proudly sang out their songs praising spring, however, and the dawn moon, caught in the limbs of trees, grew fainter in a light mist. As soon as I took my first step, my heart was filled with nothing but thoughts of travel.

.雉鳴て梅に乞食の世也けり
kiji naite ume ni kojiki no yo nari keri

pheasants cry out
in a world with beggars
under plum trees


The hokku is from the opening section of a haibun travelog entitled A Trip in the Third Year of Kansei (Kansei sannen kikoo 寛政三年紀行), probably Issa's first such haibun travelog, although he may have kept a record of his haikai trip to the north in 1789 that was subsequently lost. The journey in 1791 was made to visit his father after saying goodbye to many Katsushika-school haikai poets and supporters, who would also give him contributions to help pay for his journey. He got a further contribution from Somaru, the head of the Katsushika haikai school, for whom he was working as an assistant and scribe after the death of his first haikai master Chiku-a, who had named him as his successor as a master in the Katsushika school. In order to become a true master, however, Issa needed to publish more, gain more experience, and get to know Chiku-a's many colleagues and students in the Kyoto-Osaka area. Issa hoped to make a whole series of trips, but he told Somaru he would be gone only a month to see his father for the first time in fifteen years, so perhaps he gained confidence from this trip and only then decided to set off for western Japan. After returning to Edo, he continued to prepare for his long trip and receive contributions, and at the end of the Third Month (April) in 1792 he set out on a series of journeys that ended up continuing for seven years.

The first section of the travelog, partially translated above, is quite humble and presents Issa as a fairly weak and frail ordinary person who is setting out to try to reconnect with his father and to learn more about haikai and the world. The suffix -bou in the haikai name Issa was using then, Issa-boo (一茶坊), can mean either a Buddhist monk or a devout person who isn't a monk but who has dedicated himself to Buddhism. I would translate the name as "Secular Mendicant Issa," since Issa feels haikai is the best way he can contribute to the world and that it is a spiritual medium for him. He wears traveling robes that are fairly similar to those of an actual mendicant monk, but he obviously does not think of himself as a monk who has taken vows and entered an order. In fact, in a later section of the travelog, Issa writes about how ashamed he felt when the woman at one house where he was able to stay the night, believing him to be a monk, asked him to pray for her dead son (see my post of 5/6/2013). Issa's first master Chiku-a, also not a monk, nevertheless traveled widely around Japan and was devoted to Amida Buddha, and Issa seems to be following Chiku-a's example. At this stage in his life, the humble name "Issa" seems to have meant either a single cup of tea or perhaps the bubbles or froth on the surface of tea when hot water is poured on the tea leaves in a pot (or when green tea is poured into the large cup used in the tea ceremony).

Issa is obviously conscious of Basho, since he starts his journey one day before Basho set out for northern regions, and the last part of the haibun translated above is a clear reference to passages in the first part of Oku no hosomichi (Narrow Road to the North). The tone of the earlier part of the opening section, however, is closer to Basho's anxiety about dying on the road expressed at the beginning of Records of a Roadside Skeleton. Issa has even less travel money than Basho, and the contributions he receives aren't enough for his journey, so he feels he's somewhere between a mendicant monk and an ordinary beggar. When he sees other beggars, he no doubt wonders how different he actually is. He leaves at the end of April, just before the beginning of lunar summer, and beggars are no doubt staying outdoors a lot more now, so Issa probably passes some as he begins his journey.

The hokku can be translated in various ways, but I follow Kaneko Tota in seeing a fair amount of humility in it as well as sympathy for and kinship with the beggars who now sit beside the road under trees and other forms of shelter. Perhaps many of them also sleep under trees in the warmer weather. For this reason, I don't take the plum tree to be covered with blossoms. There are many varieties of plum trees. In the Edo-Tokyo area, some bloom in January and others in February and March or even a few in early April, but by the end of April the plums are mostly putting out green leaves, though perhaps some blossoms remain here and there. I take the tree in the hokku to be almost finished blooming and no longer a tree people come to view. The "world" of the tree has changed. This would actually be in the spirit of the Oku no hosomichi passage Issa alludes to in the haibun. There, Basho wonders when he will again see the blossoming cherry trees in Ueno and Yanaka, even though these trees finished blossoming several weeks earlier and Basho is alluding to a waka by the monk-poet Saigyo and will soon write about the new green leaves at Nikko. Issa doesn't mention either blossoms or leaves, so I simply take the plum trees near Edo to be mostly green now and no longer visited by admirers. Their place is now taken by beggars, with whom Issa feels uncannily close.

Undoubtedly some local people look with disrespect on the beggars, and Issa may be trying to capture their coldness and emotional distance with the image of male pheasants crying their sharp, almost screeching cries. The males' metallic yet strong cry is assertive and hardly seems friendly to most humans, though no specific meaning can be attributed to it. Are the pheasants crying because a beggar has invaded their territory around a plum tree? Are they just inspecting a new part of the environment? Does their cry remind Issa of the indifference toward him shown by many leading Edo haijin and of other difficulties he must overcome if he truly wants to become a haikai master? How can he go beyond begging and become a self-supporting haikai master while still retaining the free, outsider spirit possessed by beggars, such as the one he sees under that plum tree? This fairly realistic hokku seems to be a large question mark that is to be placed after each of the many sharp (pheasant-like?) questions Issa will ask himself in this psychologically searching travelog.

Many apologies. Unfortunately I didn't have time to translate the whole travelog!

Chris Drake


Oku no Hosomichi - 奥の細道
. Matsuo Basho 松尾芭蕉 - Archives of the WKD .

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hatsu-yuki ya asa-ebisu suru kado kojiki

first snow --
a beggar at the door early
calls me "God Ebisu"

This hokku is from the end of the 10th month (early December) in 1810, when Issa was traveling around to several shrines and festivals and meeting haikai poets just east of Edo.
The 10th month was very important for the god Ebisu, one of only a very few gods who did not leave and spend the 10th month at the ancient Izumo Shrine at the southwestern end of Honshu. Since most gods were away, the 10th month was called the Godless Month. Ebisu, meanwhile, was very popular then, and merchants, fishermen, and farmers all had festivals to Ebisu, a god of good fortune and fertility. Perhaps the biggest festival was the Ebisu-kou festival at which merchants thanked Ebisu, the god of wealth, for their profits and begged forgiveness for their secret cheating and lies to their customers. It was held on 10/20, about a week before this hokku was written.

The phrase asa-ebisu or "morning Ebisu" is not a synonym for early in the morning but a short way of referring to making early-morning pilgrimages to a local shrine to the god Ebisu in order to pray for business success. From this basic meaning developed two others: a) businesspeople and fishermen would pray to Ebisu in their shop or warehouse or boat the first thing in the morning and ask him for good luck during the day; and b) businesspeople would euphemistically call early-morning customers "Ebisu," as if the customers were the god Ebisu rewarding the merchant or wholesaler with money.

Issa makes his own riff on this phrase. The first snow of the winter has fallen, and while Issa is looking at things in wonderment a beggar arrives at the front door or possibly at the gate of the place where he is staying. After Issa gives him or her a coin, the beggar thanks him by calling him Ebisu, as if he were a god. Evidently the beggar, like a merchant, calls patrons Ebisu, since they are the source of his/her wealth. Issa was already a bit disoriented by the sudden sight of snow, so the beggar' s polite thanks seems to have an uncanny ring of truth to it, as if both of them were momentarily in another time and space.

Chris Drake


. WKD : Ebisu and Ebisu koo 夷講 .


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this peaceful realm --
even at beggar houses
Children's Day banners

kimi ga yo wa kojiki no ie mo nobori kana

This hokku, scribbled in a margin of Issa's Record of a Journey to the Western Provinces (Saigoku kikō 1795), was probably written on or around lunar 5/5. The Record ends on 5/1, when Issa is in Taka-ishi, a town near the city of Sakai on the Inland Sea just south of Osaka, so the hokku may have been written in the Osaka area. During Issa's many travels to western Japan in the 1790s he wrote several hokku that mention "the reign of the present ruler [i.e., the shogun or the emperor]" (kimi ga yo). The phrase has a temporal orientation, and when kimi ('lord, ruler, you') is mentioned in worldly contexts it usually refers to the current age under the present regime (the shogunate), though in ritual contexts, such as at New Year's, it often refers to the emperor (or imperial rule). Literally it means "during the life or reign of the sovereign/ruler," and yo means 'the distance between two joints on a bamboo; life, lifetime, year(s), reign, season, society, human relations, human world.' In Edo the phrase usually referred to the shogun in almost all contexts, while in Kyoto it usually referred to the emperor, so location also governed the meaning of the word.

Before the Tokugawa shogunate enforced peace on the country, it had been ravaged by terrible wars for several centuries, and although Issa was not fond of the samurai class, he appreciated the fact that the shogunate had ended the many civil wars that afflicted medieval Japan and that it had maintained peace for two centuries. Peace also meant gradual economic development, and Issa's hokku seems to be about a village of semi-outcast beggars (hinin), as opposed to hereditary outcasts (eta). Even these semi-outcast beggars, who are required to live in a separate ghetto-like village, receive enough these days to have small houses, and they obviously love their children just as much as everyone else. It is the time of the Children's Festival on the fifth of the fifth month (early June), and the beggars, too, raise long, colored wind-sock-like streamers (nobori), many in the shape of carp that flutter in the wind as if the carp were vigorously leaping up over a small waterfall, an image they hope will inspire their children to have big dreams and aspirations. The children of beggars were able to leave the class into which they were born, and no doubt the beggar parents in the village are praying their children will have a better future, even if the children have to go away to a city to find work. Issa no doubt sympathizes with the prayers of these parents.

The hokku seems to be mainly about the beggars' humanity and their hopes for their children under the Tokugawa shogun's dictatorial but peaceful reign, and it does not seem to be nationalistic or express jingoistic pride. The phrase kimi ga yo ("under the present ruler") began a new career after Issa's death, however, so a brief look at history may be useful. The word kimi appears often in ancient waka, where it means 1) "you" when referring to a lover or respected person, 2) a powerful person or local lord, or 3) the emperor. The most famous use of the phrase is in Kokinshu waka 343, which is a poem praying for the very long life (yo) of an esteemed person. Later, during the medieval period, the waka's first line was changed slightly to kimi ga yo, and its words became a popular song sung at parties and ceremonies, such as weddings, where kimi, 'you,' referred to the newly married couple or the person being feted. In Issa's time, as he surely knew, it was even sung as a kouta song in urban amusement districts as an auspicious blessing song for an esteemed "you," often a lover. Although kimi ga yo could be taken to mean 'the reign of the current emperor,' it more commonly meant 'the reign of the current shogun.' The shogun was regularly referred to as kimi both by members of the samurai class and by commoners around the country, except in the Kyoto area, and 'the current shogun's reign' usually included the sense of "in which the realm is at peace and prosperous." The period of rule of a local daimyo domain lord was also referred to by local people as kimi ga yo. Therefore it seems likely that in this hokku Issa is following the most common usage of his age and referring to the so-called "Tokugawa peace" under the shogunate, the actual rulers of Japan. Since kimi could be singular or plural, it might be possible to read Issa as referring to "the reign of the present shogun and emperor," but it was only under the shoguns and their warrior regime that Japan achieved long-term peace and increasing prosperity, so the shogun seems more likely here.

The once-common usage of kimi that referred to the shogun is rarely mentioned in contemporary Japanese schools or small-sized dictionaries, since forces opposing the shogunate overthrew it in 1868 and made the emperor the sovereign, an active imperial role that lasted until the end of WWII. The emperor is still a "symbol" of Japan, although some popular revisionist histories still claim kimi has always referred solely to the emperor. Only in large dictionaries such as Suzuki Katsutada's Zappai Dictionary (Zappai-go Jiten Tokyo-do 1968) will you find kimi ga yo defined as 'in the present shogun's reign.' You can also find many examples of the phrase referring to the shogun in haikai, including in renku by Saikaku, who lived in Osaka. It is therefore doubtful that Issa is here connecting kimi ga yo either with Japan as a nation in relation to other nations (he would probably have used 'Nippon,' 'Dai ['great'] Nippon,' or perhaps 'Kami-guni' ['divine country'] instead, as he sometimes does) or with Japan's national anthem, since Japan had no national anthem until 1888. The anthem was created then based on -- but transforming -- a popular Edo-period blessing song version of kimi ga yo sung at ceremonies and auspicious occasions. The new Meiji government declared that kimi referred not to "you" or to the shogun but only to the emperor. Japan's first national anthem thus became primarily a song praying for the emperor's long life, and its nationalistic overtones became very strong in the first half of the twentieth century. The meaning of the phrase, however, is still contested, and contemporary Japanese politicians continue to debate whether the national anthem refers to "you, the emperor" or "you, the Japanese people"! Issa himself surely could not have guessed kimi ga yo would later go through these rapid, radical changes in meaning, and it is doubtful that he uses the phrase with nationalistic overtones. Instead, he seems to be praising the aspirations of contemporary beggars while also praising the progress being made during the long period of peace that is continuing under the present regime.

- - - Addition :
I did use the current name of the 5/5 festival, Children's Day.
I realize it's not perfect, but I used it because I thought things would get too complicated if I mentioned all the various customs related to the Tango no Sekku festival complex. I also wanted to avoid the misleading term Boy's Festival, which is commonly encountered, since the Tango festival was traditionally not just for boys, except perhaps within the warrior class. Among commoners, especially in rural areas, the village young men's and young women's associations usually held celebrations, 5/5 was often considered "women's house day," and the placement of sweet flag leaves on roofs and sweet-flag baths were both for girls as well as boys. This is presumably why the Japanese government now uses the term Children's Day -- since in the Edo period the 3/3 Doll festival was held for purification and not just for girls and the 5/5 Tango festival was mainly for maintaining good health and protection against summer diseases and not just for boys. Therefore I was using Children's Day descriptively, not as a name used in Issa's time. I agree that Children's Day is a little confusing, just as the historical reality is a bit confusing.

Chirs Drake


. Children's day and Carp Streamers (nobori) .

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ほのぼのと乞食の小菜も咲にけり
hono-bono to kojiki no ona mo saki ni keri

if you look hard
even the beggar's
canolas are blooming


This hokku is from the second month (March) of 1812, when Issa was mostly traveling around in the area just northeast of the city of Edo. Many of the fields he sees are now covered with the brilliant yellow of endless-seeming canola plants, whose seeds were a major source of lamp oil. There is so much bright yellow now that it's easy to overlook the canolas blooming in one small patch planted by a beggar using found seeds -- an out-of-the-way patch perhaps located on a riverbank at one end of the bridge on which the beggar sits. Issa doesn't mention the Pure Land here, but judging from his use of canola images in other hokku it seems possible he is implying that the beggar, too, will surely go to the Pure Land, if he is not there already in his heart. In Issa's time most beggars and outcast-class people were believers in the True Pure Land school of Buddhism to which Issa belonged, so Issa may take it for granted that beggars can find the Pure Land even in this life.

In the hokku Issa refers to canola plants with the word ona, a nonstandard word from the dialect used in his hometown and the surrounding area. Since there were a great many poor migrants in the Edo area who were from his home province of Shinano, it's possible Issa is recording the word the beggar himself used to refer to his small patch of blossoming canolas.

The hokku after this one in Issa's diary may also have cosmic implications. Although Amida, the Buddha of Boundless Light, isn't mentioned directly in either hokku, the beggar's small plot and the endless wide fields of canola around Issa seem to have the same boundless value:

na no hana no toppazure nari fuji no yama

canola fields
spreading out as far
as Mount Fuji

When seen from the area northeast of Edo, Mount Fuji is in the far distance, so the yellow fields here seem to gradually pass into a zone beyond measurement.

Chris Drake



source :　google


. na no hana 菜の花 rapeseed flower .


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七夕やよい子持たる乞食村
tanabata ya yoi ko mottaru kojiki-mura

star festival --
in the beggar village
they're all good kids


Read the discussion by Chris Drake and more about the Eta
HERE
. WKD : Eta 穢多 and Burakumin 部落民 .
the "untouchables" of the Edo period


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. WKD : Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 - Introduction .


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BUSON and the moon

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. Yosa Buson 与謝蕪村 in Edo .
(1715-1783)

. WKD : tsuki 月 the MOON in all seasons .

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by Yamaguchi Hitomi 山口瞳


月天心貧しき町を通りけり
tsuki tenshin mazushiki machi o toorikeri

- quote - Robin D. Gill
the full moon
overhead, i pass through
a poor town.

The "Japanese Poetry" section of the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (1965/74) translated the same like this:

The moon passes
In splendor through its central heavens
And I through wretched streets.

I admire the guts of the translator who elaborated the middle line to develop the contrast of splendor and wretchedness he found and has the moon as well as the poet in motion, but I think the Japanese annotators of Buson's Zenshû (complete anthology) are correct to write:

The moon in the middle of the sky is clear. It is late at night and all the houses in this poor part of town are quiet and only his own footsteps can be heard. Tilted roofs, low eaves and on all of it shines the moonlight creating an eerily beautiful chiaroscuro. Who would have guessed how refreshingly clean a poor town purified by moon-light feels!
(my trans.)

In other words, the Princeton Encyclopedia commentator's contrast of moon in beautiful heaven and poet in wretched town is apparently not shared by the Japanese specialists, who have Buson finding beauty below, too. I cannot help wondering whether Chiyo and Buson both react against Sei Shonagon's disgust for wasting moonlight on the poor. It is hard to say. That is a question worth bouncing off Buson and Chiyo scholars (something I have not done yet) who have read broadly in the contemporary literature. My above translation with the comma in the second line is horrible.
A couple more tries:

The full moon
i pass through poor-town
directly below

The original speaks of the moon in mid-heaven, which is to say high in the sky and large so it seems to be hanging there. Here, I hope locating the poet directly below works in reverse. Regardless, the emotive power of the ~keri is lost.

Simply sublime:
Passing through poor-town
in the moonlight.

The second translation depends upon a proper feeling for the word "sublime," which tends to be conflated with "subtle" today, whereas it was once most commonly applied to the Niagara Falls or the Alps and should transmit a quality today called "awesome."

With moon in heaven
i crossed poor-town:
beautiful!

Fall is here and, in haiku, that means the moon. But the moon of the Edo era poets is not our moon. I dare say we cannot find poems expressing the reverence for the moon found in Issa's
"Captain, / Peeing is Forbidden: / The Moon rides the waves!"*
(this ku plays on conventional lists of things forbidden to do) or
"Facing Westward / I cannot even pee - / A full moon
(this ku plays on older poems and Buddhist stories where saints try not to fart toward the West because it is the Pureland Paradise. Also Issa's Zenkôji was, I would guess, to the West of his town.). We can imagine people misbehaving from the effects of too much moonshine, but can we imagine our sins dissolving in the moonlight as another of Issa's ku puts it?

We no longer distrust the moon as a night power and may even enjoy it, but how many people in the Occident have spread out mats on the ground and watched the moon for hours? The idea of blossom-viewing is not hard for us to appreciate, but moon-viewing?
source : www.simplyhaiku.com - 2005




source :　www.rakanneko.jp


. WKD : aki no tsuki 秋の月 - MOON in autumn .


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. gekkoo nishi ni watareba kaei higashi ni ayumu kana .
(autumn)

. hitori kite hitori o tou ya aki no kure .
(autumn)
hitori kite hitori o tou ya fuyu no tsuki  - - one person comes to visit. winter moon

. ichigyoo no kari ya hayama ni tsuki o in su .
(autumn)

. ichi wa kite neru tori wa nani ume no tsuki .
(spring)


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. WKD : kangetsu 寒月（かんげつ）"moon in the cold" .
kigo for late winter
- - - including
kangetsu ya kaisandoo no ki no ma yori
kangetsu ya kareki no naka no take sankan
kangetsu ya koishi no sawaru kutsu no soko
kangetsu ya matsu no ochiba no ishi o iru
kangetsu ya mon o tatakeba kutsu no oto
kangetsu ya nokogiri-iwa no akara sama
kangetsu ya shuuto no gungi no sugite nochi
kangetsu ya zoo ni yuki-au hashi no ue

. kangetsu ni ki o waru tera no otoko kana .
- - - kangetsu ya mon naki tera no ten takashi
- - - kangetsu ya tani ni cha o kumu mine no tera
- Buson visiting temples -

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. kawataro no koi suru yado ya natsu no tsuki .
(summer)


. meigetsu ya usagi no wataru Suwa no umi .
(autumn)

. mijikayo ya asase ni nokoru tsuki hitohira .
(summer)

. nanohana ya tsuki wa higashi ni hi wa nishi ni .
(spring)

. nashi no hana tsuki ni fumi yomu onna ari .
(spring)

. nochi no tsuki shigi tatsu ato no mizu no naka .
(autumn)

. oborozuki kawazu ni nigoru mizu ya sora .
(spring)

. tsuki no ku o haite herasan hiki no hara .

. ura machi ni negi uru koe ya yoi no tsuki .
(autumn)

. yoki hito o yadosu ko-ie ya oborozuki .
(spring)

. yomizu toru satobito no koe ya natsu no tsuki .
(summer)


a different kind of moon implication

mijikayo - a short night
yuugao - moon flower


under construction
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名月や夜は人住まぬ峰の茶屋
meigetsu ya yo wa hito sumanu mine no chaya

花火せよ淀の御茶屋の夕月夜
hanabi seyo yodono o-chaya no yuuzuki yo

. chaya, -jaya 茶屋 tea shop, tea stall .

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- Read the translations at TEREBESS -


ami o more tsuna o moretsutsu mizu no tsuki
aoginaku shika no namida ya tsuki no tsuyu

banya aru mura wa fuketari kyo no tsuki

cha no hana no tsukiyo mo shirazu fuyugomori

doomori no kogusa nagametsu natsu no tsuki

furugasa no basa to tsuki yo no shigure kana
futarine no kaya moru tsuki no seuto tachi

hatsuyuki no soko o tatakeba take no tsuki
hina matsuru miyako hazure ya momo no tsuki
hiroinokosu tanishi mo tsuki no yuube kana

ishi to naru kusu no kozue ya fuyu no tsuki
izayoi no kumo fuki sarinu aki no kaze

kaeru kari tagoto no tsuki no kumoru yo ni
kakekakete tsuki mo nakunaru yosamu kana

kawahori no futameki tobu ya ume no tsuki
kayari shite yadori ureshi ya kusa no tsuki
kazagumo no yosugara tsuki no chidori kana

kiku no ka ya tsuki sumi shimo no keburu yo ni
kinoo hana asu o momiji ya kyoo no tsuki
kitsunebi no moetsuku bakari kareobana (moonless night)

kutabirete mono kau yado ya oborozuki
kyarakusaki hito no karine ya oborozuki

mata uso o tsukiyo ni kama no shigure kana
matsushima no tsuki miru hito ya utsusegai

meigetsu ni enokoro sutsuru shimobe kana
meigetsu ni inu-koro suteru shimobe kana
meigetsu ya aruji o toeba imo kutsu ni
meigetsu ya Shinsen'en no uo odoru

mizu karete ike no hizumi ya nochi no tsuki
mume no ka no tachinoborite ya tsuki no kasa

nagaki yo ya tsuya no renga no kobore tsuki
nakanaka ni hitori areba zo tsuki o tomo
negurushiki fuse yo o dereba natsu no tsuki
nusubito no kashira uta yomu kyoo no tsuki

oboroyo ya hito tatazuneru nashi no sono
oborozuki taiga o noboru mifune kana
oborozuki kawazu ni nigoru mizu ya sora
oni oite kawara no in no tsuki ni naku
onna gushite dairi ogaman oborozuki

sakura chiru nawashiro mizu ya hoshizuki yo
sashinuki o ashide nugu yoya oborozuki
sazanka no kono ma misekeri nochi no tsuki
sentoo n uoya irishi yo fuyu no tsuki - public bath
shigonin ni tsuki ochikakaru odori kana
shika naku ya yoi no ame gyou no tsuki
shimo hyakuri shuchu ni ware tsuki o ryoosu
shirakumo no sutedokoro ari tani no tsuki
shiraume no kareki ni modoru tsukiyo kana
shizuka naru kashi no kihara ya fuyu no tsuki
suisen ni kitsune asobu ya yoizukiyo
suzuki tsurite ushirometasa yo nami no tsuki

takegari ya koobe o agureba mine no tsuki
tamakura ni mi on aisu nari oborozuki

tsuki koyoi aruji no okina mai ideyo
tsuki koyoi matsu ni kaetaru yadori kana
tsuki koyoi mekura tsukiatari waraikeri
tsuki mireba namida ni kudaku chiji no tama
tsukimibune kiseru o otosu asase kana
tsuki ni kikite kawazu nagamuru tanomo kana
tsuki ni tooku oboyuru fuji no iroka kana
tsuki no ku o haite herasan gama no hara *
tsuki yukino osame ya fude no kakedokoro

ugo no tsuki taso ya yoburi no sune shiroki

yamamori no tsukiyo no mori no shimo yo shika no koe

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. tsuki tenshin - discussion on facebook .



To join BUSON on Facebook, click the image!


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. WKD : Yosa Buson 与謝蕪村 - Introduction .

. Yosa Buson 与謝蕪村 in Edo .

. ABC - List of Buson's works and cultural keywords .


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