A small selection of these translationsfifteen poemsappeared
previously in this journal (31.2), with a note introducing
Takaha Shugyo as one of Japans leading contemporary
haiku poets. Since then, some readers will have encountered
his work in anthologies, and perhaps have anticipated the
appearance of a full collection.
Professor
Hoshinos lucid introduction to the volume in hand
gives us the basic facts about the poet: that he was born
in 1930 and worked for a company before resigning to become
a full-time poet; that he is the head of a group called
Kari (Hunting), which publishes a magazine of
that name. A secondary aspect of this account is the view
that it provides of what we might call the economy
of haiku, meaning not the sparing use of words, but rather
the operation of a system. Only one poem is quoted in the
prose:
the
chirping of tree crickets
after having judged
a thousand verses in one day |
The
judging is done in order to select poems for inclusion in
a journal or a column. There is a poem by Masaoka Shiki
about three thousand haiku and two persimmons that similarly
expresses this arduous task. Haiku practice in Japan, we
are reminded, is a huge organic system based on membership
support, in which the leading poet must function not only
as an exemplar, but as an educator too. It is a demanding
position to be in, but one which Takaha Shugyo performs
with skill and dedication, as one of the more prominent
custodians of traditional haiku culture.
This
is the second time that a substantial number of Shugyos
haiku have been translated. The first set of English translations
was done by the late Jack Stamm, a New York poet who worked
as a copywriter in Japan. (Stamms own haiku were collected
in a posthumous bilingual volume, to which Shugyo contributed
a short memoir in Japanese.) It was privately published
under the title One Year of Haiku, and contained forty-six
verses, with English and Japanese on facing pages. There
were ten poems for each of the four seasons, with a small
group of poems written overseas gathered at the end. The
new Selected Haiku contains 102 haiku, arranged more or
less chronologically, to cover fifty years of composition.
The date of composition is given in each case; though there
are no formal groupings, it is notable that the last eighteen
poems were all written in other countries. This time the
translations have been done by two scholars, though one
of them, Hoshino Tsunehiko, is a poet too.
Apart
from a larger format, which allows more space to each poem,
and the inclusion of the Japanese in roman letters, the
most noticeable change is that the poems have been printed
entirely in small letters, except for names. This is the
practice that Haruo Shirane and Makoto Ueda follow in recent
volumes, and it may be their lead that Hoshino and Pinnington
have followed. The large bilingual anthology published by
the Modern Haiku Association in Japan in 2001, however,
employed an opening capital letter for each poem. Curiously,
the four poems by Shugyo in that anthology, plainly by the
same translators, were the only English versions in the
entire volume that ended with a period as well. Presumably
that was done at Hoshino and Pinningtons insistence?
There
is a certain amount of overlap between the two selected
volumes: almost half of the poems Stamm translated reappear
in the new selection. It seems reasonable to assume that
all the poems were chosen by the poet himself in each case,
and represent some of the best of the many haiku he has
composed. The first verse in the new selection sees him
getting on a tramcar, and the fifth verse is this:
hi
o tachishi kikansha no shita chichiro naku
beneath
the locomotive
with its fire put out,
crickets sing |
Like
the famous verse by Yamaguchi Seishi (19011994), about
a train coming to a halt in summer grasses, of which it
carries an echo, this verse shows an intersection between
the man-made and the natural world. It easily submits to
an ecological reading. But what is more surprising, as one
reads on, is how relatively few of the verses deal with
the modern, urban world that Shugyo actually inhabits:
shinryoku
no apâto tsuma no harigakoi
in
our apartment,
amidst the spring greenery,
my wife encased in glass |
The
well-known verse below was written from the Empire State
Building, and graces the cover of the book:
matenrô
yori shinryoku ga paseri hodo
from
the skyscraper
the fresh greenery of the trees
just like parsley |
The
expression paseri hodo is not easy to render, since hodo
means the degree or limit or extent of something, and is
somehow more suggestive than the words in English. Stamms
version typically aims for the 575 syllabic
pattern, and is freer in expression:
From
a skyscraper,
nothing but so much parsley
springtimes new greens |
The
poems written overseas that close both collections seem
to bring the poet closer to the urban world.
In
the new selection, there are some lovely things:
yo
no shinju shi no gyôkan o yuku gotoshi
fresh
green trees at night
like walking between
the lines of a poem |
kumo
no i no mattaki naka ni kumo no ue
in
the midst
of the perfection of its web,
the spiders hunger |
The
first is one of several poems that discover a meeting point
between the poets craft and the natural subject, while
the latter verse delivers a reflective frisson. The language
is always clear, but improvises less than Stamm, whose versions
are given on the haiku below:
yamaguni
no yukige shizuku wa hoshi kara mo
mountain
country thaw
the melting snow drips
even from the stars |
Snow
in the mountains
glitter-melting drop by drop
from the stars, too |
kareno yuku mottomo tôki hi ni hikare
journeying
over
the withered moor,
drawn by the furthest light |
Crossing
barren fields
captivated by a light
far far away |
One cannot award the laurels unequivocally to either of
the translations: Hoshino and Pinnington are usually more
accurate, if sometimes a little flat; Stamm is livelier,
if now and then a little loose. But the differences between
them raise some interesting points.
Take these two versions, for example, again with Stamms
given below:
umi
ga mieshi ka ikanobori orite kozu
can
it see the sea?
the kite which
refuses to descend |
Kitehas
it looked at
the sea, that it refuses
to come down again? |
The
tenses and the structure are somewhat different. Stamm presses
the connection with more persuasive rhetorical effect; and
his come down seems a more suitable expression
than descend, which suggests an airplane. This
verse too may be usefully compared:
raise
ni wa tenba ni nare yo tozanuma
in
your next life,
be a pegasus!
mountain pack |
Hill
country cart horse,
hurry up and be reborn
horse as Pegasus |
There
are minor differences again, between the more interpretive
and the more literal versions, but certainly mountain
packhorse is the more apt expression for the animal.
The Pegasus / pegasus variation is subtler,
and here the lower case works quite well. Yet it is not
employed quite throughout the new translated volume, which
has upper case for names, as well as an opening apostrophe
(O). As so often, the use of lower case tends
to highlight problems of punctuation.
Professors
Hoshino and Pinnington do not always seem quite certain
on this matter. It is sometimes difficult to see why a dash
was preferred in one case, a colon in another, or a comma
in a third. There are a few verses where the use of a comma
creates a sort of dangling participle:
kôhajime
kusabi no gotoki ichigo hori
the
first manuscript of the year,
looking for that one word
which will act as a wedge |
Another
question this volume raises is about the translation of
season words: should they be consistently the same, as they
are in Japanese, or varied, as seems natural in English?
In this selection kareno is given twice as withered
moor, while hinataboko, which usually translates as
basking in the sun, is given in two other ways.
One of the latter is just a little bit perplexing:
daibutsu
no te ni aru omoi hinataboko
like
lying
in the palm of the Great Buddha
winter sunshine |
It
is necessary to return to the initial like to
be sure the poem is about someone enjoying the winter sunshine
and not about sunshine on the palm.
It
is a pity that there are no notes on the poems, even to
explain the season words. Readers find these illuminating,
especially readers who are not familiar with the Japanese.
There is quite a lot available already on that subject in
other volumes, however. Certainly this is a valuable addition
to the growing number of individual collections of work
by modern haiku poets translated into English. It is different
enough from the Stamm collection to be enjoyed together
with it (though both were only issued in Japan), and sufficiently
distinctive to be enjoyed alone.
One
of the characteristic gestures to be found in haiku is of
gazing at the hands, or of holding something in them. Shugyo
has several unique poems about cracking walnuts (and different
ones in the two selections). They are intriguing pieces,
whose intention is less metaphysical than metaphorical perhaps:
kurumi
waru kurumi no naka ni tsukawanu heya
cracking
open a walnut
inside the shell,
one unused room |
This
is not a mystical revelation (like that received by the
fourteenth-century English mystic Julian of Norwich, gazing
in astonished wonder at a hazelnut resting in her palm),
but something much more down-to-earth: a revelation of the
ordinary. It is exactly the kind of revelation to which
the haiku is peculiarly well suited, and which Shugyo is
masterly at conveying.
|