One thing we like to do here at Cafe Haiku, is take a fresh and unique look at themes in the world of haiku. This series is a look at poignant, touching poetry – the jisei or death haiku of the Japanese tradition. This series will continue for a while as our editors take a new look at an old subject. And not only Japanese. We will look at death poems from the rest of the world too. Join us on this emotional but ultimately life affirming journey.
In this series, haiku poet and Japanese teacher Geethanjali Rajan gives us a unique view of the last poems of the four masters, written specially for Cafe Haiku. We will carry one Jisei post every Tuesday. There is lots more to come in the Jisei series so happy reading.
A jisei series? Yosa Buson
Geethanjali Rajan
Buson was a painter and a poet of the Edo period. His haiga stand as a testament to his superior skill in both. His poems are replete with fine details of concrete images and are very sensorial, having their influence from painting and his painting, from haiku. He created beautiful calligraphy too, that are infused with what we (perhaps) now call ‘haikai-spirit’.
Buson’s jisei are seen as three possible haiku. These poems, some say, are a series of 3 haiku. However, most prefer to see them as three different verses. And the one that he recited last is widely seen as his jisei. Here it is:
しら梅に明る夜ばかりとなりにけり
shiraume ni akaruyo bakari to narinikeri
white plum blossoms
fill the night becoming dawn
Yoel Hoffman’s book however, has this translated version:
Of late the nights
are dawning
plum-blossom white. (1)
Probably, Buson alludes to his wish to enter a land and time where white plum blossoms are in bloom after his death.
The other two haiku that are accorded to having been written on the day before he died (along with the one above) are:
冬鶯むかし王維が垣根哉
fuyu uguisu mukashi ooi ga kakinekana
winter warbler
on Wang Wei’s hedge
so long ago
(Tr. Chris Drake)
Gabi Greve’s world kigo database has this illuminating analysis of Buson’s last three haiku by Chris Drake (2). Wang Wei was a Chinese poet and painter from the Tang Dynasty and is considered to be one of the greatest from the Golden Age of Chinese poetry. Buson, who admired Wang Wei, refers to the poet and talks of the winter warbler on his hedge. Drake points us to the possibility that Buson probably had reached the stage where time and place did not have any significance anymore. He also tells us that the warbler’s sharp cheep in winter is very different from its cry in spring. Perhaps, Buson dreamt of meeting his favourite poet – painter after death, when space and time did not matter.
うぐひすや何ごそつかす藪の中
uguhisu ya nanigosotsukasu yabu no shimo
warbler,
what sounds do you make
in the frost-covered bush?
The second haiku that was written refers to the warbler too. This auditory ku talks of the small sounds made by the warbler in the frost-covered bush outside. Drake explains that Buson probably worried about why the bird was making the sounds and may have also seen himself in the bird, worrying about the sounds he himself was making. “Perhaps this realization leads him to stop worrying and talking too much to Gekkei (3) and to silently calm his mind, to prepare to leave the frost-covered bush of his body, and to accept death.” (2)
Another interesting analysis of the above three haiku is something I read on a Japanese blog (things I found on the way, almost lost on the way). If the 3 haiku are read as a series, it could be interpreted as a past-present-future series. Wang Wei being the past where Buson travels to meet his soul, the present being Buson’s observation about the sounds outside his window and the future being that he will awaken in a land of white plum blossoms, in a land of beauty, of purity. Drake reminds us that plum blossoms are images of “great purity” in Amida Buddha’s Pure Land (Lotus Sutra).
Yosa Buson’s poems accentuate the need for observation, for the fine details, for concrete images in haiku. I really should be referring to each of the last poems of Buson as ‘hokku’. The seasons and kigo are clear, the images painted with simplicity, and the heart of the poem – so pure.
For more on jisei by the Masters, watch this space.
(1) Japanese Death Poems, Yoel Hoffman, page 147
(2) https://wkdhaikutopics.blogspot.com/2010/11/koha-fragrant-wave.html
(3) Gekkei – Buson’s disciple, painter and poet, name Matsumura Goshun.
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