Haiku Demystified
Haibun: The Joy and Journey of Poetic Engineering, part 2
By Pravat Kumar Padhy
Concept of Haibun
After a long span, Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) coined the word ‘Haibun’, a literary expression of poetic prose with haiku in 1690 in a letter to his disciple Kyorai.
The form existed earlier to the seventeenth century in the form of prefaces and mini-lyrics, but Basho infused the aesthetic sense of haiku spirit (aware). Basho’s ‘Oku no Hosomichi’ (Narrow Road to the Interior) is considered the masterpiece of haibun in Japanese literature. It comprises of narration of the ecstatic beauty through the traverse of 1500 miles over 156 days, mostly on foot, from Edo (modern-day Tokyo) to the northerly interior region known as Oku.
Jeffrey Woodward comments: “Haibun’s historical provenance is perhaps inseparable from the haikai of Basho and his school, that is, it made its social debut in the company of haiku.” Read the rest HERE.
Shin hana tsumi (The New Gathering Flowers) by Yosa Buson (1716-1783); Oraga Haru (My Spring) and Chichi no shūen nikki (Last Days of My Father) by Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828), Byōshō rokushaku (Six-foot Sickbed) by Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) and Kōshin’an-ki (Notes from Kōshinan’an), Tsukiyo sōshi (Sketches of Moonlit Nights) both by Kurita Chodō (1749-1814) are some of the iconic works in haibun literature. Uzuragoromo (Mottled Quail Cloak) by Yokoi Yayū and ‘On Releasing a Sparrow’ by Kawai Chigetsu are some of the noteworthy Japanese haibun.
The word haibun is also associated with old genres of memoirs, diaries and travel literature (nikki and kikôbun) and even referred in the form of a preface, headnotes to hokku with a short essay written by haikai masters. Kyoriku Morikawa’s Honchō Monzen (“Prose Collection of Japan”), published in 1706, is considered the first Japanese anthology of haibun.
Defining haibun as a cultural symbiosis, Haruo Shirane says “haikai prose” as a basic definition of haibun, and further writes that haibun “combined, in unprecedented fashion, Chinese prose genres, Japanese classical prototypes, and vernacular language and subject matter, thereby bringing together at least three major cultural axes” (Traces of Dreams, 27).
(Shirane, Haruo. Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998).
The Tosa Diary
By Ki no Tsurayuki
18th February, 13th day. At daybreak the rain was gently falling but then it stopped and we all went to the nearby place for a hot bath. I looked over the sea and composed the following poem:
the clouds overhead
look like rippling waves to me;
if the pearl divers were here
“Which is sea, which is sky?”
I’d ask and they’d answerThe classical haibun, ‘Ki no Tsurayuki’s The Tosa Diary’ (935):
So, since it was after the tenth day, the moon was especially beautiful. After all these days, since I first came on board the ship, I have never worn my striking bright red costume because I feared I might offend the God of the Sea. Yet . . .
The opening paragraph of Matsuo Bashô’s ‘Oku no Hosomichi ’ (The Narrow Road to the Interior) has been translated by many poets. Indeed it is the iconic haibun and the opening part translated by Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu is given below:
Oku no Hosomichi
By Matsuo Bashô
Moon and sun are passing figures of countless generations, and years coming or going wanderers too. Drifting life away on a boat or meeting age leading a horse by the mouth, each day is a journey and the journey itself home. Amongst those of old were many that perished upon the journey. So — when was it — I, drawn like blown cloud, couldn’t stop dreaming of roaming, roving the coast up and down, back at the hut last fall by the river side, sweeping cobwebs off, a year gone and misty skies of spring returning, yearning to go over the Shirakawa Barrier, possessed by the wanderlust, at wits’ end, beckoned by Dôsojin, hardly able to keep my hand to any thing, mending a rip in my momohiki, replacing the cords in my kasa, shins no sooner burnt with moxa than the moon at Matsushima rose to mind and how, my former dwelling passed on to someone else on moving to Sampû’s summer house,
the grass door too
(From the eight omote) set on a post of the hut.
turning into
a doll’s house
Translated by Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu
(Back Roads to Far Towns, 1968)
Kurita Chodō (1749-1814) was a highly respected poet in Japan. His ten haibun, based on the stages of ten-part of moon, in Tsukiyo sōshi (Sketches of Moonlit Nights) were written from the perspective of moon as a metaphor of his own life sketch. Out of ten, two are composed without haiku. Imamura says, “if the haibun itself bears haiku characteristics, a haiku need not be attached” .
(Tr. Imamura Takeshi and Patricia Lyons, Published by Noma Minako Matsuyama, japan 2013)
Joan Zimmerman – A Japanese Perspective on the Haibun
The Waxing Moon
By Kurita Chodō (1749-1814)
By the seventh and eighth days, the moon takes on a lovely shape. As people come and go along a broad street, they may look familiar, but it is difficult to know for sure. How delightful it is to exchange glances for no reason at all. At this time, the moon hidden behind pine needles is especially wonderful.
(Tr. Professor Patricia Lyons)
going out in autumn
it always seems to be
a moonlit night
(The ten Sketches of Moonlit Nights)
The Waiting-Night Moon
By Kurita Chodō (1749-1814)
What a fine name it is, the Waiting-Night Moon. While pondering whom to visit on the following night, when the fifteenth day moon will be full, we think of this person and that, and cannot wait to see them. It is the way of this world of ours that what lies before us soon will change. How much more elegant to refrain from looking one’s fill of the moon tonight.
(Tr. Professor Patricia Lyons)
(The ten Sketches of Moonlit Nights)
Missing the moon
To be continued
Cafe Haiku 