Kobayashi
Issa
(1763-1827) was one of the most prolific of Japan's haiku poets,
leaving thousands of one-breath masterpieces for the world to
enjoy. Only a small fraction of his life's work has been
translated into English. Translator, David G. Lanoue's
interactive website, The
Haiku of Kobayashi Issa, offers an archive of over 2,400
of Issa's haiku. Readers can search the archives by keyword,
read the texts in English and see original Japanese texts and
comments on Issa's haiku. A biography of Issa is provided, and
recently, interactive lessons have been added.
David's
translations are based on Issa zenshű (Nagano:
Shinano Mainichi Shimbunsha, 1979. Vol. 1). Some of the
translations first appeared in the book, Issa, Cup-of-Tea
Poems, Tran. David G. Lanoue (Asian Humanities Press,
1991). Others are taken from his light-hearted novel, Haiku
Guy (Red Moon Press, 2000).
David
is currently a full professor of English at Xavier University of
Louisiana in New Orleans. Since 1984, he has have published his
original haiku, translations, and haiku-related essays in
various magazines and anthologies, and he conducted research in
Japan from 1987 - 1988. Read more about David at his website,
but first, enjoy the second episode in his essay series, Confessions
of a Translator!
As a one-breath burst of language, a haiku must say everything
in that one breath. A haiku is immediate and experiential:
ore to shite niramekura suru kawazu kana
locked in a staring
contest
with a frog
This well-known verse by Issa doesn't seem to need explication
for a reader, even a child, to "get" it. Yet one's
appreciation deepens when one reads it in the context of Issa's
diary. The haiku appears in two journals: Hachiban nikki
("Eighth Diary") and Oraga haru ("My
Spring"). In the first text, it is prefaced simply
with the phrase, "Sitting alone" (4.236), but in Oraga
haru, a lengthy anecdote about the drowning of an eleven
year-old boy precedes it. Issa attended the child's cremation
and was so moved that he composed a waka in which he compares
the boy to fresh, new grass turned to smoke so soon after it has
sprouted. He then wonders out loud,
"Will not even the
trees and plants one day become Buddhas?"
He
immediately answers his own question:
"They, too, will
acquire Buddha nature" (6.137).
And then, as if continuing
a single thought, he writes the phrase,
"Sitting
alone," and inserts the haiku:
locked in a staring
contest
with a frog
In
the context of Oraga haru, then, this humorous verse about a
frog and a poet has a distinctly Buddhist flavour. Issa reminds
the reader that all beings, including plants, are on a karmic
path toward enlightenment. Thus, when he engages in a staring
contest with a frog, he is communing with an ancient fellow traveller. Buddhist truth lurks inside the comedy of the moment.
Issa and the frog are peers.
He referred to himself as issa-bo haikaiji, Priest Issa of Haiku
Temple. His Buddhist way of life, and way of thinking about that
life, profoundly influenced his art. He lived and professed the
precepts of the popular Jodoshinshu (True Teaching Pure Land)
sect. To translate Issa with sensitivity, one must become
familiar with key concepts of this school of Buddhism, as the
Japanese critics Murata Shocho and Kaneko Tohta suggest. Issa's
haiku are often predicated on Jodoshinshu concepts of sin,
grace, faith, and salvation, as in the following example.
hana oke ni cho mo kiku ka yo ichi daiji
on the flower pot
does the butterfly also hear
Buddha's promise?
The key phrase is the third: ichi daiji. Literally, it
denotes, "one great thing." Yet if a translator leaves
it at that, the reader is presented with a technically correct
but baffling poem:
on the flower pot
does the butterfly, too,
hear One Great Thing?
In the context of Buddhist belief, the "one great
thing" that the haiku refers to is Amida Buddha's promise
to rescue all sentient beings who invoke his name, ensuring
their rebirth in his Western Paradise, the Pure Land. Here, Issa
wonders if the butterfly also hears the good news of salvation-a
universal salvation that applies to it as much as it does to the
human poet and his readers. Its stillness, to Issa, implies
attentiveness. The butterfly thus embodies innocent, natural
piety and serves as a role model for all.
The French translator, Titus-Carmel, renders the third phrase of
this haiku, "la Grande Unité" (31), transforming
"one great thing" into "the Great Unity."
It's a brilliant solution, given the fact that she chooses to
present Issa's poems without critical comment. However, a vague
notion of cosmic unity is not really the focus of this poem.
Issa and his butterfly are contemplating a quite specific
"great thing": Amida Buddha's vow to allow their
rebirth in the Pure Land-a metaphor for enlightenment.
According to its prescript in the two texts in which it appears,
this haiku was inspired by a memorial service that Issa attended
(Issa zenshu 2.467; 9.222), suggesting a temple scene wherein
the faithful congregation might be chanting the nembutsu ("Namu
Amida Butsu"), the Pure Land prayer invoking the name of
Amida Buddha and celebrating his "causal vow" to save
sentient beings. Or, as R. H. Blyth visualizes the scene, a
priest might be preaching a sermon before an image of Amida
(2.552). Either way, the haiku's prescript evokes a religious
setting in which a butterfly clings to a vase, and the poet
asks, "Does it hear the Great News too?"
The poem happens to be a revision of an earlier piece:
aka tana ni cho mo kikuka yo ichi daiji
on the red shelf
does the butterfly also hear
Buddha's promise?
In the original version, the butterfly rests on a red shelf, a
shrine that contains an image of the Buddha along with offerings
such as water and flowers (Issa zenshu 2.426, note 3). Without
intent or calculation, it has landed in the lap of Buddha's
mercy. The question in the haiku is purely rhetorical-for Issa.
Of course the butterfly hears Buddha's promise!
Wittgenstein showed a long time ago that language never occurs
in a vacuum but always as part of human activity or "a form
of life" (11). To participate in a language game-haiku,
sonnet, limerick, novel-one must learn its rules. One must never
play badminton as if it were tennis. "Haiku Priest
Issa" creates an enlightened poetry that describes not an
escape from the world, but an escape into it. According to
Shinran, the founder of Issa's sect, once one has reached
enlightenment, he or she returns to this world of suffering as a
new bodhisattva-a living saint-with the loving purpose of
awakening others still trapped in their self-made hells of
craving, paranoia, and hopeless calculation. Issa urges us
to trust simply and utterly in the saving grace of Amida: to sit
quietly with eyes and ears open-like an unblinking frog or a
frozen butterfly. We must pay attention to what silence is
telling us.
Critical commentary would have been superfluous for Issa's
original readers, but I think it's essential today. The
translator of haiku, like it or not, must also become a critic,
revealing cultural contexts and linguistic rules of game that
Issa and other masters would have taken for granted. As a
critic, the ultimate goal is to become useless. Once a reader
grasps the key concepts that shape haiku, he or she can throw
out the notes and enjoy each poem, one breath at a time, on its
own terms.
NOTES
Blyth, R. H. Haiku. Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1949-1952; rpt.
1981-1982 [reset paperback edition]. 4 vols.
Issa (Kobayashi Issa). Issa zenshu. Nagano: Shinano
Mainichi Shimbunsha, 1976-1979. 9 vols.
Murata Shocho. Haikai-ji Issa no geijutsu. Shimonoseki:
Genshashin, 1969.
Titus-Carmel, Joan. Issa: Haiku. Vendome: Éditions
Verdier, 1994.
Kaneko Tohta. Issa kushu. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1983; rpt.1984.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Tran. G. E.
M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953.
Read:
Confessions of a Translator
-Episode 1 - Volume 1- Issue
1; May 2001 [Use
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Visit
David G. Lanoue's website: The Haiku of Kobayashi Issa
