The Beat of Different Drummers:
English Translations of Hokku from
Matsuo Basho’s Oku no hosomichi
Mark Jewel, Waseda University
(*The following paper was first
published, without the Appendix, in The JASEC Bulletin, vol. 10, no. 1,
September 2001, pp. 1-15. Minor bibliographic changes have been made to the
Notes. The Japanese Association for Studies in English Communication is based at
Waseda University in Tokyo.)
Haiku is without question Japan’s
most successful literary export. Indeed, along with judo in the field of sports
and, more recently, anime and video games, haiku is one of only a handful of
Japanese cultural products that can be said to have acquired an international
following of any significant size. Haiku in English boasts a history in
translation of over one hundred years, and an active “haiku community” of
original poets that dates back at least as far as the first regularly published
magazines of English haiku in the 1960s. As one indication of just how popular
English haiku has become in the past quarter century, it may suffice to point
out that more than ten single-volume anthologies of haiku in English have been
published since the first such anthology—Cor van den Heuvel’s The Haiku
Anthology (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books)—came out in 1974.[1]
Small wonder it may seem, then,
that the poetic travel diary Oku no hosomichi, by Matsuo Bashô
(1654-1694), which contains fifty of Bashô’s hokku, has been translated into
English more frequently than any other major work of Japanese literature, with
no fewer than eight complete published versions. [2] Part of the purpose of this
paper is to suggest that, in fact, eight different versions cannot be called an
overabundance in this case. But before turning to an examination of some of the
hokku from Oku no hosomichi to help justify this assertion, I think it
will be helpful to review the changing fortunes of haiku in English over the
past hundred years, for the current high regard in which Bashô’s poetry is
held by both translators and English-language haiku poets by no means reflects
its reputation among the first serious foreign students of Japanese literature.
A brief historical survey should allow us both to identify some of the basic
problems attendant upon the translation of this quintessentially Japanese
literary form, and also to remark on the existence of a productive dialectic in
English between translation and original composition that has already influenced
both and promises to lead the genre in new directions in the future.
Makoto Ueda has identified
Lafcadio Hearn as the earliest translator of Bashô’s hokku into English. [3]
The famous poem about the frog jumping into an ancient pond, for example,
appeared in Exotics and Retrospectives in 1898. Later works by Hearn also
include a significant sprinkling of hokku, with the Japanese arranged into three
lines and a one- or two-sentence English translation placed in brackets
underneath. While showing a sympathetic appreciation for the genre, Hearn (in
the “Insect Studies” section of Kwaidan) admits that it must be
considered an “acquired taste.” British scholar W.G. Aston, on the other
hand, writing at about the same time in the first complete English history of
Japanese literature, is much more direct in his criticism: “It would be absurd
to put forward any serious claim on behalf of Haikai to an important position in
literature.”[4] Aston goes on to confidently assert that with the appearance
of longer, Western-inspired poetic forms, “the day of Tanka and Haikai seems
to have passed. These miniature forms of poetry are now the exception and not
the rule.”[5]
The kind of cultural arrogance
that lies behind Aston’s pronouncements is really quite astonishing when
viewed from our post-Second World War multicultural perspective. Even his
compliments are backhanded ones:
Can it be imagined that when a
religion is presented to [the Japanese] which alone is adapted to satisfy far
more completely all the cravings of their higher nature, the Japanese, with
their eminently receptive minds, will fail in time to recognise its immense
superiority? They have already accepted European philosophy and science. It is
simply inconceivable that the Christian religion should not follow.[6]
But the basic argument that Aston
makes is surely one that any advocate of hokku or modern haiku must address—that
haiku is an essentially trivial form unsuited to dealing with the intellectual
and emotional complexities of modern life. This argument was made to even more
devastating effect by another British scholar, Basil Hall Chamberlain, whose
reputation among the Japanese themselves has been eclipsed by that of his more
congenial contemporary, Hearn. Chamberlain, a scholar of immense erudition,
discusses Bashô in a detailed paper presented at the Asiatic Society of Japan
1902.[7] He concludes that compared with the “Palaces of Art” constructed by
Tennyson, Japanese hokku resemble “a litter of single bricks, half bricks in
fact,” [8] and remarks that the hokku “appears, now as a tiny herb or flower
on our path, now as some brilliant insect which hovers for a moment, and, ere we
have noticed it, flits away out of sight and memory.”[9] Like Hearn,
Chamberlain provides transliterations of the Japanese divided into lines of
5-7-5 syllables, but for translation uses an epigrammatic style that does not
follow any set formal pattern (although caesuras and exclamations are often
indicated typographically by means of punctuation).
Given this rather dismal early
assessment of the value of hokku, what happened to turn the situation around? In
terms of the history of English poetry itself, a major turning point came with
the modernist revolt instituted by Imagists Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell beginning
in around 1912. The poetry of the Imagists resulted in a general (and lasting)
preference on the part of practicing poets for patterns of clearly defined
images rather than narrative, a preference that was informed by a sympathetic if
not necessarily well-informed understanding of Chinese and Japanese poetry,
including haiku.[10] In short, haiku now seemed strikingly compatible with the
modern mode of perception being advocated by such poets as Pound, Lowell,
William Carlos Williams, William Butler Yeats, and T.S. Eliot.[11]
In the field of translation, the
transition from lukewarm acceptance to ardent approval was accomplished largely
through the work of two men: R.H. Blyth and Harold G. Henderson. Blyth was an
Englishman who lived in Japan for more than thirty years until his death in 1964
and spent the Second World War interned in Kobe; Henderson was an American
acquaintance of his who published the first (very short) book on haiku in
English in 1934 and helped found the Haiku Society of America in 1968. Although
the two were close friends (at least initially), they held somewhat different
views on haiku. Blyth, who had studied and practiced Zen Buddhism in Korea
before arriving to Japan, emphasized the Zen aspect of haiku: an intuitive sort
of immediacy that points the way to enlightenment.[12] His translations, which
started appearing just after the war, were read by and influenced the Beat poets
of the 1950s. Although now considered rather déclassé among many specialists
in Japanese literature, Blyth provided the direct inspiration among poets and
readers in English for taking haiku seriously as an art form, and his spirit
informs the work of such current translators as Lucien Stryk, co-translator of The
Penguin Book of Zen Poetry. Blyth’s translations typically give both
Japanese (in the original and transliteration) and English, with the latter
arranged into three lines of no fixed syllabic length, but with the first and
third lines indented so as to give visual prominence to the second line. For
haiku in English, Blyth advocates a three-line form that consciously avoids
rhyme, with a 2-3-2 accented-beat rhythm that is, however, neither regularly
iambic nor anapestic.[13]
Henderson, who taught at Columbia
University, revised his earlier book on haiku in 1958, and in 1967 also wrote a
book called Haiku in English, which was published specifically in
response to a growing demand in the 1960s by teachers, readers, and
practitioners for a detailed explanation of what haiku is and how to write it or
teach others to write it.[14] No doubt partly because of their brevity and
accessibility, these two books greatly influenced the first few postwar
generations of Japanologists and the general public as well. In Haiku in
English, Henderson concisely reviews the basics of haiku, formulating four
“general rules” for traditional Japanese haiku: the use of a 5-7-5 syllable
count; the insertion of a conventional reference to nature (the kigo, or
“season word”); an emphasis upon particularity rather than generality; and a
focus on the present time rather than on the past. These rules are then
discussed in connection with writing English haiku, including a short discussion
of the use of rhyme (a technique almost invariably and yet subtly employed by
Henderson himself). No hard-and-fast conclusions are drawn about the
applicability of Japanese models, and Henderson is at particular pains to
discount the need for unvarying observance of the 5-7-5 syllabic pattern in
English. Instead, the emphasis is placed on conveying by means of suitable
imagery what has come to be known as “the haiku moment”: the simple, direct
expression of an emotion evoked by some particular natural event or aspect of
nature. This approach, although not inherently antithetical to Blyth’s more
transcendental, Zen-based approach, does seem to end up being rather more modest
in its ultimate goal. And if Blyth’s versions carried greater philosophical
weight (especially among the Zen-inspired Beat poets of the 1950s), Henderson’s
approach helped to ingratiate the form with the general reading public and
facilitated its adoption by American school curricula in the 1960s and 1970s.
This, then, is the period when haiku can be said to have entered the poetic
mainstream, at least in the United States.[15] And in spite of Henderson’s own
reservations, it is probably when the 5-7-5 syllabic pattern came to be widely
regarded as a model for composition in English as well.
Currently, the leading proponent
of the second, more nature-centered approach to English haiku described above is
the American poet and translator William J. Higginson, who asserts in his 1985 The
Haiku Handbook that Western haiku poets “concentrate on capturing the
kinds of moments—the sudden intimate seeings—that they wish to remember
themselves and share with others.”[16] To my mind, this bears an uncomfortable
resemblance to the “Kodak moment” extolled in television commercials by the
well-known American manufacturer of film and cameras, and runs the risk of
re-trivializing or perhaps simply confirming the trivial nature of modern haiku
(a question that has by no means been settled). Nevertheless, in its emphasis
upon the central role of nature and seasonal change, it does appear to be the
approach now followed by the majority of haiku poets writing in languages other
than Japanese. Higginson follows Blyth in his preference for a 2-3-2
accented-beat rhythm in English, claiming that this results in a better
approximation of the length of Japanese haiku when read aloud than does the
5-7-5 syllabic form. But it should be noted that this pattern does adopt the
basic short-long-short rhythmic model of the Japanese, and that Higginson also
uses a fairly standard three-line format in his translations. In other words,
even while rejecting the authority of the traditional Japanese syllabic count in
determining the form of haiku in English, Higginson implicitly acknowledges the
importance of both the original rhythm and a three-part organizational scheme.
Furthermore, Higginson has recently argued for the usefulness of an
international saijiki, or “haiku almanac” categorized by season word,
as a guide in composing haiku in Western languages.[17] Acknowledging that the
choice of season words to be included in such an almanac must take into account
different geographic locales and that provision should be made for a larger “no-season”
category than in a Japanese saijiki, he nevertheless holds that this
traditional sort of poetic manual fosters the sort of seasonal awareness he
views as essential to good haiku in any language.
In this way, Higginson’s attempt
to reconcile traditional Japanese hokku/haiku conventions with a nascent set of
English conventions can be said to be characterized by a certain amount of
expediency and compromise. But rather than criticize Higginson for a lack of
logical consistency, it seems best to recognize that expediency and compromise
are inherent in any such undertaking, and to regard his example as pointing to
the key role played by cross-cultural mediation in the development of this
relatively young English literary genre. Indeed, it seems to me that the efforts
of both translators and original poets to work out a hybrid set of conventions
are a clear indication of the vitality of haiku in English. That is, even as
translators have contributed to the development of haiku in English by appealing
to the authority of Japanese models, their own practice has been influenced by
the work of other translators and by original haiku in English. It may well be
that this is the only field in Japanese literature where specialists feel
compelled to take into account the work done by those who may themselves have
only a very modest background in the Japanese language and the study of Japanese
poetry.
Precisely as a result of this
quasi-collaborative process, the translations I propose to discuss here can be
expected to reveal a surprising diversity of approaches to the problem of
translating what is surely one of the most rigidly defined of poetic forms. Of
course, reasons that are purely linguistic are also involved—even within the
range of seventeen syllables, there is enormous room for variation in syntax and
diction. Yet the large amount of variation also reflects conscious choices on
the part of the translators about how to handle form and images, and these
choices have, in turn, often been influenced by earlier translations, by an
awareness of the conventions of English poetry, or by the rejection of solutions
adopted by previous translators. The task of the attentive reader is to take
note of the methods used in each case and, quite simply, try to decide how
successful they are.
To simplify that task in this
paper, I have chosen to examine five hokku out of the fifty composed by
Bashô for Oku no hosomichi as rendered by the eight translators
mentioned in the second endnote. The major criterion for selection was personal
preference, guided to some extent by an eye toward the problems of translation.
Despite the relatively small size of the sample, I believe that it can be
considered representative—the translators tend to be consistent in their
methodology, and increasing the number of examples would not change my basic
conclusions. I want, first of all, to use the translations to point out both the
strengths and weaknesses of each translator and to make a number of specific
comments about hokku translation in English. In this context, the first two
hokku are discussed in some detail with regard to each translated version; the
remaining three are then used to review and qualify a number of the points
already made. After this analysis, and rather immodestly perhaps, I intend to
offer a final judgment about the general effectiveness of each translator’s
approach, which the reader is free to accept or reject as he or she sees fit.
There are two initial points to be
made concerning the original Japanese versions. The first is that of Bashô ’s
fifty hokku, forty-seven follow the standard 5-7-5 syllabic pattern. Bashô was
a master of this structural pattern, and a significant amount of internal
rhythmic variation is to be found in these hokku. Nevertheless, it seems obvious
that at least for Oku no hosomichi, Bashô decided to adhere very
closely indeed to the standard pattern.[18] The second point to note is that
many of the verses rely for their effect on the use of the technique of the
juxtaposition of images that is usually held to be one of the defining
characteristics of Bashô ’s mature style. It would therefore seem logical to
assume that the ordering of the images is intended to produce a specific effect
in each case, and that tampering with this order in translation risks altering
that effect.
Using these two preliminary
observations as our starting point, then, let us turn to the hokku themselves:
1. no o yoko ni/uma hikimukeyo/hototogisu
| Yuasa: |
Turn
the head of your horse/Sideways across the field,/To let me hear/The cry of the
cuckoo. |
| Corman/Kamaike: |
across the fields/head the
horse/hototogisu |
| Miner: |
Cutting across the moor,/Draw
still the horse you lead along—/Hear the wood thrush again |
| Britton: |
Turn across that moor,/O horseman,
for I hear/A cuckoo singing there! |
| McCullough: |
A cuckoo song:/please make the
horse angle off/across the field. |
| Sato: |
Turn the horse round across the
field, cuckoo |
| Keene: |
Lead the horse sideways/Across the
meadows—I hear/A nightingale. |
| Hamill: |
The horse turns his head—/from
across the wide plain,/a cuckoo’s cry |
To begin at the level of interpretation, it should of course be
remembered that all of the hokku in Oku no hosomichi are placed in a
specific narrative context. In this case, Bashô is being led on a horse to the
famous Killing Stone (Sesshôseki) in present-day Tochigi
Prefecture when the man who is leading the horse asks him for a poem. The quoted
hokku is Bashô ’s response. Taking the translations in order, we see first of
all that Nobuyuki Yuasa has chosen to translate in four lines.[19] To me, this
seems a very misleading method. One reason is that it often forces the
translator to fill out the lines with extra material, here meaning the entire
third line of the translation. The second reason is that it gives the reader the
wrong idea about the type of rhythmic balance that is created in hokku: an
asymmetrical three-part balance that is ill-served by Yuasa’s first-half,
second-half symmetry. The rhythm in translation is created simply by dividing
the English into semantic units, yielding a total syllable count of twenty-two.
The 6-6-4-6 pattern used here is repeated just once in Yuasa’s other
translations, and indeed, no syllabic pattern is repeated more than once in any
of Yuasa’s versions.[20] All in all, the translation comes across as somewhat
stilted, although Yuasa does succeed in preserving the order of images in the
original, which has the intended effect of emphasizing the (call of the) cuckoo
as both the inspiration for and goal of the poet’s proposed detour across the
field.
Cid Corman and Susumu Kamaike’s
translation offers a stark contrast to Yuasa’s. First, no notice is paid to
English conventions such as capitalization, ending punctuation, or even normal
syntax. It is also hard to discern any consistent use of rhythm, either in terms
of syllable count or even accented beats (although the number seldom exceeds
three in any one line). This makes it appear as though Corman and Kamaike want
above all to maintain a certain imagistic fidelity to the Japanese even at the
risk of violating the usual rules of English usage. In this context, it should
be noted that Corman himself (Corman is the one responsible for the final
English form of the translations) is a modernist poet of distinction, and that
his practice in composing English poetry is no different from his practice in
translating Japanese. This may, therefore, be a case in which the perceived
similarity in style (the use of concrete, fragmentary images) has intentionally—and
somewhat misleadingly—been allowed to take precedence over formal regularity
as a principle of fidelity. The treatment accorded “cuckoo” (hototogisu),
too, may on one level be said to reflect an insistence on paying attention to
the importance of the concrete image—a hototogisu may be a member of the
cuckoo family, but it is not exactly the same bird English speakers know, and
should not be treated as if it were. Yet one cannot help feeling that the
translator’s responsibility as a communicator of meaning is being slighted
here, for a reader not already familiar with the bird called hototogisu by
the Japanese will have no idea just what is being referred to here. Insistence
upon the uniqueness of the image does run the risk of obscurity. Taken to its
extreme, the refusal to paraphrase or accept any substitutes would simply result
in a word-for-word repetition of the Japanese—the very antithesis of
translation. Corman and Kamaike are not really quite so extreme, but the desire
to make interpretation more challenging, and hence more rewarding, by disrupting
conventional expectations in this manner is a distinctly modern approach.
Perhaps another reason for leaving hototogisu untranslated is the effective use
made of alliteration in the English version. The translation contains twelve
syllables (arranged in a 4-3-5 pattern) which, when read aloud, have a
pronounced rhythm attributable in large measure to the repeated H sounds. Corman,
naturally enough considering his experience, has an acute ear for rhythm in
short poetic forms, at least in English, and this particular hokku seems to me
to be one of the more successful translations in the Corman-Kamaike version of Oku
no hosomichi.
The third translation is that of
Earl Miner, who along with Robert H. Brower wrote the book when it comes to
translating and analyzing waka.[21] This twenty-syllable version is very nearly
as long in three lines as Yuasa’s is in four, and I must confess that it seems
quite wordy to me now in a way it did not when I first read it more than
twenty-five years ago. Miner does follow a short-long-short syllabic pattern,
but it is telling that only six of his translations from Oku no hosomichi
actually fall below eighteen syllables in English. Two other problems exist
here. First, Miner interprets the situation differently from the other
translators, creating the impression that the poet is already crossing the field
on the horse, which is surely mistaken. It is an unusual slip for him. Second,
although the major break follows the Japanese in coming at the end of the second
line, the imperative verb in the third line shifts the attention of the reader
from the cuckoo to the horse driver, which is both repetitious (one command has
already been given), blurring the focus, which should be on the image of the
bird (or, more conventionally, its song). Miner’s use of “wood thrush” is
precisely the sort of vague substitution that Corman and Kamaike appear to
disdain. It may be possible to acknowledge its usefulness as an interpretive
crutch for non-specialists, but one must finally admit the incongruity of a bird
native to North America attracting the attention of a seventeenth-century
Japanese poet. This translation thus labors under the disadvantages of being
both misleading and drawn out.
Dorothy Britton’s translation
comes the closest so far to the standard seventeen-syllable count (the majority
of her versions actually fall into the nineteen- or twenty-syllable range). But
the addition of extraneous information in the second and third lines—the
direct address to the horseman and the explanation of the reason for the poet’s
request—lowers the tension achieved in Japanese by keeping the last line
semantically separate from the first two. The one-sentence format makes for
smooth reading, but one almost feels that it is too smooth, that the
juxtaposition of images should have a more forceful impact upon the reader. The
conventionality of the English is reinforced by the use of capitalization at the
beginning of each line, the rather archaic form of direct address (“O horseman”),
and an attempt to match sound values at the end of the first and third lines (a
technique that tends toward the rhyming versions Britton often produces). A
tight formal unity is achieved, but that unity derives solely from English
conventions and disguises the way the translator has rearranged the order of the
images. Ease of reading alone can hardly be considered the hallmark of a
faithful translation.
The next version comes from Helen
McCullough, a translator who can arguably be said to have translated more
classical Japanese into English than any other person.[22] When she translates
waka, McCullough tends to follow a 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic pattern quite closely, but
apparently she finds the hokku form too constraining for such a rigorous level
of consistency: although none of her versions of Bashô ’s hokku exceed
nineteen syllables or fall below fourteen, only seventeen—or about thirty
percent—actually follow a 5-7-5 pattern (Keene, with fifteen, is the only
other translator even to approach the same level of consistency). McCullough
prefers full-sentence English syntax (noun phrases are allowed to stand as whole
poems, but otherwise subjects and verbs are clearly stated), which means that
her translations typically contain participles and prepositional phrases, end
with periods, and use capitalization only at the beginning of a new sentence.
She thus follows the pattern set down by Yuasa, Miner, and Britton, but with the
important difference that she is more concise than the first two and less given
than Britton to applying traditional rhyming techniques and standards of
diction. On the other hand, McCullough reverses the position of the first and
third lines of the Japanese version. I suspect that she did this in order to
avoid adding the sort of explanatory material added by Britton. But, of course,
moving the concrete noun to the beginning of the hokku reduces the force of the
ending, so that the English version appears to trail off weakly. Perhaps the
damage is not as great as it might be with a hokku more obviously dialectic in
effect, but the loss of focus is not negligible. Granted that McCullough seems
to have found it necessary to compromise in this case, hers seems to be a
careful, scholarly approach that draws its strength from its reliability.
The next version, by Hiroaki Sato,
is as radical in its own way as that by Corman and Kamaike. Sato advocates
one-line English haiku on the basis that Japanese haiku are written and printed
as one line and that, when read aloud, the duration of an English haiku should
approximate the duration of a Japanese haiku.[23] In terms of arguing for
duration as a standard of both translated and original haiku in English, his
position is close to that of Higginson, whose suggestion of a 2-3-2
accented-beat pattern (with a total length of about twelve syllables) has been
noted above. However, while Higginson continues to write in three lines, Sato
takes the additional formal step of joining the lines together. The potential
disadvantages of such an approach are amply in evidence here. I admit to being
confused about how one can turn a horse “round across” a field, and my first
instinct is to take “cuckoo” at the end as a direct address, so that the
poet is telling the bird to do something with the horse (and in another hokku
from Oku no hosomichi, Sato uses “cuckoo” in precisely this fashion).
These misreadings follow directly from the format chosen by the translator,
which in my view argues strongly against the applicability of this translated
form.
Donald Keene’s translation
follows the long-short-long rhythmic pattern he takes as his basic model (next
to McCullough, Keene has the most translations in “standard” 5-7-5 form—fourteen
in all). Cast in sentence-pattern syntax, it seems intended to be as clear as
possible in meaning: like Britton, Keene adds “I hear” in the second line to
make explicit a logical connection that is allowed to go unstated in Japanese.
Keene apparently feels that without such an explanation, the motivation will not
be sufficiently clear to the inexperienced reader. But in the attempt both to
maintain a syllabic count approximating the 5-7-5 Japanese pattern and to retain
the original image order, he has broken the second line in the middle, in effect
creating two halves rather than a two-line, one-line division. This has the
effect of disrupting the rhythm of the original and slightly drawing attention
away from the cuckoo (which Keene inexplicably translates as “nightingale”).[24]
When one also considers that leading the horse “sideways” creates the
potential for comic confusion, it must be concluded that this is not one of
Keene’s more convincing efforts.
Finally, Sam Hamill’s
translation must be considered quite wide of the mark in terms of accuracy. Not
only does Hill change a Japanese command into a descriptive phrase in English (“the
horse turns his head”), he makes it seem as though the cuckoo’s call has
caused the horse’s reaction and that that ends the implications of the poem.
As Japanese commentators invariably explain, the situation is that having heard
the cuckoo call out once in the distance, Basho is telling the horseman to lead
the horse nearer the spot so that he (or they) can hear it again. In other
words, there is an implied purpose to the poet’s command that is simply
ignored in this version. Hamill is an experienced poet and translator, but this
kind of carelessness (or eccentricity) appears with distressing regularity in
his versions of hokku from Oku no hosomichi. In terms of syllabic count
here and throughout, Hamill comes close to Keene in observing a regular
short-long-short rhythm (without, however, matching McCullough’s level of
consistency), yet he manages to achieve greater directness through the more
frequent omission of ending punctuation. This attempt to better match the
immediacy of the Japanese, however, seems inadequate compensation for the
problematic rendering of meaning.
2. oi mo tachi mo/satsuki ni
kazare/kaminobori
| Yuasa: |
Proudly exhibit/With flying
banners/The sword and the satchel/This May Festival Day. |
| Corman/Kamaike: |
chest
too and sword/in May hoist high as/paper standards |
| Miner: |
The
pannier and sword:/Use them to decorate the Boys’ Festival/Along with carp
streamers. |
| Britton: |
What
a proud display!/Chest and sword and paper carp,/For Boy’s Festival Day. |
| McCullough: |
Paper
carp flying!/Display pannier and sword, too,/in the Fifth Month. |
| Sato: |
Display
both casket and sword in May with paper carps |
| Keene: |
Sword and altar both/Display on
Boy’s Day in May/When paper banners fly. |
| Hamill: |
Sword,
chest, and wind-carp/all proudly displayed/on Boys’ Festival Day |
The situation, as described in Oku no hosomichi, is when
Bashô arrives at the temple where stand the graves of the two wives of Sato
Tsugunobu and Satô Tadanobu, loyal followers of Minamoto no Yoshitsune. Bashô
is moved to find that the temple has on display both Yoshitsune’s sword and
the pannier carried by Yoshitsune’s famous retainer, Benkei.[25] Yuasa again
translates as if the hokku had a basic structure of four parts, although in this
case his reversal of normal English sentence order allows for a three-line,
one-line division that can be said to approximate the two-phrase, one-phrase
division in Japanese. Still, the fact that the last, relatively independent line
refers to the month rather than to the paper carp streamers (which Yuasa has
confusingly called “flying banners”) certainly detracts from the
concreteness of the image. Extra information has been provided in English with
the use of “proudly,” a subjective judgment that is best left to the reader
to make. The translation also makes a problematic reference to Satsuki as
May, which gives the impression that this is some kind of spring festival. In
fact, the reference is to the fifth lunar month, which corresponds to the
greater part of June under the modern calendar (the season word kaminobori
belongs to the “summer” category). If the seasonal reference is to be
considered central to the effect of hokku, it will simply not do to substitute
spring for summer. Finally, the English translation seems to call on the
listener to display all three items together, while the grammar of the original
uses the preexisting image of the paper carp as the basis for suggesting what to
do with the other two objects. The Japanese, in other words, more clearly
reveals the imagination of the poet at work, even in a hokku that is not
especially serious in intent.
Corman and Kamaike puzzlingly (in
view of their previous treatment of hototogisu) repeat the misleading
English reference to the fifth lunar month. Furthermore, the command to “hoist
high” the sword and chest results in (for me) the rather bizarre image of the
two objects dangling unceremoniously from ropes. Clearly, placing the semantic
elements in the same order as in the Japanese does not by itself make for
appropriate translation.
Miner substitutes “Boys’
Festival” for “Satsuki,” attempting to avoid the calendar problem
while relying on the reader’s knowledge to locate the festival in its proper
season. The potential gain in clarity, however, once again comes at the cost of
a certain verbosity (the second line alone contains eleven syllables). “Carp,”
too, is a more specific image than “paper banners” or “standards,”
signaling Miner’s basic policy of making concessions to the needs of
non-Japanese readers. Miner does not seem to add subjective elements as Yuasa
does, but otherwise his style of rendering English in fairly complete semantic
units produces a similar impression of bulkiness (Miner arranges his translation
in just three lines, but it actually contains one more syllable than Yuasa’s
four-line version).
Britton’s translation is tightly
unified by rhyme this time. It appears to be a technique adopted from Henderson,
who justifies the practice on the basis of personal preference and the need to
keep hokku from seeming fragmentary.[26] Since the Imagists and other modernists
have prized just this fragmentary aspect of hokku, the general reluctance of
other translators and haiku poets to adopt rhyme is perhaps only to be expected.
Here, especially, the result is a sing-song quality that is positively
distracting. Not only that, the imagery itself has again been rearranged to
achieve the rhyme. Instead of one set of images (“pannier” and “sword”
in the first line) set in juxtaposition to another image (“carp streamers”
in the third line) with the second line used to mediate between the two, we have
all three images lumped together in the second line. This is a distortion of the
basic technique for which Bashô is most justly famous, and in this case it
trivializes the poem.
McCullough’s translation, too,
rearranges the order of the images, transporting the paper carp to the first
line, moving the pannier and sword down a line, and ending with the reference to
the Fifth Month. Although, as before, a juxtaposition of sorts is maintained,
the mediating function of Basho’s second line is lost, and the result is an
undue emphasis on the time of year. Thus, even while McCullough’s translation
can be called faithful in that it adds no extra interpretive material and takes
note of the lunar calendar by the expedient of capitalizing “Fifth Month,”
the effect is by no means the same as when the hokku is read in Japanese.
Once again, Sato’s translation
seems almost to flout English standards of common sense in its determination to
match the presumed one-line format of the Japanese. Since the English is in one
line, the phrase “with paper carps” may at first be taken as modifying “in
May” rather than the verb “displayed.” It might perhaps be argued that
recognizing a 2-2-2 accented-beat rhythm in the English helps to avoid that
misreading by cutting off “paper carps” from the immediately preceding
phrase; but if that rhythm is to be taken as the basis for a semantic yoking,
then a different problem arises in the separation of “casket” from “sword”
and in the subsequent linking of “sword” with “May.” In addition, Sato
makes the unfortunate decision to translate the Japanese “oi” as “casket,”
a word too readily associated with the image of a coffin. “Carps,” while
technically correct, is a relatively uncommon plural form that calls undue
attention to itself here. And apparently Sato intends the inaccurate use of “May”
to be justified on the basis of contemporary custom rather than tradition. It is
interesting to note that, as a rule, Sato’s most successful translations
resemble the epigrammatic forms used long ago by Hearn and Chamberlain. Sato is,
however, less concerned with observing standard English grammar, and when he
departs from it in his desire to establish a fixed rhythm (of sorts), the gain
in rhythmic regularity can be outweighed by an increase in semantic confusion.
Considering Keene and Hamill
together, we notice that although Keene has also unaccountably decided to
translate “Satsuki” as “May,” he retains both the order and
placement of the original images. Hamill has invented a new English word in “wind-carp,”
combined the three central images in the first line, and inserted a subjective
judgment with the addition of the word “proudly.” Hamill’s version may
have a bit more sparkle and a better sense of English rhythm than Keene’s, but
Keene’s does Basho the service of preserving his characteristically synthetic
method of constructing poetic meaning.[27] As before, blandness seems a modest
price to pay for Keene’s more consistent level of fidelity to the original.
3. natsukusa ya/tsuwamonodomo
no/yume no ato
| Yuasa: |
A
thicket of summer grass/Is all that remains/Of the dreams and ambitions/Of
ancient warriors. |
| Corman/Kamaike: |
summer
grass/warriors/dreams’ ruins |
| Miner: |
The
summer grasses:/The high bravery of men-at-arms,/The vestiges of dream. |
| Britton: |
A
mound of summer grass:/Are warriors’ heroic deeds/Only dreams that pass? |
| McCullough: |
A
dream of warriors/after dreaming is done,/the summer grasses. |
| Sato: |
Summer
grass: where the warriors used to dream |
| Keene: |
The
summer grasses––/Of brave soldiers’ dreams/The aftermath. |
| Hamill: |
Summer
grasses:/all that remains of great soldiers’/imperial dreams |
This hokku, one of Bashô’s most famous, refers
to the ill-fated members of the Fujiwara clan at Hiraizumi who perished at the
sword of Minamoto no Yoritomo. The order of images in the Japanese is summer
grass-warriors-remnants of dreams, again reflecting Bashô’s characteristic
three-part organizational process. A major break comes after the cutting word at
the end of the first line, resulting in a common variation of the standard 5-7-5
syllabic pattern. Yuasa is the only translator to depart conspicuously from this
pattern, although McCullough once again reverses the first and last lines,
thereby failing to suggest the correct location of the break while still
separating the image of summer grasses from the other images. Corman and Kamaike
are the most “literal,” stripping the English down to its bare essentials,
but awkwardness results from using “warriors dreams” possessively as a
compound noun and breaking it in half at the same time. Britton’s question is,
of course, rhetorical, but the Japanese does not even imply the trifling doubt
of a rhetorical question. It is perhaps misleading for Hamill to refer to the
“imperial” dreams of soldiers who lived at a time when the imperial court
was no longer the seat of real political power. Other than these relatively
minor quibbles, however, this hokku seems to offer the reader an excellent
chance to form a preference for any translator purely on the basis of style. And
if that decision seems a hard one to make (at last with respect to more than one
translator), then I think a good case has already been made for translating a
poet like Bashô repeatedly. In translation, “definitive” is not a word to
be used lightly, and different approaches can succeed in illuminating different
aspects of the same work. I certainly would hesitate to choose any of these
versions as the definitive English version of Bashô’s hokku; rather, I enjoy
having the chance to read and consider them all.
4. shizukasa ya/iwa ni shimiiru/semi
no koe
| Yuasa: |
In the utter silence/Of a
temple,/A cicada’s voice alone Penetrates the rocks. |
| Corman/Kamaike: |
quiet/into
rock absorbing/cicada sounds |
| Miner: |
In
seclusion, silence./Shrilling into the mountain boulder,/The cicada’s rasp. |
| Britton: |
In
this hush profound,/Into the very rocks it seeps—/The cicada sound. |
| McCullough: |
Ah,
tranquility!/Penetrating the very rock,/a cicada’s voice. |
| Sato: |
Quietness:
seeping into the rocks, the cicada’s voice |
| Keene: |
How
still it is here––/Stinging into the stones,/The locusts’ trill. |
| Hamill: |
Lonely
stillness—/a single cicada’s cry/ sinking into stone |
This is a personal favorite of
mine and another of Bashô’s most famous verses, in which poetic meaning is
once again generated by a synthetic process based upon the juxtaposition of
images. The text of Oku no hosomichi makes it clear that the reference is
to Risshaku (or Ryûshaku) Temple in present-day Yamagata Prefecture. The
translations by the various translators essentially fit the stylistic patterns
that have already been identified. Yuasa adds an extra line; Corman and Kamaike
are cryptic; Miner is wordy; Britton uses rhyme; McCullough is reliable; Sato
uses a single line (here, however, clearly demarcated semantically); Keene uses
an Americanism to translate “semi,” and the alliteration does not
suggest the sound of cicadas very well; Hamill is the only translator to take
the (largely unwarranted) liberty of altering the original order of images. What
makes this hokku especially interesting, however, is the various ways the
translators have rendered “shizukasa,” “iwa” and “semi.”
Corman and Kamaike are the only ones to use a single English word for the first
line of the Japanese, while McCullough adds an exclamation to account for the
cutting word “ya.” The other translators all try to specify the
quality of the silence by adding modifiers. Five of the translators use a
countable word for “iwa,” the other three use an uncountable word. A
majority (five) prefer the idea of one insect, one translator hears more than
one, and two translators finesse the issue by using a compound noun in which “sound”
becomes the key word (although that, too, can be countable or uncountable).[28]
Here, it seems to me, is another hokku where the existence of different
variations in English translation tends to amplify the meaning of the original
rather than disperse it. How many insects should we hear? What is the precise
quality of the silence? Is it, in fact, necessary to provide a definite answer
to these questions? I think it is a tribute to Bashô’s skill that the
Japanese encompasses all of the possibilities suggested by the translators (it
is not common to find such wide discrepancy in the use of singular and plural
among experienced translators of Japanese), and at least for this hokku, I would
say that the answer to the last of my three questions is no.
5. hamaguri no/futami ni wakare/yuku
aki zo
| Yuasa: |
As
firmly cemented clam shells/Fall apart in autumn,/So I must take to the road
again,/Farewell, my friends. |
| Corman/Kamaike: |
clam/shell
and innards parting/departing fall |
| Miner: |
Parting
for Futami Bay/Is like tearing the body from the clam-shell:/Autumn goes to its
end. |
| Britton: |
Sadly,
I part from you:/Like a clam torn from its shell,/I go, the autumn too. |
| McCullough: |
Off
to Futami,/loath to part as clam from shell/in waning autumn. |
| Sato: |
A
clam/separates lid/from flesh as autumn departs |
| Keene: |
Dividing
like clam/And shell, I leave for Futami—/Autumn is passing by. |
| Hamill: |
Clam
ripped from its shell,/I move on to Futami Bay:/passing autumn |
This is the last hokku in Oku no hosomichi,
composed as Bashô, after being greeted by disciples and friends at the end of
his journey, is preparing to set off in a boat to offer prayers at Ise Shrine.
Of the hokku being considered here, it probably represents the greatest
technical challenge for the translator because of the wordplay surrounding “futami”
(both the name of the bay that is Bashô’s destination and a phonetic
combination meaning “shell” and “body”) and “wakare-yuku”
(referring to the separation of a clam from its shell, the departure of the
poet, and also to the passing of autumn). Yuasa simplifies matters greatly by
dropping the place name and the reference to the end of autumn, and yet even
then he requires twenty-seven syllables to make his translation. What is more,
he has the poet address his friends directly, something not warranted by the
Japanese. Corman and Kamaike also pass over the geographical reference (and so
the poet’s reference to his own departure), but the whimsical “parting
departing” combination is surely the most effective treatment of “wakare-yuku”
to be found among these versions. Miner fits in all of the elements, but takes
twenty-four syllables to do it. Britton’s use of rhyme seems less intrusive
here than elsewhere, and this can probably be counted among her more successful
translations. However, she, too, is unable to find room for the geographical
reference, and the use of “sadly” adds an unnecessarily sentimental note to
the verse. McCullough rises to the challenge nicely by explaining the meaning of
the puns in a well-turned 5-7-5 translation. Of course, to explain wordplay in
this manner is also to diminish its effectiveness as play, so perhaps it cannot
be helped that her version (like almost all of the others) does not convey the
lightness of Bashô’s original. Sato gives the distinctly mistaken impression
that the clam is somehow dividing itself from the shell and, of course, he also
omits the geographical reference. He has, however, translated this hokku in
three lines, noting that “at least two” of the three manuscript traditions
also do so.[29] This seems an oddly literal affirmation of the formal
constraints imposed by the original when Sato has no compunctions about ignoring
Japanese conventions regarding syllable count. Keene ends up committing a
grammatical error in attempting to accommodate all the elements involved in the
wordplay: starting the first line with a participial clause, he has “I”
dividing like clam and shell, apparently intending this to refer to Bashô’s
separation from his friends. The effect, however, is inadvertently humorous.
Hamill’s version seems well done in this case, although the violence of the
separation (not inappropriate to the actual act of shelling a clam) is stronger
than that implied by the intransitive form of “separate” used by Bashô.
Wordplay may be difficult or even impossible to render adequately in
translation, but it goes without saying that in a verse obviously meant to
embody the playful spirit of haikai, a translation that works will itself be
lighthearted. This is why, despite its omission of one key element, Corman and
Kamaike’s translation finally seems best here, and why the other translations
from this relatively unknown version of Oku no hosomichi can at least
stake a valid claim to the reader’s attention.
Having surveyed a total of forty
versions of five hokku, we now seem very much in danger of running afoul of the
law of diminishing returns. Let me therefore conclude this discussion of
specific examples by making a few short (and admittedly opinionated) comments on
the overall merit of each translator’s approach. Yuasa’s complete
translation of Oku no hosomichi was the first to appear, and since it is
included in the Penguin Books series, a certain amount of prestige has accrued
to it. His versions of hokku are often the ones readers encounter first. Yuasa’s
understanding of the meaning is reliable enough, and the prose sections of his
translation of are quite competent, if rather pedestrian. But I have already
expressed my strong reservations about the four-line model he has chosen as the
paradigm for his translations of hokku, and I would say that his versions have
now served their purpose and should be retired to the back shelves of the
library. Penguin Books needs a fresh edition of Bashô.
Corman and Kamaike, as we have
seen, take a deliberately modernist approach that also insists on following the
original image order as closely as possible. William J. Higginson, for one, has
pronounced this the best translation available in English.[30] I am not so sure.
Granted that even in Japanese a certain amount of external knowledge is required
to identify allusions and untie the syntax of many hokku, the original still
strikes me as being much more conventional in expression than Corman and Kamaike’s
English would lead the reader to believe. Their choppy and sometimes cryptic
style often makes it almost as much of a challenge to get through the English as
to read the Japanese, and the rhythm—at least for me—is a very different
kind of rhythm. It is an interesting experiment with some notable successes, but
still very much experimental in nature. I would not choose to send a class of
American students to it first.
Miner’s translation is a
relatively early scholarly version, and as such it admits of more substitution
and approximation in its hokku than most scholars (and other translators) would
now feel comfortable with. Although Miner always observes a three-line format in
English, the wordiness of his translations sometimes comes close to defeating
the purpose in doing so. Yet I myself did not really notice this verbosity until
after I had had the opportunity to read other translations, and comparing Miner’s
version with those of several later academic translators provides a useful index
to the extent the modern preference for brevity and unexplained, juxtaposed
images has taken hold even among specialists in Japanese literature.
The hokku translations contained
in Britton’s translation of Oku no hosomichi are clearly intended for
the general reader. They suffer to some extent from being removed from their
prose context, the smoothness of which seems makes her version quite accessible
to those who do not want to wade through copious notes and explanations.
Unfortunately, the obtrusive reliance on rhyme and the resulting distortions of
poetic structure mean that Britton’s hokku often have a different specific
gravity, so to speak, than Basho’s originals, and her style is unlikely to
appeal to many future translators.
McCullough typifies the diligent,
scholarly approach of many academic translators. At her best, she combines
attention to detail and precise diction with a disciplined respect for the
syllabic rhythms of the original, without, however, insisting on unwavering
obedience to those rhythms. If there is a risk to this kind of scrupulousness,
it is the risk of dryness and the willingness to subordinate other aspects of
poetic structure—such as image order—to a syntactic order based on syllabic
and syntactic considerations. Like most other academics, McCullough diligently
includes transliterations as a way of allowing the reader to verify the
appropriateness of her methods. All told, McCullough would seem to be an
excellent choice for serious students of Japanese literature or for those
enrolled in university survey courses.
In the introduction to his
translation of Oku no hosomichi, Sato declines to justify his method of
translating in single lines, stating that it is an experiment that must stand or
fall on its own merit. This is surely true, but personally I tend to agree with
Edwin Cranston when he says that the tension and interplay between visually
separate lines offer valuable opportunities unavailable to a translator such as
Sato.[31] I have remarked on the awkwardness of Sato’s hokku translations, and
this awkwardness also characterizes the prose sections of his version of the
travel diary. I must confess I am quite puzzled when, in the introduction, Cor
van den Heuval pronounces this the “most accessible” English version to be
found. That is hardly the case. While admitting the value of the experiment, I
have to say that I think the experiment fails. This is the most heavily
annotated of the translations, by the way, and the wealth of information is very
useful. But providing so many notes in a version like this (which also contains
transliterations of the Japanese) seems to constitute an invitation to the
reader to regard them as a sort of corrective to the excesses of translation,
and one gets the impression that the real goal is a synthesis of the two
aspects. I do not think the translation stands up very well on its own.
I have heard it said that Donald
Keene has read more Japanese literature than any other person alive. Such
scholarship is not to be taken lightly. Still, as a translator Keene has never
been the stylist that contemporaries like Edward Seidensticker have proved to
be. Keene’s translations almost always leave the impression of being extremely
competent but plain. This plainness is no doubt deceptive to some degree, for I
know from experience how hard it is to demonstrate the same level of competence.
Keene’s translation of hokku, too, is always competent and in places quite
skillful, but I find it hard to say that his versions are in any sense
definitive. Indeed, the complete translation of Oku no hosomichi from
which they are taken seems rather unsure of its own audience, for the
information on the end-flaps is written in Japanese, and Japanese translations
are included even for the English notes, which themselves can be puzzling in the
sort of information they do or do not offer. Perhaps if a style-minded editor
had gone over the English carefully with the translator, or if Keene had
designed the book more specifically for a knowledgeable English-speaking
readership, more sparkle would have resulted.
The versions offered by Hamill are
also disappointing in my view, for reasons that have already been stated. Hamill
simply misleads the reader too often regarding the basic meaning (“too often”
is a relative term, and I do not mean to imply a very high statistical
frequency). I was, quite frankly, startled in the prose section of Oku no
hosomichi to find him refer to an honest innkeeper nicknamed Hotoke Gozaemon
in Japanese as “Joe Buddha,” and the dropped-subject, diary-like style
favored by Hamill in an attempt to convey the compression of Bashô’s prose
seems to me to misrepresent the stylistic polish of the original. Still, while
the prose deserves consideration as an attempt to come to terms with the
stylistic implications of the Japanese, the hokku translations lack authority.
What, then, are some of the
general conclusions that can be drawn about translated hokku by Bashô? First of
all, as I have already noted, it is important to recognize that definitive
versions of individual hokku are very hard to come by. In spite of the criticism
I have leveled at some of them, most have something to recommend them and most
also have drawbacks. In this sense, the brevity of hokku actually works to the
reader’s advantage because it allows different versions of the same verses to
be compared without making unreasonable demands on one’s time. It is a luxury
not available to many other literary genres. The richness of meaning that has
accrued to Bashô’s hokku in English is very much the product of the different
versions published by different translators over the years. And the fact that
the truest appreciation for the Japanese emerges after reading multiple versions
is not so much an ironic comment on the value of translation as it is an
indication of the potential of the hokku form as realized by its first great
master in Japanese (the recognition of this potential, beginning with the work
of Blyth and Henderson, counts as a permanent change in the prestige of the
genre in English).
A second point is that the issues
raised by the earliest translated versions remain quite volatile today, both
among scholars and within the so-called haiku community of poets in English.
There is still no unity, for example, over the most appropriate format to use
when writing in English. This is so despite the fact that certain methods (Yuasa’s
four-line method and Britton’s preference for rhyme, for instance) have failed
to win the support of the majority of either translators or original poets. One-
or two-line epigrammatic forms, 5-7-5 three-line schemes, rhymed lines, and
accented-beat patterns—all have attracted and continue to attract supporters,
for experimental purposes at least. The interesting thing is that these
different formats have not developed in isolation but have had to compete with
and accommodate each other in a way that has resulted, for example, in Sato’s
combination of epigrammatic form with the modernist technique of syntactic
disruption and an English-based rhythmic pattern that nevertheless appeals to
one aspect of traditional Japanese practice for its authority. Even scholarly
translators have been affected by the actual composition of haiku in English to
the extent of modifying their own procedures.[32]
Both of the foregoing points are
signs of the lively atmosphere surrounding the production of haiku in English
(and other languages) today. And all this activity would seem to indicate that
we are presently in an age of interaction and convergence, where the tension
created between traditional versions, translated versions, and foreign-language
versions of hokku/haiku is coming to inform our awareness of the achievements,
limitations, and possibilities of each category. It will be interesting to see
where this interaction takes haiku in the future.
Notes
[1]. The third edition of this
anthology was published by W.W. Norton in 1999, and includes about 850 poems in
more than 400 pages. Among the other anthologies, the Red Moon Press series,
under the editorship of Jim Kacian, is notable for having published a new volume
of original English haiku each year since 1996.
[2]. The translations to be
discussed here are those contained in the following books, which are listed in
order of original publication: Nobuyuki Yuasa, trans., Narrow Road to the
Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books,
1966); Cid Corman and Susumu Kamaike, trans., Back Roads to Far Towns: Bashô's
Oku-No-Hosomichi (1968; Hopewell, N.J.: The Ecco Press, 1996); Earl Miner,
trans., Japanese Poetic Diaries (Berkeley, Calif.: University of
California Press, 1969); Dorothy Britton, trans., A Haiku Journey: Narrow
Road to a Far Province (1974; Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1980); Helen
Craig McCullough, ed. and trans., Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990); Donald Keene, trans., The
Narrow Road to Oku (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1996); Sam Hamill,
trans., Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings (1999; Boston:
Shambhala Publications, 2000). Because of the many variations in the translated
titles, I will be referring to the travel diary here solely by its Japanese
title.
It should be noted that a
distinction is being observed here between the words “haiku” and “hokku.”
It is now widely recognized in the English-speaking world that the hokku
(literally, “starting verse”) was originally not an independent form of
poetry but simply the first of a sequence of linked verses (renga or renku) that
typically went on until a conventional length—typically thirty-six, fifty, or
one hundred verses—was reached. The first poet would begin by composing a
verse in 5-7-5 syllabic form, and the second poet would add a verse in 7-7 form
to cap the first verse and produce a complete 31-syllable tanka. Then a third
poet would add another 5-7-5 verse which, when added to the previous 7-7 verse,
constituted a second poem formally independent of the first and yet related to
it by a fairly complex set of linking rules as well as by the shared lines.
Although the importance of the opening verse meant that poets in Bashô's day
often composed hokku separately, there was always the expectation that hokku
would (or at least could) be used to start a complete sequence. The term “haiku,”
as used to refer to an independent poem in 5-7-5 syllabic form, was popularized
by the modern poet Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902). Following what is now becoming
standard practice, I therefore use “hokku” to refer to the “starting”
verses composed by Basho, and “haiku” to refer to modern verses that are
intended to be read as independent poems.
[3]. Makoto Ueda, Bashô and
His Interpreters (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 5.
[4]. W.G. Aston, History of
Japanese Literature (London: William Heinemann, 1899), p. 294. “Haikai”
is the general term for the genre of “playful” linked verse that emerged in
the Muromachi period and in which Basho worked; the hokku was the opening verse
of a haikai sequence. Aston’s book remained the only reasonably complete
history of Japanese literature in English until Donald Keene’s version began
to appear in 1976. It is still available from Tuttle.
[5]. Aston, p. 395. Aston
translates in three lines of English, but maintains no regular syllable count in
the very small number of hokku he offers (he disposes of the genres haikai,
haibun, and kyoka in the space of ten pages).
[6]. Aston, p. 399.
[7]. Basil Hall Chamberlain, “Basho
and the Japanese Poetical Epigram,” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of
Japan, vol. 30 (1902), pp. 243-362. Reprinted in Japanese Poetry (London: John
Murray, 1910), pp.145-260, and also in the final volume of Early Japanology:
Aston, Satow, Chamberlain, 4 vols. (Tokyo: Yushodo Press, 1997), pp. 305-426.
See also the “Poetry” section of Chamberlain’s Things Japanese, 5th
ed. (London: J. Murray, 1905), pp. 374-382, where Chamberlain refers to hokku as
the “limit of the little” in poetry.
[8]. Chamberlain, “Basho and the
Japanese Poetical Epigram,” p. 307.
[9]. Chamberlain, “Basho and the
Japanese Poetical Epigram,” p. 309.
[10]. Pound’s 1913 “In a
Station of the Metro” is sometimes put forward as the first English haiku: “The
apparition of these faces in the crowd;/ Petals, on a wet black bough.” This
assessment is not universally acknowledged.
[11]. For a convenient, if brief,
discussion of haiku in English starting with the Imagists, see Haruo Shirane, Traces
of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory and the Poetry of Basho (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 44-51. More detailed information
can be found in chapters 4 to 6 of William J. Higginson, with Penny Harter, The
Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku (1985; Tokyo: Kodansha
International, 1989), pp. 49-83. Also see George Swede, “Haiku in English in
North America,” publication date unknown, 15 March 2000 <http://www.atreide.net/rendezvous/
histnortham.htm>, which apparently combines articles previously published in Haiku
Canada Newsletter, vol. 10, no. 2, January 1997, and vol. 10, no. 3, March
1997.
[12]. In his preface to the first
volume of Haiku, 4 vols. (1949-1952; Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1981-1982), Blyth
states flatly that “haiku are to be understood from the Zen point of view.”
For biographical information about Blyth, see James Kirkup’s introduction to The
Genius of Haiku: Readings from R.H. Blyth (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1994); in
Japanese, see Yoshimura Ikuyo, R.H. Buraisu no shogai: zen to haiku o aishite
(Tokyo: Doho Shuppan, 1996).
[13]. R.H. Blyth, A History of
Haiku, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1964), p. 351. Quoted in Harold G.
Henderson, Haiku in English (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company,
1967), p. 32.
[14]. Harold G. Henderson, An
Introduction to Haiku (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958),
and Haiku in English, cited above.
[15]. The first English haiku
contest sponsored by Japan Air Lines in 1964 is often mentioned as a watershed.
About 41,000 entries were submitted.
[16]. Higginson, The Haiku
Handbook, p. 96.
[17]. Higginson has written two
books on the subject: The Haiku Seasons: Poetry of the Natural World (Tokyo:
Kodansha International, 1996) and, with Meagan Calogeras, Haiku World: An
International Poetry Almanac (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1997). The
first book makes the argument on a more theoretical basis; the second represents
an actual attempt to create such a seasonal almanac.
[18]. Of the three that stray from
the basic pattern (all are in 6-7-5 syllabic form), two appear to do so mostly
for linguistic reasons. One of these starts with the phrase oi mo tachi mo
(literally, “pannier and sword and”), which consists of two nouns joined in
a parallel construction; the other begins with Atsumiyama ya, which is a
place name followed by a “cutting word” (kireji) conventionally used when
place names appear in the first line of a hokku. The extra syllable in the
opening line of the third exception (tsuka mo ukoke/wa ga naku koe wa/aki no
kaze) seems to reflect an intent to add emotional emphasis, which makes it a
unique case.
[19]. Again for reasons of space,
line divisions in the translations are indicated by virgules. The divisions
shown in the Japanese originals are matters of convention and convenience rather
than a reflection of the practice of the poet. For Yuasa’s (finally
unconvincing) reasons for adopting a four-line method, see The Narrow Road to
the Deep North, p. 48.
[20]. Yuasa repeats syllabic
patterns a total of only four different times.
[21]. Robert H. Brower and Earl
Miner, Japanese Court Poetry (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 1961). This was also my introduction to the field, and as Edwin Cranston
observes when making the same point in the introduction to A Waka Anthology:
The Gem-Glistening Cup (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993),
it may be that one’s own preferences as a translator are determined by one’s
first encounter with a translation, for I have always regarded the five-line
translations of tanka by Brower and Miner as basic models for translation. With
regard to hokku, however, other translations have succeeded in making me feel
the need for greater brevity.
[22]. Among her translations (in
addition to the anthology of prose quoted earlier) are complete versions of Ise
monogatari, Kokin wakashu, Heike monogatari, Taiheiki, Eiga monogatari (with
W.H. McCullough), and Gikeiki.
[23]. Sato argued for one-line
versions of tanka as early as the 1987 article “Lineation of Tanka in English
Translation,” Monumenta Nipponica, 42:3 (Autumn 1987). His translation of Oku
no hosomichi appears to signal an attempt to extend the same principle to hokku.
[24]. Although Keene’s full
version of Oku no hosomichi was published only recently, he did translate
selections for his 1955 Anthology of Japanese Literature. It may be that
he was working from previous notes and inadvertently repeated an earlier,
immature error (in Japanese, both hototogisu and kankodori, or kakko,
are cuckoos, so he may have wanted to draw a distinction between them). Still,
“nightingale” is both factually inaccurate and the usual prewar translation
for uguisu (now “bush warbler”), so it should not appear in this
translation.
[25]. This hokku serves to
demonstrate that the current haiku “rule” about emphasizing the present
moment ignores the actual practice of Basho, for whom the past was a constant
preoccupation (Oku no hosomichi itself explicitly invokes the experience
of past poets such as Sôgi and Saigyô, present already in the travel diary’s
famous opening lines). For further consideration of this point, see Haruo
Shirane, “Beyond the Haiku Moment: Bashô, Buson, and Modern Haiku Myths,”
Modern Haiku, XXXI:1 (Winter-Spring 2000), pp. 48-63.
[26]. Henderson, An
Introduction to Haiku, pp. ix-x.
[27]. Space prevents extensive
citation of the kind of misleading carelessness I have already pointed out in
Hamill’s translations, but in one hokku, for example, Hamill has young girls
making dye when they are in fact dyeing cloth; in another, he describes a famous
Chinese beauty as “wrapped in sleeping leaves” when a comparison with mimosa
drooping in the rain is intended; and in a third, he translates a line as “Tremble,
oh my grave,” when the Japanese obviously refers to another person’s tomb.
[28]. Ueda, in Bashô
and His Interpreters, adopts the plural form in his translation of the same
hokku; Shirane, in Traces of Dreams, prefers the singular. Ueda used the
singular in an earlier translation published in Matsuo Bashô (1970;
Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1982), but has apparently changed his mind since
then. My own experience with cicadas suggests to me that plural is best, but I
must admit that the choice is timorously made.
[29]. Sato, p.132.
[30]. To verify this, it will be
necessary for the reader to locate the book on Amazon.com’s Web site and then
read Higginson’s review, the URL for which is too long to include here.
[31]. Cranston, A Waka
Anthology: The Gem-Glistening Cup, p. xix.
[32]. Both Ueda and Shirane
address the issues raised by English “haikuists,” and in Ueda’s case it is
instructive to compare the versions of translated hokku that appear in Matsuo
Bashô with those that appear in Bashô and His Interpreters. Ueda and
Shirane, however, also revert to the practice initiated by Henderson in An
Introduction to Haiku in providing word-for-word translations along with the
final polished version. The attempt to have things both ways is a recognition of
the provisionality of the translation no less than an exercise in scholarly
diligence. On a related note, it can be seen that the commonly advanced
complaint that a 5-7-5 syllabic count constitutes an arbitrary constraint in
English certainly cannot be laid at the door of translators, who as a group have
never been dogmatic about form in English.
Appendix
Syllable counts for English
translations of all 50 hokku by Bashô in Oku no hosomichi, arranged in
low-to-high order for total number of syllables (shading for identical patterns
when translations are in multiple lines)
|
Yuasa
|
Corman
|
Miner
|
Britton
|
McCullough
|
Keene
|
Sato
|
Hamill
|
|
3-4-5-5
4-2-3-4
4-4-4-4
4-5-6-6
4-5-6-7
4-5-6-7
4-5-9-8
4-6-3-5
4-6-6-5
4-6-11-6
4-7-8-5
4-10-5-7
5-4-4-2
5-5-5-6
5-5-6-6
5-5-6-6
5-6-5-6
5-6-6-7
5-6-7-5
5-6-7-6
5-6-7-6
5-7-5-6
5-8-6-7
5-8-7-7
5-9-7-7
5-10-7-8
6-2-9-5
6-4-7-5
6-5-5-5
6-5-9-5
6-6-4-5
6-6-4-6
6-6-4-6
6-6-4-7
6-6-5-5
6-6-7-6
6-7-6-7
6-7-6-8
6-7-8-5
6-10-4-8
6-10-8-6
7-4-5-4
7-5-4-7
7-5-7-5
7-6-4-7
7-9-7-5
7-11-7-5
8-8-7-9
8-3-6-7
8-6-9-4
|
1-5-2
1-6-4
2-3-4
2-3-4
2-4-4
2-4-5
2-4-5
2-5-2
2-5-4
2-5-4
2-5-5
2-6-3
2-6-3
2-6-4
2-7-3
3-2-2
3-2-3
3-3-5
3-5-5
3-6-2
3-6-4
3-6-5
3-7-5
4-3-4
4-3-5
4-4-2
4-4-3
4-4-3
4-4-3
4-5-4
4-5-4
4-5-5
4-5-5
4-6-3
4-6-3
4-6-5
4-6-5
4-6-5
4-8-3
5-3-2
5-4-2
5-4-3
5-4-4
5-4-4
5-5-3
5-5-5
5-6-2
5-6-3
5-6-4
5-7-4
|
3-8-5
4-7-5
4-7-5
4-8-5
4-8-6
4-8-6
4-9-5
4-9-6
4-9-7
4-10-4
4-11-5
4-11-7
4-12-6
5-6-6
5-8-4
5-8-5
5-8-5
5-8-5
5-8-6
5-8-6
5-8-7
5-9-5
5-9-5
5-9-5
5-9-5
5-9-6
5-9-7
5-10-5
5-10-5
5-10-6
5-10-6
5-10-6
5-10-7
5-10-7
5-10-7
6-7-5
6-8-5
6-8-5
6-8-6
6-8-6
6-9-5
6-9-6
6-10-7
6-11-5
6-11-6
7-9-6
7-9-7
7-10-6
7-10-6
7-11-6
|
4-8-5
4-8-6
5-6-6
5-7-4
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-6
5-7-6
5-7-6
5-7-6
5-7-6
5-7-6
5-7-6
5-8-5
5-8-5
5-8-5
5-8-5
5-8-5
5-8-5
5-8-6
5-8-6
5-8-6
5-9-6
6-7-5
6-7-5
6-7-5
6-7-5
6-7-5
6-7-6
6-7-6
6-7-6
6-7-7
6-7-7
6-8-5
6-8-5
6-8-5
6-8-5
6-8-6
6-9-5
7-7-5
7-9-6
|
3-7-5
4-5-5
4-6-5
4-6-5
4-6-6
4-7-4
4-7-5
4-7-5
4-7-7
4-7-7
5-6-3
5-6-4
5-6-4
5-6-4
5-6-5
5-6-5
5-6-6
5-7-4
5-7-4
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-5
5-7-6
5-7-6
5-7-6
5-7-6
5-7-7
5-8-4
5-8-5
5-8-5
5-8-5
6-7-5
6-7-5
6-7-6
6-7-6
6-8-5
|
3-7-5
4-6-5
4-6-5
4-7-5
4-7-5
4-7-6
4-7-6
|
