WHC MASAOKA SHIKI
CENTENARY CELEBRATIONS
Shiki’s
Fireworks, a note from Susumu Takiguchi
This text is extracted from the
introduction to the fifth strand of the Masaoka Shiki On-line Joint Translation
Project. An article detailing the development of the strand appears elsewhere in
this publication under the title In the Aftermath of Shiki’s Fireworks (Ed.).
hito kaeru hanabi no ato no
kura-sa kana
........Masaoka
Shiki, 1895, Meiji 28
hito=people
kaeru=return, go home (rentai-kei, or a kind of participial adjective)
hanabi=fireworks
no=possessive, or genitive (case) particle
ato=after
no=possessive, or genitive (case) particle
kura-sa=darkness
kana=particle, exclamatory, kireji
spectators
on their way home
after the fireworks -
what
darkness!
........version
by ST
The fireworks over,
The people all gone, --
How dark it
is!
........tr.
by R. H. Blyth, pp. 1025-1026, Haiku, vol. 4
Blyth comments:
This is no mere psychological
observation. The darkness was felt by the poet in a physical way. We may explain
the matter as a physiological reaction, but what Shiki is telling us is
something about the absence of two things and the presence of one as a unity of
deep experience.
It seems that there is a
slight mistake here (if such a great man as Blyth could make a mistake, which I
think he could). Ostensibly, there is no past tense or present perfect in the
verb kaeru used. It is in the present tense. Therefore, one cannot say
that the people have, or are "all gone". They may still have been all
be there, or some may have gone but others, or the majority of them, may have
still been there. Having said that, the real interpretation is not necessarily
merely based on grammar. Even if the tense is present like the haiku under
review, Shiki could still be ‘meaning’ the past, i.e. people have already
gone home. Only in this case, I don't think so.
The important point seems to me to be that Shiki was depicting the time when the
people were in the process of going home. In my experience as a child, as many
as a thousand people came to see the fireworks along the coast and it took them
half an hour to an hour to disappear completely. In Trafalgar Square, London,
thousands would come on New Year's Eve. Such a crowd take a long time to
disperse and disappear. Of course, Shiki could be talking about a few, a dozen
or 20, 30 people.
My gut feeling is that he was talking about eyes having been accustomed to
the brightness of fireworks, especially the finale, then being unable to adjust
to the sudden darkness quickly; also psychologically being unable to switch from
one scene of elation and wonder to the other of darkness and nothingness. This
feeling tends to last for some time, which is also my experience. I had never
thought otherwise until I started to write this introduction. Contrary to Blyth,
I would say that this haiku is about physical reaction to the darkness first and
psychological reaction second. I agree with him about the deepness of the poem
but, then, perhaps few would disagree to it anyway.
Blyth quotes Shoha's haiku about fireworks and speculates that it may have
inspired Shiki:
hanabi-bune yujin satte aki no mizu
........Shoha
In a boat seeing the fireworks;
When the spectators had gone. --
The water of autumn.
Rather than this, Blyth's
quoting another haiku by Shiki is more appropriate:
Sabishisa ya hanabi no ato no hoshi no tobu
........Shiki
Loneliness;
After the fireworks,
A falling star.
Instead of quoting Blyth's
explanation of this haiku, I would just cite our own member's recent haiku:
the odyssey
of 2001 draws nigh
Jupiter's bright glow
or,
odyssey 2001
draws to a close
Jupiter's bright glow
........soji, Fredericksburg, VA, USA
06/01/02 ST
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