The World Haiku Festival 2002 Basho Journey: PRELUDE (10)

 

Speakers

Dorothy Britton (Lady Bouchier)

 A speaker at the Kamakura Option Public Lecture & Panel Discussion with James W. Hackett and Susumu Takiguchi on Wednesday 11 September 2002, Shohgai-Gakushu Centre, Kamakura

---

Along the coast of Isshiki of Hayama, there is a house overlooking the Imperial Detached Palace, Hayama Go-Yohtei, in some distance, where the sound of waves is a concert for the musically or poetically orientated.

It is where Dorothy Guyver Britton (Lady Bouchier) has lived since before WWII. It is a typical Japanese house, having Japanese architectural features. However, when I set foot inside, I thought it was a house from the time of Victorian England, occupied by people with strong Japanism. It was also obviously a house where artistic and literary pursuit was evident.

Dorothy was born in Yokohama. She is a composer, author and poet. “Tokyo Impressions” and “Yedo Fantasy” are her suites which are most well-known. These have been praised as being a highly successful “translation of the koto-samisen aesthetic into Occidental terms,” by the American Record Guide. She has composed variations of Japanese folk songs with her own English translations. She has also composed musicals. She studied music under a French composer called Darius Milhaud at Mills College in California. Dorothy says Milhaud was sympathetic with the lightness of modern music, and disliked the heaviness of the nineteenth century music. Did he influence her penchant for “karumi”?

Her activity as an author and translator has also been significant, publishing almost all the literary forms, poems, books, translations, essays and various articles in both English and Japanese. Her book, Nihon no Tsuru (Cranes of Japan), has been highly acclaimed.

However, to my mind, Dorothy is best-known as a translator into English of Oku-no-Hosomichi by Basho: A HAIKU JOURNEY- Basho’s Narrow Road to a Far Province. Since it was first published in 1974, the book has been read by haiku lovers around the world, who appreciate the sensitive rendering of her translation and sympathetic introduction.

A lecture Dorothy gave at Soka City’s celebrated series of Oku-no-Hosomichi Conferences in 1993 reveals how much thought and effort were put into this translation task. One such admirer has mentioned,

“Most translations rarely capture the succinct beauty and subtlety of haiku, but [Britton’s] come close in form and content.”
..............................(an American reviewer quoted in the book)

I am helping The Yomiuri Daily with its new series dealing with Oku-no-Hosomichi, and my task involves looking at different English translations of Basho’s haiku by various translators. While comparison is not only odious but also difficult, there are lots of translations by Dorothy which make me agree with the American reviewer’s observation.

Her late husband was a hero in the Battle of Britain, Air Vice Marshal Sir Cecil (“Boy”) Bouchier, K.B.E., C.B., D.F.C. Dorothy is half British and half American. However, she sounds and looks more British than American to me. Britton is closer to Briton, anyway.

Dorothy’s lecture I referred to above demonstrates eloquently the relationship she claims to exist between haiku and music, or "the musicality of haiku". It may be summarized as follows:

Oku-no-Hosomichi is in the same tradition as Manyo-shu (the first anthology of poems in Japan) and therefore possesses the same musicality. The book can be compared to a symphony with definite themes, refrain and finale. Themes consist of such symbols of journeys as “parting”, “boat”, “horse”, or “clouds”. Basho’s style includes something which is like counter-point in music. When we are reading Basho’s haiku poems, we are also “reading” their underlying poems by such poets as Li-po.

The whole structure of Oku-no-Hosomichi is also musical. It has a rich overture. The first haiku written at Senju, and the last haiku written at Ohgaki, are both about “parting”. The former is in Spring and the latter Autumn. They are placed at the beginning and the end of the journey. The kireji for the former, “ya”, has some kind of an elated expectation of someone embarking on a long journey and that for the latter, “zo”, has the quality of something definitely ending, i.e. the end of the journey.

yuku haru ya tori naki uo no me wa namida

Loath to let spring go,
.....Birds cry, and even fishes’
.........Eyes are wet with tears. 

(tr. By Dorothy Britton)

  hamaguri no futami ni wakare yuku aki zo

 
sadly, I part from you;
....Like a clam torn from its shell,
......I go, and autumn too.        

(tr. By Dorothy Britton)

Other musical features in Oku-no-Hosomichi include “major” and “minor” in style, harmony in such descriptions as in the "Natagiri-Tohge", or "Oya-Shirazu". On the other hand, we hear “discord” in the description in "Iizuka". An interesting little “variation according to water” in the description in "Shitomae-no-Seki", having the bath water of baby, Yoshitsune, his first piss, rain storm and the famous sound of a horse urinating. "Matsushima" and "Kisagata" are lyrical notes and "Ichiburi" turns into a Romantic music.

One of the best translations by Dorothy is also seen in the "Ichiburi" section where Basho eavesdrops the conversation between two prostitutes staying the same night in the next-door room:

Where the white waves foam
..As they break upon the shore,
..We are sea wrack evermore,
Like fisherfolk without a home,
Making fickle love each night
..Is our karma and our fate,
..To have fallen to this state:
What s sorry, sorry plight!

 And the famous haiku about the prostitute and the bush clover, the translation of which by Dorothy could be said to be classic :

 
Neath the selfsame roof
I slept with a courtesan! Like moon
With bush clover, forsooth.

I am sure I have not done justice to Dorothy’s fine lecture, but hope that you have been able to get even just the flavour of it. The following are some of her favourite haiku in Oku-no-Hosomichi, all in her own translation. Reading them is like looking at paintings by Rembrandt, making one feel that contemporary haiku poems look like pop art:

Turn across that moor,
O horseman, for I hear
A cuckoo singing there!

 
One whole paddy field
Was planted ere I moved on
From what willow tree!

For verse, it did suffice
To hear the northern peasants sing
As they planted rice.

To the Pine Tree Isles,
You would need crane’s wings to fly,
Little cuckoo bird!

In this hush profound,
Into the very rocks it seeps –
The cicada sound.

How many cloud shapes
Capped the peak before the moon
Rose on Moon Mountain?

The river Mogami
Has drowned the hot, summer sun
And sunk it in the sea!

 

(Biographical note by Susumu Takiguchi)

 

|  Back  |  Next  |