WHF2002 Basho Journey - Rogetsu

WHF2002 - Ishii Rogetsu

The World Haiku Festival 2002
Basho Journey: PRELUDE (2)

Ishii Rogetsu (1873-1928) 1
Susumu Takiguchi
Oxford, Engand

The destination of our Basho Journey is Yuwa Town, Akita Prefecture, Japan. We will get there in late afternoon of Thursday 19 September 2002, after seven days of what promises to be a glorious trip, following in footsteps of Basho. This little town in northern Japan is the location which was especially chosen for the three-day World Haiku Festival 2002. Why Yuwa Town? What is the connection?

The connection is Ishii Rogetsu (1873-1928). Rogetsu is the haiku name of this relatively obscure but nevertheless important figure in the Japanese haiku world. It is said that one day he was appreciating the beauty of a camellia tree in his garden under the moonlight when he observed hundreds of exquisite dewdrops twinkle. “Ro” means dews and “getsu” means the moon.

Rogetsu was one of the closest students of Masaoka Shiki, who regarded him highly. Other important fellow students such as Takahama Kyoshi and Kawahigashi Hekigodo also respected Rogetsu. Moreover, Yuwa Town is where he was born and bred, and spent most of his life until he died at the age of fifty-five. His real occupation was medical doctor. However, he devoted his life also for the benefit of his home town (a very small village) in the field of education and other worthy causes. In our age, Yuwa Town is a prosperous community, and its importance in Akita has been increased since it was chosen as the location for the Akita Airport. In those days, it was one of the most inaccessible places on earth. Now one can fly into this airport within an hour from Tokyo.

The World Haiku Club is running two-year marathon celebrations to commemorate the centenary of the death of Shiki. One of the high points was the London Conference, “Reappraisal of Masaoka Shiki”, which took place at the University of London in May 2001. Two scholars from Japan introduced Rogetsu to the world, perhaps for the first time: Mr. Kazuhiro Kudo delivered a paper on the importance of Rogetsu in the reform process of the modernisation of haiku, which was initiated by Shiki. This was probably the first academic paper delivered on Rogetsu outside Japan. Professor Katsushi Wada gave two talks on Shiki, in which he referred to the relationships between Shiki and Rogetsu. It was decided then, that WHF2002 should be held at Yuwa Town, when WHC’s Shiki celebrations would reach their climax, and the 130^th anniversary of the birth of Rogetsu would be celebrated. Basho was added to the Festival theme as the father of all that relates to haiku both in Japan and in the entire world. R. H. Blyth was especially chosen to complete the theme, as almost definitely the most important figure who introduced haiku to the rest of the world.

Nowaki fukedo ugokazaru kumo takashi
Rogetsu

The autumn tempest rages,
But high in the sky
The clouds are motionless.

(tr. by R. H. Blyth)

In this series of PRELUDE to WHF2002/Basho Journey, I will be giving my account of Rogetsu, so that not only the participants in the Festival will be able to have some background knowledge of this haijin, but those who may not be able to attend it can gain some insight into the haiku figure who is now being “re-discovered”. It is sometimes refreshing to study some name we have never heard of, which is also part of the underlying aims of WHF2002/ Basho Journey.

Ishii Rogetsu (1873-1928) 1
His Biographical Sketch (a)

We begin with a brief sketch of the life of Rogetsu. He was born on 17 May in 1873 (Meiji 6) in Memeki, Tomegawa-mura, Kawabe-gun, Akita, which is located on the Japan Sea side of Japan, and for half a year is covered with snow. Memeki later joined three other neighbouring villages to form the present Yuwa Town, which is about 20 kilo meters south of Akita City. At that time, his father, Tsunekichi, was 39 years old and his mother, Ken, 32. He had one elder brother, three elder sisters and one younger brother. Rogetsu was six years junior to Shiki one year senior to Kyoshi and the same age as Hekigodo.

Rogetsu came from a good family of “shoya” (village headman) and wealthy farmers. This is, of course relative, as the village itself was poor. The family estate still exists to this day. However, in the civil war which led to the Meiji Restoration of 1868, enemy forces attacked the village, reducing it to rubble, making his family destitute.

Tomegawa-mura is situated along the Omono River, which meanders like a giant dragon and seems to cover a large part of Akita Prefecture. It is a beautiful river reminiscent of the upper stream of the Seine. The width and the abundance of water mean that it has long been the main (and often the only) channel of transport and communication. Its most important role was, perhaps, that of transporting great quantity of rice crops paid as a tax (“nengu-mai”) in feudal Japan. Despite the incursion of modernity, the landscape of Yuwa Town is still beautiful. How much more so it must have been in Rogetsu’s childhood.

He was a bright and precocious child who was fond of reading. However, tragedy struck when his father died at the age of 48, leaving the eleven-year old boy grieved. His grandfather, who was 69, took over the father’s role for Rogetsu and taught him, among other things, tanka, haiku and painting. Rogetsu was particularly good at Chinese classic and Chinese poetry, which has long been a most important area of study in Japan, comparable to Latin to English school boys. He was also initiated to haiku. However, how much he took to it or understood it is open to question.

He was good at school. However, he had to abandon it on account of illness. He was a slight boy with poor health, and afflicted with various illnesses. At home, he spent the greatly increased time reading Basho, Chinese poems and other literary works, while at the same time writing his own poems. After a while, he found a job as a teacher at the nearby local primary school. He was not happy though, as his friends had gone to live in Tokyo, achieving their aspirations, while he was stuck and had to live a “dog’s life” as an insignificant teacher of a provincial school.

He was well-read, especially in the areas of history and Japanese and Chinese literature. When he was 20, Rogetsu made an important conscious decision to become a novelist, and moved to Tokyo in order to achieve this burning desire. He went to see Tsubouchi Shoyo, a renowned scholar of Shakespeare, a novelist, and someone who had established himself as “the” leader of Japan’s literary world at the time; he asked him to take him up as his private student. However, Shoyo’s answer was NO, after persuading Rogetsu against wanting to be a novelist, which was extremely hard to achieve.

This was a terrible blow to Rogetsu, but through a strange irony of events, it led him to be connected with Shiki. A worried friend of his introduced him to Shiki’s cousin, Fujino Kohaku, who then introduced Rogetsu to Shiki. Shiki promptly secured him a job with “Sho-Nihon”, the newspaper for which Shiki was working. “Sho-Nihon” was a supplementary newspaper of the more substantial “Nihon”, which was owned by one of the leading figures of the Meiji Japan, Kuga Katsunan. Katsunan was, effectively, the guardian of Shiki and looked after this literary genius, literally in sickness and health. Shiki had been asked to be the editor-in-chief of “Sho-Nihon”, and through this newspaper, he had by then begun his relentless attack on what he termed as the tsukinami haiku masters (those who indulged in low-quality and clichés haikai for fame and livelihood).

Shiki liked people. He also had leadership quality. He looked after an incredible number of people who appeared on his vast human network. The way he looked after them was meticulous, attentive and often over-bearing (which some people, such as Kyoshi found weary). However, Meiji era Japan was a dynamic society of strange mixture of contradicting or competing factors. Shiki was at once democratic (giving equal opportunity to all, irrespective of their age or social status), and slightly authoritarian (telling people what to do, controlling others or imposing his will on others). The Meiji Era was an age of hope, newness and innovation, which were all entangled in the same pot with the opposite sentiments.

Thus it was that Rogetsu entered the world of the Shiki school. He was given, by Shiki, an initiation on the basics of a newspaper company, such as how the editorial office or print shop worked. His first task was to read all the manuscripts which were sent in by news agencies, and do the initial sorting out of which ones to be printed and which ones to be discarded. They were mostly about various developments and movements of political parties or about affairs in the business world, and naturally Rogetsu was not so keen on this initial task. However, here was Rogetsu, a country bumpkin, living in the aspired Tokyo, having Shiki as his mentor, and secure with a regular job. It was a long way from Yuwa Town.

16/07/02

Read more about Rogetsu

Read more about the WHF2002 Akita

WHF2002 Speakers

See the WHC Website for Details & Application Form

Read the WHF2002 R. H. Blyth Competition Winners

| Back | Next |

| BookMart | e-Cards | Search |