Here’s this month’s poetry post from our friend, poet and translator, Keiji Minato.

My first article for Deep Kyoto took up the topic of  YOSA Buson‘s (1716-1784) hokku (or haiku). As it says, and you all probably know, Buson was a great haiku master and painter, and I would like to add here that he was also an experimental poet who tried poetic styles that had never been used in the history of Japanese literature. His three longer poems show great results: “Hokuju-rosen o Itamu” (北寿老仙をいたむ), “Shumpu Batei Kyoku” (春風馬堤曲; Song of the Spring Wind on the Horse Bank), “Denga-ka Sanshu (or just Dengaka)” (澱河歌三首; Three Poems on Yodo River), all published in Yahanraku (夜半楽; Midnight Music; 1777). The topic this time is “Dengaka.”

澱河歌三首 　　　与謝蕪村
Denga-ka Sanshu (Three Songs on Yodo River)　　by YOSA Buson

春水浮梅花　南流菟合澱
錦纜君勿解　急瀬舟如電

The spring water floats down plum blossoms

toward the south to join Yodo River

Do not loose the gilt-threaded mooring lines

On the rapids a boat runs like a lightning

菟水合澱水　交流如一身
船中願同寝　長為浪花人

Once Uji River joins Yodo River

their mixing flows are like one body

On the boat hopefully we will sleep together

and be living in Naniwa forever

君は水上の梅のごとし花水に
浮て去こと急カ也
妾は江頭の柳のごとし影水に
沈てしたがふことあたはず

You are like a plum blossom dropped

on the water that floats away so quickly

I am like a willow tree whose shadow

is sunk too deep in the water to follow

“Shumpu Batei Kyoku” is a kind of collage in which Chinese-style verses, freer Japanese lines based on Chinese styles, and hokku-like 575 lines. In “Denga-ka,” he tries a similar style but in a smaller scale. The first two stanzas are written in a major Chinese style, Gogon-zekku (五言絶句), which has four phrases, each of which has five letters. The last stanza flows more freely, yet still based on Chinese writing styles.

What is appealing about the poem, however, lies more in content than in form, or in the intersection between content and form. The narrator is a female who sings of her affair with a man. The described geography shows that the relationship is between a merchant from Naniwa. a city of commerce, and a yujo (遊女; performer-prostitute) in Fushimi, a town in the south of Kyoto City. The poem superimposes them with the two rivers, Yodo (澱水) and Uji (菟水) (On today’s map Uji and Katsura Rivers join around Yahata to be Yodo River; See Google Map!). The image of the joining rivers of course has sexual connotations, which are strengthened by “the gilt-threaded mooring lines” in the second line, which connotes an obi (a broad sash tied over a kimono) the yujo is wearing.

Please note that the poem cannot be read in one sequence. In Stanza Two, as the two rivers merge and flow toward Naniwa, the lovers will happily live together ever after, at least in the yujo’s hope. In Stanza Three, however, the tone is totally different (which is emphasized with the difference of the styles). The yujo has no illusion about their future: their affair will no doubt be short, and the man will never come back. Stanza One and Two might be a speech the yujo makes to her lover, and Stanza Three sounds more like her inner voice which cannot deny the bleak reality. So, in my reading the poem diverges from Stanza One in two different directions: Stanza Two (dream) and Stanza Three (reality), between which the yujo’s mind is torn apart. It is interesting that the reading of the poem simulates the form of the rivers.

As I re-read the poem, lines from Gillaume Apollinaire’s “Le pont Mirabeau” came to my mind:

L’amour s’en va comme cette eau courante
L’amour s’en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l’Espérance est violente

Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure

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This text and translations by Keiji Minato. Keiji writes a guest blog for Deep Kyoto once a month introducing Kyoto’s poets and poetry. You can find former articles by Keiji Minato here.

Here’s this month’s poetry post from our friend Keiji Minato.

Ikkyu Sojun (一休宗純; 1394-1481) is one of the most famous monks in the history of Japan. Since his lifetime countless legends have been told about his weird acts and unmatchable wits. For contemporary Japanese he has become the most familiar figure as a Buddhist monk through the television anime series Ikkyu-san (一休さん; originally broadcast between 1975 and 1982, but re-broadcast many times after that). In this still popular anime, the protagonist Ikkyu-san is a boy who is kind and bright, helping people around him with his tonchi (the ability to solve difficult questions in original ways) and outfoxing Shogun-sama, who is always trying to trick him for fun.

The image of Ikkyu Sojun in the real history was difficult to grasp, but he might not be such a likable person as depicted in the anime. It is said that he urinated on a newly built Buddhist statue which he had been asked to consecrate and on another occasion took a nap using a statue as his pillow. (In the latter case a legend says that his friend Ren’nyo-shonin, another famous monk, came back to find Ikkyu sleeping and said, “Don’t use the tool for my trade as a pillow,” and they both had a good laugh over it.) His criticism of other monks often went beyond extreme or sounded just like blunt slandering, but in his last days he became head-monk of Daitoku-ji (大徳寺), one of the biggest Zen temples at that time and also today.

Kyounshu(狂雲集) is a collection of his Chinese-style poetry first published in 1642, well after his death (Kyo’un is one of the pseudonyms Ikkyu used, meaning a “crazy(狂) cloud(雲)”), and his image is multi-faceted even in this one book. He once stayed at Nyoian (如意庵) in Daitoku-ji to commemorate the thirteenth year of his master Kasou (華臾)’s death. Ten days after the ceremony he put the following poem on the wall of the building and went away:

如意庵退院寄養臾和尚
住庵十日意忙々
脚下紅糸線甚長
他日君来如問我
魚行酒律又淫坊

At leaving Nyoian, sending this to Youyu-osho,
Living in this hut for ten days made my mind fidgety
to my legs long red strings of the world get tangled
if some day you come visit me
go to a fish dealer, a tavern, or a brothel

Yosou (養臾) is his senior fellow, who succeeded their master Kasou and became head-monk of Diatoku-ji. It is clear that Ikkyu disliked him; he even said that Yosou’s claim as Kasou’s successor was false and severely criticized his rather successful managing of their sect as fawning upon the authorities.

自賛
八十窮僧大●苴　　　　　●＝磊にくさかんむり
淫坊興半尚勇巴
半醒半酔花前酒
臨済徳山何作家

Self-praise
At eighty this poor monk is such a rogue
during playing at a brothel thinks of a boy’s love
half sober, half asleep, drunk under the blossoms
In Rinzai or Tokuzan who got real enlightenment?

* Rinzai and Tokuzan stand for the biggest Zen Buddhist sects at that time.

There must be some exaggerations, but Ikkyu was famous for his indulgence in drinking and sexual interests: he always visited brothels and even in his latter days he had a blind beautiful performer named Shinjisha (森待者) as his lover. Ikkyu also loved boys as the poem above says. (By the way, homosexuality was very common among monks at his time.)

Let me quote a poem on his lover Shinjisha (there are many!):

謝森公深恩之願書
木凋葉落更回春
長緑生花旧約新
森也深恩若忘却
無量億劫畜生身

Prayer for thanking Shinjisha for her great favor
Trees weaken, leaves fall, and spring comes again
Lengthening green, breeding flowers, old promises renewed
Should I forget Shinjisha’s great favor by any chance
I would remain a dumb beast for endless time

In Buddhism the most significant is to leave your desires. However, many Zen and other sect masters point out that the desire to leave your desires is the biggest of all. I am not sure that Ikkyu’s indulgence in worldly interests led him to real enlightenment, but his poems certainly have the power to free our mind.

It is said that his dying word was “I don’t want to die (死にとうない).

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This text and translations by Keiji Minato. Keiji writes a guest blog for Deep Kyoto once a month introducing Kyoto’s poets and poetry. You can find former articles by Keiji Minato here.

Of Related Interest:
Cities of Green Leaves 青葉の都市 – Ginko no Kukai
The Hojoki – Visions of a Torn World
Irish Haiku!
One Hundred Poets on Mount Ogura, One Poem Each
Introducing Keiji Minato
Songs and Stories of the Kojiki retold by Yoko Danno
Japan International Poetry Society