An Edo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Mega-City, 1750-1850

The "Peony Petals" Sequence

400 ARTISTS AND POETS + 8 9< YOSA BUSON AND TAKAI KITŌ Z Yosa(alsoYoza)Buson(1716–1784)wasamajorpoetofhokku, haikai linked verse (renku), haibun prose, and experimental poemsinmixedChinese-Japanesestyle.Hishaigapaintingsalso set new standards, and his mastery of the Chinese literati style, infusedwithhispersonalapproach,causedhimtobepairedwithIkenoTaiga (1723–1776) as one of the two greatest painters of his age. Today his surnameisoftenpronouncedYosa ,butBusonmaywellhavepronounceditYoza due to his ties to the Yoza region. Little is known of Buson’s youth, since he rarely mentioned it. He grew up in the farming village of Kema, near Osaka, used the surname Tani, and may have been the illegitimate son of the village headman and a migrant worker from Yoza, a poor area north of Kyoto. Buson loved painting , and he may have absconded from his village and gone to Edo, perhaps influenced by the crop failures and famine in the Kyoto-Osaka area in 1732–1733. Buson was in Edo at age twenty and at twenty-three was living with the haikai master Hajin (1676?–1742), whose house was humorously named Yahantei (Midnight Pavilion) because a large bell nearby always rang at midnight. There Buson learned the worldly, humorous style of the Edo-za, or the Edo school of linked haikai, or renku, and gradually joined in hundred-verse sequences led by Hajin. Hajin urged his live-in secretary to write haikai and study Chinese painting and literature, but his most important teaching was, “To learn from a master, never imitate the master.” After Hajin’s death, Buson spent a decade with two of Hajin’s followers and former patrons living north of Edo. In 1744, in Utsunomiya, he first used the name Buson (Overgrown Village), possibly an ironic reference to Chinese poet Tao Qian’s poem “The Return” about leaving the world and returning to overgrown fields in his hometown. No such return was possible for Buson, but he did return as far as Kyoto and become a professional painter. He also led a study group and wrote hokku and renku linked verse with followers of Hajin living in Kyoto, gradually taking the leading role, although he made a three-year trip to Yoza and a two-year journey to Sanuki to paint. In 1770, back in Kyoto, he was asked to become Yahantei II, and he began to lead regular hokku and linked verse meetings. From that time on, he concentrated equally on writing and painting. Perhaps because he depended mainly on painting for his income, Buson’s view of haikai was genial and free of polemic. He called for an ARTISTS AND POETS 401 iconoclastic “Zen haikai” (though he himself was an Amidist lay monk), for an estheticist purity of treatment “using the common uncommonly,” and for an open, playful, and humorous approach. His most talented follower was Takai Kitō (1741–1789), with whom he linked verses in several important sequences. Kitō also wrote a book on linking, edited anthologies, and became Yahantei III two years after Buson’s death, but he died only three years later. Buson mainly linked verses using the shorter, less formal kasen format of thirty-six verses. Suited to intimate gatherings, it was used with great success by Bashō, who considered his linked verse his greatest accomplishment . Although Buson called for a “return” to Bashō, for him the revival of Bashō meant, above all, linking polished verses in short sequences for intensely esthetic purposes. The “Peony Petals” sequence, translated here, is more sensuous and romantic than Bashō’s haikai, and it was written and revised much more slowly than sequences led by Bashō. In the spring of 1780, Buson and Kitō gradually began to compose this and one other kasen by means of letters and meetings, and both were published together in the eleventh month as “Peaches and Plums.” Buson used one of his famous hokku as the hokku of “Peony Petals,” presumably to suggest that the whole sequence was as polished as a hokku writ large. The haikai linked-verse form stresses movement, bonding, and chance. Each verse has a meaning by itself, but each verse after the hokku also replies to the previous verse and forms a temporary pair with it, so readers simultaneously read each new verse both as an individual verse and as half of a pair. Since each new verse is linked to the previous verse, it also gives the previous verse a new meaning within this temporary two-verse relationship. For example, Buson’s hokku evokes peony petals, while the second verse, in relation to the hokku, gives the time and implies a place. The third verse then links to the second, pairs with it, and evokes unpredictable new meanings from the second. Linking proceeds within a moving two-verse bond, so the third verse must leave the hokku behind and link only to the second verse, while the fourth verse links only to the third, and so on. In contrast to their emphasis on intricate polishing, however, Buson and Kitō are influenced by Hajin’s jostling Edo-za style, and they sometimes allow a verse to successively have strongly contrasting meanings. For example, verse 27 evokes a man, but then, in the new relationship formed with verse 28, verse 27 implies that it is about a woman. Buson and Kitō treat rules governing image placement fairly flexibly. For example, the moon usually appears first in the fifth verse, but Kitō places it in the second verse. The distance between contiguous verses can also be considerable, requiring a strong leap of the imagination, though at 402 ARTISTS AND POETS other times the verses are close, almost forming narratives. With respect to associative and narrative continuity, Buson and Kitō are sometimes closer to urban Danrin and Edo-za poets than to Bashō-style sequences. Verses 13 through 18, for instance, can also be read as a loose narrative strand, and verses 30 through 34 also suggest longer perspectives. ( cd ) PREFACE TO PEACHES AND PLUMS Once—it’s hard to remember exactly when—there were four kasen linked haikai sequences, each beginning in a different season. The spring and autumn sequences disappeared, however, and only the summer and winter sequences remain. Someone wanted to publish these, but someone else said the sequences had lain around too long and would no longer seem fresh enough to readers sensitive to the latest styles. Laughing, I replied that haikai linked verse is so large and free that it never really changes, though various styles come and go. Poets who always write in the latest style are like people chasing each other around a circle: those in front eventually find themselves behind. It’s impossible to say which style is actually most “advanced.” Poets take each day as it comes and try to write about what they feel at the moment. Today’s haikai is today’s, and tomorrow’s is tomorrow’s. The title of this haikai collection, “Momo -su-mo-mo” (Peaches and Plums), can be read equally forwards and backwards, continuously and without end. This, in fact, is the main theme of the collection. THE “PEONY PETALS” SEQUENCE 1 Peony petals fall, two or three on each other —Buson The large petals of a peony past its peak begin to drop and scatter one by one. The early summer air is still, since two or three of the petals—it is difficult to tell—have fallen in almost the same place and now rest on each other. After leaving their stem they are still fresh as they begin wilting— halfway between flower and earth. ARTISTS AND POETS 403 2 Faint predawn light— twentieth of the fourth month —Kitō The soft light of the waning moon—it was full on the fifteenth—mixes with the equally faint predawn light. It is late in the first month of lunar summer, usually sometime in late May or early June (in 1780, when Kitō is writing, the date was May 23). The thick, oval peony petals are barely visible as they lie scattered on the ground of a garden or temple, moist and glistening slightly with dew. Two or perhaps three petals are lying on each other, indistinct yet drawing the eye with a slight intensity of color. Like the newly fallen petals, the light is in transit, halfway between darkness and daylight. 3 Coughing it must be an old man opening the door —Kitō Dawn comes earlier as summer deepens, but someone is up already. There is the sound of the front gate of a house opening, and then a low voice coughing. It seems to belong to an older man who has slept lightly and is clearing his throat after getting up. The third verse swerves away from the peonies in the first, the hokku, and links only with the verse immediately behind it, as will the rest of the verses in the sequence. 4 A spectral visitor hopes to marry his daughter —Buson Although the first six verses of a kasen sequence are supposed to be placid and avoid gods and ghosts, Buson evokes an otherworldly figure coming to visit a human house. The owner has been interviewing men who hope to marry his daughter and be adopted into the family, and the candidates must also be tested and approved by the daughter. In this verse the father opens the gate to allow one rather uncanny and distinctly odd candidate to leave discreetly after a visit with his daughter. The obvious way the father clears his throat is his only good-bye. It may even indicate he realizes the candidate’s human shape is only temporary. 404 ARTISTS AND POETS 5 Chopping down the town’s ancient hackberry tree —Buson The supernatural being, perhaps a tengu mountain spirit, is losing its dwelling place, a tall old tree, because the great tree is being chopped down. Homeless, the being decides it wants to live with a human woman. An example of Buson’s typically understated humor. 6 On the road for a hundred ri, never knowing where he’ll sleep —Kitō The wanderer has been traveling for a hundred ri, that is, for a very great distance. This evening, as he enters a new town, he sees people cutting down a tree that looks centuries old. He stops and watches, perhaps feeling sadness and kinship with the tree: he has been traveling so long he can sense the scale of the tree’s journey through many centuries. The link mixes space with time. 7 A place famous in old poems—fever abating yesterday, today —Kitō A poet or lover of classical poetry travels continuously to far places noted for local gods or for waka poems written there centuries earlier. At one place he succumbs to malaria, but for a day now his fever has been subsiding , and he is already dreaming of visiting still another distant place. 8 Cutting early rice in a small mountain field —Buson From the place where the traveler is recovering, perhaps a farmhouse, he can see that fall is coming already to these small, highland paddies, where the farmers harvest a variety of rice that ripens early in the season. The cool weather should also hasten his recovery. ARTISTS AND POETS 405 9 Moon up already, chickadees cross the sky —Kitō Evening comes earlier, and the farmers keep working after the sun goes down, trying to harvest their quickly ripening rice before cold weather comes. A flock of chickadees, equally busy, flies across the early-rising crescent moon in the darkening sky. 10 Alone, leaning against the door— anxious in autumn —Buson Aware of time passing and the uncertainty of the future, someone living alone leans against the door or door frame, gazing at the moon and the moonlit landscape. The noisy, convivial chickadees that momentarily crossed the sky and then disappeared seem to have stirred up strong loneliness and anxiety in his or her mind. 11 Eyes closed, swallowing bitter herbal broth —Kitō Autumn disappears from sight, though it lingers in this nonseasonal verse. The person leaning against the door is physically weak from a long sickness and shuts his or her eyes as he or she swallows a bitter broth of herbal medicine. The strong aftertaste, difficult to endure, and the tactile pressure of the door are the only sensations that remain. They lead the person to deeper thoughts, perhaps about surviving. 12 Sending the wrapping cloth back to Taima, letter inside —Buson Someone from Taima, southwest of Nara, recuperates at a healthful spot, perhaps a hot springs. Relatives or friends in Taima have sent a present— or perhaps more herbs—wrapped in a decorated square cloth, and now, after boiling and drinking some herbal broth, the person, eyes closed, 406 ARTISTS AND POETS begins to mentally compose a letter of thanks with news about his or her condition. The letter will soon return by messenger to the sender wrapped inside the same cloth. 13 The voice of the lamp oil salesman— he’s still next door —Kitō Letter written, the writer waits for the traveling lamp oil salesman to arrive. For a small fee, the salesman will carry the wrapping cloth and letter with him and deliver them when he goes through Taima. At the moment, however , the salesman and the next-door neighbors are busy exchanging news and stories. 14 Darkness thickens above three feet of snow —Buson Someone in a village in the north or in the snow country along the Japan Sea waits for the lamp oil seller to arrive. The short winter day is ending already, but he still has not come. He is obviously enjoying his talk with the news-hungry neighbors, and their animated voices can be heard through the falling snow. Those who wait may be sitting in darkness. 15 Signs of a starving wolf hiding near the house —Kitō Unable to find food in the snowy hills, a wolf is scavenging the periphery of a village. A villager notices footprints and other evidence suggesting that the wolf has taken advantage of the dim light to hide under the eaves of her or his house—or perhaps even inside it. 16 The harelipped wife weeps uncontrollably —Buson ARTISTS AND POETS 407 When a hunter’s wife sees the evidence suggesting a wolf is lurking nearby, she begins to cry uncontrollably. She accepts the common belief that her harelip is due to bad karma, a karma made worse by living with the hunter, whom she probably married only because her parents could not find another husband for her. Hunters, who live by taking life, were believed to bring misfortune to those related to them—and now a hungry wolf has actually come while he is out. The woman is terrified. 17 New temple bell booming among blossoms— she cuts off her hair —Kitō Hoping forreleasefromherbadkarma, thehunter’s wifevisitsaBuddhist templetoattendaceremonyfortheinstallationofanewlycastlargebell,which givesoffalong,lowsoundwhenstruckwithahorizontalloghangingbeside it.Followingcustom,thewifeandtheotherwomenworshipersstrikeitfirstto commemorateitsinstallation.Cherry treesareinfull bloomat thetemple,and theceremonyis alsoarequiemfortheiralreadyscatteringblossoms.To show herdetermination,thewomanhasdecidedtobecomeanun,andshecutsoff herhair.Weeping, shepresentsherhairto thetemple.Kitōlateracknowledged thatthisversecontinuesthenarrative ofthewifeandherhunterhusbandfor thethirdconsecutiveverse,anextendedlinknotallowedinclassical renga. 18 Sun sinking, spring too leaving toward the west —Buson The day has been a long one for the woman, who has cut off her hair and left her previous life behind. The sun is finally sinking, and the woman faces west and prays that her soul one day will travel far beyond the setting sun to Amida Buddha’s Pure Land paradise at the westernmost edge of the universe. Lunar spring is deepening, and, as the blossoms scatter, the whole season seems to be preparing to leave. 19 Faint sounds of Noritsune’s great bow in distant mist —Buson 408 ARTISTS AND POETS Far off in the twilight mist the sounds made by the large bow of the famous archer Taira no Noritsune, governor of Noto, grow fainter and fainter. Buson’s image moves across space and time to the western end of the Inland Sea, where the sea battle of Dannoura is being waged in late lunar spring of 1185. There, Noritsune’s Taira clan is being destroyed by the Minamoto clan, despite the archer’s best efforts. Noritsune has once more failed to shoot the Minamoto commander Yoshitsune, and he will soon— as Buson’s readers know—jump into the sea praying to be reborn in the western Pure Land. 20 The learned diviner sees the future, knits his brows —Kitō The verse evokes an imperial diviner sometime before the battle of Dannoura —either on a Taira boat or back in the Fukuhara capital when it was controlled by the Taira. The learned doctor, well versed in yin-yang divination and the Chinese classics, has apparently been asked by Noritsune or perhaps Munemori, the Taira leader, to foretell the future. The divination is made, and the doctor frowns anxiously. 21 A bird cries— “A horse hauling grain collapsed and died.” —Buson The diviner makes his prediction metaphorically by alluding to the fifth book of The Analects. There, Confucius praises his disciple Gongye Chang, who was suspected of murder though actually innocent. According to legend, he was jailed for making a true statement about the death of a murdered man. He later cleared himself and proved he had heard of the murder from a bird when, listening to another bird from his jail cell, he correctly announced the death of an ox. The diviner speaks of a horse, and his prediction seems ominous, focusing on the horse’s death. 22 Bead tree blossoms fall on a long path between fields —Kitō ARTISTS AND POETS 409 A dead horse lies on one of the long, narrow paths that run, slightly raised, between rice paddies and dry fields. It is early summer, and the horse seems to have died from overexertion beneath a heavy load of fresh grain, perhaps barley. Small, light purple blossoms from one of the bead trees along the path scatter and fall on the horse and on the spilled grain. A bird cries in its branches. 23 A rainbow broken by smoke from Mount Asama —Buson After the rain, wet bead tree blossoms lie scattered here and there. Above the fields and the path between them, Mount Asama, a volcano in central Honshu, is sending white smoke high up into the now clear sky, where a rainbow is trying to form over the mountain. Parts of its arch, however, are hidden by the billowing smoke. Three years after this kasen sequence was published, there was a major eruption of Mount Asama that darkened skies in Europe and covered distant Edo with a layer of ash. 24 Proud to say his inn is used by imperial messengers —Kitō The owner of an inn near Mount Asama, along the mountainous Nakasendō route connecting Kyoto and Edo, is unusually proud as he mentions one group of visitors. Every year, at the end of the second lunar month, a delegation from the imperial court in Kyoto travels along this traditional route to Edo, where, early in the third month, they pay their respects to the shogun. In the eighteenth century, courtiers were no longer able to pay lavish amounts to inns along the way, so their prestige is at least as important to the innkeeper as the amount he will receive. There is humor in the way he mimics the relatively poor courtiers and pretends that money is the least important thing of all. The way the rainbow is partly hidden by smoke from Mount Asama, however, suggests the actual economic condition of the inn and the messengers. 25 Bright red bellies of river fish 410 ARTISTS AND POETS in a bamboo basket —Buson An open basket woven from strips of bamboo holds large fish caught a short time before in a river near the inn. The innkeeper has ordered them specially from a fisher and now oversees preparations for the feast the imperial messengers will receive. 26 Sun out but, once again, hail —Kitō The winter sky is bright again. It’s been changing all day, and hail falls once more while the sun shines down on the basket of fishes. The hail on the just-caught fishes contrasts with their red color and makes their bellies glisten. 27 Temple procession— “Boy I love, walk by, let me see you.” —Buson A ceremony to commemorate the completion of a new hall at a Buddhist temple is underway, and monks of various ranks in their best robes are now marching to the new hall past a crowd of onlookers, to be followed by lay young men and boys dressed as various heavenly beings. One man has come to the ceremony hoping to catch a glimpse of a young man he considers especially heavenly. The young man he loves has not appeared yet, and he is cold and tired of waiting. And now it is hailing again. 28 Furious at the man who touched her hair —Kitō The perspective changes. As a young woman waits to see the young man she loves, someone in the jostling, free-for-all crowd touches her hair as he tries to push to the front to get a better view. He messes up the hair she has carefully piled up high on her head in a fine hairdo she hoped the young man would notice, and now she wonders if the young man will even see her. She prays, asking the young man to appear soon before her hairdo is ARTISTS AND POETS 411 gone completely. The sudden change of genders here is typical of Edo-za haikai but not of Bashō-style linking. 29 Evening of the sixteenth— working hard in the dark before moonrise —Buson People who work at night prefer to wait for the moon to rise before they begin, but on the sixteenth the moon rises late, and this woman, probably a poor peddler or manual worker, cannot afford to wait for the moon. In the dark a man reaches out and touches her hair, making her wish all the more that the moon would rise. 30 Mallets pounding clothes in Banba and Matsumoto —Kitō In the Matsumoto and Banba districts in Ōtsu, on the Tōkaidō road just east of Kyoto, the local people are very busy even before moonrise. From here and there out in the darkness come the sounds of women softening clothes and giving them luster by hitting them with mallets on special blocks. The little wealth there is here comes from servicing travelers, and many women work long hours fulling robes for the local inns. 31 Only one palanquin carrier— autumn rain —Kitō A traveler tries to hire a palanquin but is surprised to find one of its two carriers missing. There are no other palanquins available, so the traveler is forced to stand and wait, surrounded by the sharp slapping of fulling mallets and softer sounds of cold rain. It is an unexpected, offbeat moment, and Buson praised Kitō highly for this link, presumably for its unspoken suggestion. 32 Kites and crows 412 ARTISTS AND POETS look the other way —Buson A palanquin has been moving through a wooded stretch of a road, but now it has stopped. The rider and one carrier are now waiting for the other carrier , who has disappeared, probably to relieve himself in the bushes. The birds in the trees along this nearly deserted part of the road pay little attention to the humans who pass by, but, to the waiting rider, the birds look as if they were discreetly trying not to stare at this strange palanquin with only one carrier—and at what the other carrier is doing. 33 A small shrine to an avenging god deserted in a rice field —Kitō A small shrine to a god famed for taking revenge on those who have done bad deeds stands on a raised area in the middle of some rice paddies. It is not a shrine to the village god, and the local farmers do not seem to worship this fearsome deity. Kansabite can mean “venerable, awesome,” but here it seems to mean “deserted, unpopular, dilapidated.” Lacking local believers to care for it, the shrine shows signs of neglect. It is so quiet and unvisited that even the birds ignore it. 34 “It looks like Genba’s going to lose the suit.” —Buson Villagers discuss the lawsuit, perhaps about irrigation rights, brought by a local farmer, Genba, presumably the owner of the rice paddies surrounding or bordering on the small run-down shrine. He is away in the city, but rumor has it that the suit is going badly. One villager suggests that it’s because the man is letting the shrine go to ruin. Now the god is punishing him for his negligence. 35 Unmoved by blossoms, he cooks rice and soup in a long-term inn —Buson ARTISTS AND POETS 413 Genba has been living in a cheap city inn for long-term lodgers involved in legal actions. He has probably been there several weeks, and he must always stay near his lodgings, since court messengers could arrive at any time and ask him to appear immediately. His suit is rumored to have been rejected, and, depressed, he has no interest in the cherry blossoms, which are in full bloom now. At the moment, he and the other people staying at the inn, which provides neither baths nor meals, gather in the kitchen to cook simple suppers. 36 Not yet completely dark— lamps lit in spring —Kitō The verse shifts from Genba to travelers like him who are too preoccupied to be able to go out and enjoy the cherry blossoms. The people staying at this inn need to light their oil lamps even though it is not yet completely dark outside. The days are longer now, but these commoners need lamplight to make their early meals and read the various legal and commercial documents they must examine during their stays in the city. The final verse (ageku) should end the sequence harmoniously, but there is a hint of longing and perhaps even pathos here. No doubt it is also a commentary on the human condition. translated by Chris Drake  ( Waka Selections Z Waka, originally a generic term for various types of indigenous verse, most commonly refers to tanka: thirty-one syllables in lines of five-seven-five-seven-seven syllables, the form that will be treated exclusively here. The earliest extant collection of waka, the eighth-century Collection of Myriad Leaves (Man’yōshū), amply illustrates the originally demotic scope of this genre, with poems describing the lives of peasants and frontier guards as well as the practices of the gentry. However, by the appearance of the first imperial anthology—Poems Old and New (Kokin Wakashū, 905)—the court had already established a ...