Japanese Literature/Chapter 2

by Donald Keene

II. JAPANESE POETRY

One of the earliest and most famous statements on Japanese poetry was made in 905 A.D. by Ki no Tsurayuki in his preface to the Collection of Ancient and Modern Poetry. This begins:

“Japanese poetry has for its seed the human heart, and grows into countless leaves of words. In this life many things touch men: they seek then to express their feelings by images drawn from what they see or hear. Who among men does not compose poetry on hearing the song of the nightingale among the flowers, or the cries of the frog who lives in the water? Poetry it is which, without effort, moves heaven and earth, and stirs to pity the invisible demons and gods; which makes sweet the ties between men and women; and which can comfort the hearts of fierce warriors.”

At first glance these words may seem little more than a conventional statement on the powers of poetry, and indeed there is in Tsurayuki’s words more than one suggestion of earlier Chinese remarks. But beneath the smooth rhetorical finish there are some things said, and some unsaid, which are bound to interest the Western reader. First of all, we must note that Tsurayuki claims that poetry has the capacity of affecting supernatural beings, not, as in the West, that the supernatural beings speak through the poet, who is merely an inspired medium for their words. The Japanese may have believed that poetry, like everything else in their country, originated with the gods, but Japanese poets have never turned to a muse or any other divine being for help with their verses. The art, for all the wonderful powers that were attributed to it, was not considered to lie beyond the unaided talents of man. Tsurayuki listed some of the circumstances under which people have sought consolation in poetry—“when they looked at the scattered blossoms of a spring morning; when they listened of an autumn evening to the falling of the leaves; when they sighed over the snow and waves reflected with each passing year by their looking-glasses; when they were startled into thoughts on the brevity of their lives by seeing the dew on the grass or the foam on the water; or when, yesterday all proud and splendid, they have fallen from fortune into loneliness; or when, having been dearly loved, are neglected”. These remained among the principal subjects of Japanese poetry and required none of them a muse of fire.

The second point made by Tsurayuki was that poetry helped as a go-between in love-affairs. This perhaps needs little explanation for Western readers, familiar as we are with the love-poetry of European languages, but until we read one of the Japanese court-novels such as The Tale of Genji, written about 1000 A.D., we are not prepared for the extent to which poetry could be used for this purpose. Whole conversations between lovers were carried on in poems, and a skilfully caught poetic allusion might win a man’s heart as easily as a glimpse of his lady’s face. There is a full repertory of Japanese love-poetry, whether protestations of passion, aubades by parting lovers, laments over faithlessness, or any of the other possibilities in so highly developed a medium. The importance of poetry as a go-between in love-affairs arose from the to us rather strange manner of courtship of the Japanese aristocracy in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, when the techniques of their poetry were being formulated. Since court ladies might not be seen by any other men than their recognized husbands, conversations between lovers, at least in the initial stages, took place with the lady hidden behind a screen. This formalization of the relations between the two people favoured the adoption of the more formal language of poetry. When the lovers did not actually speak to one another, they were constantly sending notes back and forth, sometimes tied to sprays of plum-blossom or red maple-leaves, if they happened to be in season. The notes, of course, were also poems, and they were judged not only by their content but by the calligraphy. The usual way a love-affair began was for a young man, who had never seen the lady of his choice, to write her a poem. Then he would wait with impatience for her reply.

“She chose a Chinese paper, very heavily scented. ‘Some fault there must be in the stem of this marsh-flower. Else it had not been left unheeded amid the miry meadows by the sea.’ Such was her poem. It was written in rather faint ink and Genji, as he eagerly scanned it, thought the hand lacking in force and decision. But there was breeding and distinction in it, more indeed than he had dared to look for; and on the whole he felt much relieved.”^[1]

Sometimes, however, the ardent lover had his passion cooled:

“It was an idle repartee, and even the handwriting seemed to Prince Sochi’s expectant eye somewhat vague and purposeless. He was, indeed, not at all sure, when he saw it, that he had not made a great mistake.”^[2]

No better way existed to conquer a lady’s heart than with a poem beautifully written on just the right paper. As a final touch:

“She could not but be pleased and flattered by the elegance of the note; for it was not only written in an exquisite hand, but was folded with a careless dexterity which she greatly admired.”^[3]

The writing of love-poetry was not restricted to amorous young people, but was indulged in by all members of the court, from the Emperor down, as a form of literary exercise. In looking through the old anthologies we are apt to find verses like the following one, which is signed simply “A Former Prime Minister”, and entitled On Hidden Love.

shirurame ya	Who could detect it?
ko no ha furishiku	Carpeted with fallen leaves
tani mizu no	A stream in the valley
iwama ni morasu	Trickling between the rocks—
shita no kokoro wo	An all but stifled love.

It should not be supposed, however, that it was only at the court that poetry was considered to be an indispensable accomplishment. Tsurayuki declared that poetry could comfort the hearts of fierce warriors. Indeed, we are likely to be struck when reading Japanese novels, by the composure of heroes in their death struggles who manage to find time to compose a valedictory verse about the falling of the cherry-blossoms, or by the verses of ordinary soldiers who gathered of a winter’s night to compose poetry together. But poetry in Japan is the property of all classes of society, and even today almost any Japanese can write a poem without difficulty, although, of course, it may not be of any literary merit. Tsurayuki asked in his preface, “What man does not compose poetry on hearing the song of the nightingale among the flowers?” and the same question was asked 800 years later by the haiku poet Onitsura (1661–1738):

fude toranu	Is there, I wonder,
hito mo arō ka	A man without pen in hand—
kyō no tsuki	The moon tonight!

It remains true to this day that poetry is not felt to be exclusively the business of poets, or even of educated people. This is partially because of the simplicity of Japanese prosody, partially also because the range of the poetry is so limited.

The prosody of Japanese has been determined by the nature of the language. Stress accent, or quantity, the two most common features of European poetry, are ruled out by their absence in Japanese. This is true, of course, of French poetry as well, but the excessive facility of rhyme in Japanese, where every syllable ends in a simple vowel and there are no consonant clusters, deprives the language of this mainstay of French poetry. Japanese verses, then, came to be based on the syllable-count, and different types of poetry are usually distinguished by the number of syllables they contain. Thus, the tanka is a poem in 31 syllables, arranged in lines of 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables. The haiku, a more recent development, contains 17 syllables, in three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. In these two forms and in variants based on them is to be found almost all of what Japanese consider to be poetry. As may well be imagined, it is no great problem to compose a verse in only 31 or 17 syllables, without rhyme or metre, but it must be added that it is as difficult in Japanese as in any other language to write anything of value.

The range of the poetry is limited both by the shortness of the verses and also by what it was felt proper to include in a poem. The shortness is responsible, among other things, for the lack of true narrative poetry, since, obviously, very little can be related in 31 syllables, much less 17. But the shortness alone is not accountable for another feature, the rarity of poems of an intellectual or otherwise non-emotional character. The list made by Tsurayuki of subjects likely to arouse a man to poetic expression contains only emotional ones. In contrast, the most sizeable, if not usually the best parts, of many Chinese poets’ works consist of occasional verse of an almost completely unemotional character in any ordinary sense. In Arthur Waley’s book on Po Chü-i, for example, we find such specimens of Po’s lyricism as:

Since the day that old Ho died the sound of recitation has ceased;
Secretaries have come and secretaries gone, but none of them cared for poetry.
Since Hoy’s day their official journeys have remained unsung;
The lovely precincts of the head office have waked no verse.
For long I grieved to see you kept in the same humble post;
I trembled lest the art of high song should sink to its decline.
To-day when I heard of your appointment as Secretary of the Water Board
I was far more pleased than when myself I became secretary to a Board.^[4]

This is an example of the kind of verse which it is impossible to write in Japanese, and no one would dream of attempting it. A Japanese political poem is much more likely to take the form of a wish that the emperor’s reign will last until pebbles become boulders and are covered with moss.

The number of moods in which Japanese poetry can be written is also limited by tradition. There are few poems written in burning indignation, like some of the greatest Chinese poetry, few of religious exaltation, few which touch more than vaguely on metaphysics or ethics. This list might be prolonged almost indefinitely until we are left with a very limited variety of subjects considered fit for poetry, and within that limited variety, a limited number of ways of treating them. Most of the verses may be classified as love- or nature-poetry, and the most frequently employed tone is one of gentle melancholy. The falling of the cherry-blossoms and the scattering of the autumn leaves are favourite themes because both of them suggest the passing of time and the brevity of human existence. There is a religious background to such poetry, the type of Buddhism which taught that the things of this world are meaningless and soon faded, and that to rely on them is to put one’s faith in dust and ashes. But such religious ideas as are found in Japanese poetry are quite simple, and cannot have disturbed the poets very much. Typically enough, it was the anti-intellectual Zen Buddhism which furnished the only significant religious influence on Japanese poetry.

The uncomplicated nature of the subjects favoured by Japanese poets was perhaps the result of the simplicity of the verse-form, or perhaps it was the simplicity of the ideas which helped to dictate the form. In either case, most Japanese poets did not fret at the narrow limits of the 31-syllable tanka; those who did could write “long-poems” (nagauta), although this became an increasingly rare medium, or compose poems in Chinese, as English poets used sometimes to write verse in Latin. For the most part, however, the form and content of traditional Japanese poetry seem perfectly suited to one another, and to correspond with Japanese taste as revealed in other forms of art.

One obvious feature of Japanese poetry, which has been highly praised by critics, is its power of suggestion. A really good poem, and this is especially true of haiku, must be completed by the reader. It is for this reason that many of their poems seem curiously passive to us, for the writer does not specify the truth, taught him by an experience, nor even in what way it affected him. Thus, for example, the haiku by Bashō (1644–94):

kumo no mine	The peaks of clouds
ikutsu kuzurete	Have crumbled into fragments—
tsuki no yama	The moonlit mountain.

A Western poet would probably have added a personal conclusion, as did D. H. Lawrence in his Moonrise, where he tells us that the sight made him “sure that beauty is a thing beyond the grave, that perfect bright experience never falls to nothingness”. But this is what no Japanese poet would say explicitly; either his poem suggests it, or it fails. The verse of Bashō’s just quoted has clearly failed if the reader believes that the poet remained impassive before the spectacle he describes. Even for readers sensitive to the suggestive qualities of the poem, the nature of the truth perceived by Bashō in the sudden apparition of the moonlit mountain will vary considerably. Indeed, Bashō would have considered the poem faulty, if it suggested only one experience of truth. What Japanese poets have most often sought is to create with a few words, usually with a few sharp images, the outline of a work whose details must be supplied by the reader, as in a Japanese painting a few strokes of the brush must suggest a whole world.

It is partially because of this feature of suggestion that Japanese poetry is communicated rather inadequately into English. The Western reader is often in the position of the lover of Russian ballet who watches for the first time the delicate gesture-language of the Balinese dance—no leaps, no arabesques, no entrechats, nothing of the medium with which he is familiar save for the grace and the movement. The dance—or Japanese poetry—may appear over-refined, wanting in real vigour, monotonous, and to such criticism there is no answer. Their compass will inevitably appear limited to most people, and only the connoisseur will discover areas of suggestion around them.

The word “connoisseur” suggests another difficulty for the Western reader. Japanese poetry, like almost every branch of their arts, is virtuoso in methods, and perfectionist in details. This is in direct contrast with Western poetry, where two or three mediocre stanzas in the middle of a long poem are not considered a serious defect providing that there are a sufficient number of high moments in it. Although the second verses of most of our poems are inferior to the first ones, the cry from the poet’s heart or his philosophic perceptions are generally thought worthy of more than a single quatrain. However, the Japanese poet when expressing his feelings is more likely to use a few words of someone of long ago, words as familiar to everyone in Japan as at one time the famous parts of the Bible were familiar in this country, adding a little and giving to these old words the new accent of the present. It is thus possible in a highly concentrated form to express much to the connoisseur familiar with the allusion, and the change from the old poem needs to be very slight if it is expertly managed. Often it is almost impossible to express these slight changes in English translation, so delicate are the variations. If the range of Japanese poetry is small, the shadings within that range can make the English language seem gross and unwieldly.

The problem in translation is accentuated by the fact that there is no poetic correspondence in vocabulary between Japanese and English. For example, Japanese has a rich variety of words for different types of winds, enough to name a whole class of destroyers used in the past war. Or with the word hanami, which we may translate “flower-viewing”, a poet can suggest gaily-clad crowds enjoying the sight of the cherry-blossoms. Of course we can express the idea in half a dozen words, but the poetic effect is lost.

As a final major difficulty, there is the fact that the overtones of words are not the same. Sometimes this results from the fact that the thing itself is different; thus, the frog is celebrated in Japan for the beauty of its cries, which are not at all like the croaking with which we are familiar here. But more often it is the poetic tradition which is different. Japanese are never tired of writing about the autumn grasses—all of which have disagreeable Latin names when one attempts to translate—but they seem utterly indifferent, say, to the rose, although familiar with it. This list might be prolonged to cover almost all the most frequent images of both languages.

It must be clear from the above that to appreciate Japanese poetry fully it must be read in the original, but I think that it is possible to communicate some of its qualities by describing the developments in one branch of the poetry. I have chosen the renga, or linked-verse, together with the related haiku. These in some ways are the most Japanese of verse-forms, and suitable therefore as illustrations.

The linked-verse, in its simplest form, consisted of one tanka composed by two people; that is, one person wrote the first three lines, and the other the last two lines, to make one normal poem. An example of this type of linked-verse may be found even in the Record of Ancient Matters (Kojiki) of 712 A.D., the oldest surviving Japanese book, but it was not until the eleventh and twelfth centuries that the form became popular. How it happened that one poem came to be divided in two may be seen by comparing the early anthologies with the New Collection of Ancient and Modern Poetry (Shin Kokinshū) of 1205 A.D. In the earlier poetry there was no fixed place for the break in the verse, which would come at the end of the second, third, or fourth line, but in the New Collection it most commonly falls after the third line, as in this poem:

furusato wa	My old home
chiru momijiba ni	Under scattered scarlet leaves
uzumorete	Lied buried now.
noki no shinobu ni	Through the fern by the eaves
akikaze zo fuku	The autumnal winds blow.

Minamoto no Toshiyori.

In this example the last two lines of the poem have the effect of a comment on the first three, and almost stand independent. We can see how such a poem might have been created by two people, unlike the older poems which were generally far more of a piece. Linked-verse of a simple kind became in the eleventh and twelfth centuries a popular court pastime. One man would compose the opening three lines, making them as difficult to “cap” as possible, and a second man would demonstrate his virtuosity by supplying the final two lines in spite of the problems. The first major step forward in the development of linked-verse came with the addition of a third verse in three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables, thus destroying the limitations imposed by the original tanka form of a poem in five lines, and opening the way to poetry chains of many verses alternating three and two lines. The unit of three verses remained the most important in the long linked-verse, even when the number of links reached 10,000 or more, for each verse had to fit with the one before and the one after. This represented a marked change from the earlier form of linked-verse, where the highest object had been to achieve a brilliant response to a difficult opening. In a long series it was no virtue to compose a verse which it was almost impossible to follow, and thus linked-verse became essentially a co-operative enterprise, and as such was popular among soldiers, priests and ordinary citizens as well as courtiers, who found that an evening of linked-verse making was pleasantly spent. Generally three or more persons took turns composing verses, either of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, or of 7 and 7 syllables. The subject matter of these verses varied from contribution to contribution, the only requirement being a link of some sort with the verse immediately preceding. This is illustrated by one of the earliest examples of the linked-verse by three people (from the Mirror of the Present of 1170 A.D.):

Nara no miyako wo	My thoughts go out
omoi koso yare	To the capital at Nara.
	Fujiwara no Kinnori.
yaezakura	The double-cherry blossoms
aki no momiki ya	And the red leaves of autumn
ika naramu	What are they like?
	Minamoto no Arihito.
shigururu tabi ni	With each autumnal shower
iro ya kasanaru	The colours multiply.
	Echigo no Menoto.

Here, the second verse is linked to the first by the fact that the capital city of Nara was famous for its cherry-blossoms and bright autumn leaves. The third verse links to the second in its reference to the colour of the leaves changing after the autumnal showers. But no apparent connection exists between the first and third verses. It was, in fact, considered undesirable to pursue the same subject beyond a few verses.

The existence of a superficially similar type of poetry in China has led some people to believe that the linked-verse was not an indigenous Japanese product. However, a careful examination of the Chinese lien-chü, as it was called, shows that no connection could have existed between the two types of poetry. A typical lien-chü is this dialogue between one Chia Ch‘ung and his wife, a work of the fourth century A.D.:

Chia:	Who is it sighs so sadly in the room?
Wife:	I sigh because I fear our ties may break.
Chia:	Our marriage ties are firm cemented; rocks may crumble, but my heart will never change.
Wife:	Who does not worry at the end? ’Tis fate that they who meet must part.
Chia:	My heart is known to you; your heart I understand.
Wife:	While you are faithful to your word, it’s fit I stay with you.

This example illustrated two characteristics of the Chinese lien-chü, the unity of subject and the lightheartedness of the tone, neither at all true of Japanese linked-verse. In any case, I believe it is clear from what has already been said that the linked-verse was a natural development in Japanese poetry, and not dependent on any foreign influence.

The lien-chü was never taken seriously by the Chinese, and is barely mentioned in histories of their literature, but linked-verse developed steadily in Japan into an extraordinarily complicated form of poetry, governed by elaborate codes. Of the opening verse (the hokku) it was said, “The hokku should not be at variance with the topography of the place, whether the mountains or the sea dominate, with the flying flowers or falling leaves of the grasses and trees of the season, with the wind, clouds, mist, fog, rain, dew, frost, snow, heat, cold or quarter of the moon. Objects which excite a ready response possess the greatest interest for inclusion in a hokku, such as spring birds or autumn insects. But the hokku is not of merit if it looks as though it had been previously prepared.” The requirements for the second verse were somewhat less demanding; it had to be closely related to the first and to end in a noun. The third verse was more independent and ended in a participle; the fourth had to be “smooth”; the moon had to occur in a certain verse; cherry-blossoms could not be mentioned before a certain point; autumn and spring had to be repeated in at least three but not more than five successive verses, while summer and winter could be dropped after one mention, etc. The rules multiplied to such an extent that one might feel safe in predicting that nothing worthwhile could be written under such handicaps. Yet, although linked-verse increasingly became the toy of dilettanti whose chief accomplishment was exact conformity to the rules, great poetry was occasionally written, especially by Sōgi (1421–1502), the master of the linked-verse.

In 1488 Sōgi and two disciples met at a place called Minase and composed together 100 linked-verses which are considered to be the marvel of the art. The series begins:

yuki nagara	Snow yet remaining
yamamoto kasama	The mountain slopes are hazy—
yūbe ka na	It is evening.
	Sōgi.
yuku mizu tōku	The water distantly flows
ume niou sato	By the plum-scented village.
	Shōhaku.
kawakaze ni	In the river-breeze
hitomura yanagi	A cluster of willows—
haru miete	Spring is appearing.
	Sōchō.
fune sasu oto mo	The sound of a boat being poled
shiruki akegata	Clear in the clear morning light.
	Sōgi.

There is an effortlessness about these verses which might deceive us into thinking that the rules had been ignored, but verse after verse will be found to be in perfect conformity. The opening one tells us that the season is early spring, when the haze first hovers over the mountains still covered with the winter’s snow. The place is indicated as the Minase River by its allusion to this poem by the Emperor Gotoba (1180–1239):

miwataseba	When I look far out
yamamoto kasumu	The mountain-slopes are hazy
Minase-gawa	Minase River—
yabe wa aki to	Why did I think that only in autumn
nani omoikemu	The evenings could be lovely?

And Sōgi tells us that it is evening, thus giving the season, place and time as required. The second verse helps to complete the opening one by continuing the theme of early spring in its mention of the plum-blossoms, the first flowers of the year. It also helps further to identify the setting as the Minase River in its mention of the flowing water, an allusion to another poem on the subject. The third verse also mentions the spring, in keeping with the rule, and continues the water image. The fourth verse breaks the spring image, but continues the water one to three, and also satisfies the requirement of smoothness. There are many other subtleties which it would be difficult to explain here, but the important thing is that in spite of the hampering rules, a poem emerges of surpassing grace and beauty. It is a poem unlike any ever written in the West, as far as I know, in that its only unity is from one verse to the next. Each verse is linked to the one before and the one after, but whereas, for example, the first verse tells us it is evening, the fourth verse is about the early morning; again, in the sixth verse we are told that autumn is drawing to a close, although the first three verses have all indicated the season as spring. To give a parallel in the graphic arts, one may compare the linked-verse with the Japanese horizontal scroll (emakimono). As we unroll one of the scrolls with our left hand we simultaneously roll up a correspondingly long section with our right hand. No matter which segment of the scroll we see at one time, it makes a beautiful composition, although when we examine it as a whole it possesses no more unity than a river landscape seen from a moving boat. Linked-verse at its best produces a somewhat similar effect.

The raising to so high an artistic level of what had originally been a kind of parlour game meant that it was necessary for the fierce warrior who sought comfort in verse, or for any other amateur poet, to find some newer and simpler verse-form. The new form which developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the haikai or “free” linked-verse. In contrast to the traditional linked-verse, which had been full of cherry-blossoms, willows and pale moonlight, the free linked-verse delighted in mentioning such humble things as weeds, running noses, and even horse-dung. In time, of course, the new poetic diction became as stereotyped as the old, but the first result of the absence of formal rules in the free linked-verse was the release of floods of linked-verse and of haiku, a new form derived by making an independent unit of the opening verse of a linked-verse series. It is sometimes also called hokku, or haikai.^[5] One man is said to have composed 20,000 verses in a single day. Obviously the quality of all of these verses cannot have been very high, but this expansive, optimistic, and rather vulgar kind of poetry is most characteristic of late seventeenth-century Japan. After long years of internal warfare, the establishment of peace at the beginning of the century had led to a period of great prosperity and a brilliant flowering of the arts. It was natural that Japanese poetry, which had hitherto been marked chiefly by its sobriety and restraint, should become more cheerful and extravagant, and that the shift of the centre of creative activity from the court to the haunts of merchants should be reflected also in the tone. What is surprising is that there lived at this time in the capital city of the shoguns a man who is often considered Japan’s greatest poet, whose verses are of exquisite refinement, and who himself led so pure a life that he is venerated as a saint by some. This was Bashō (1644–94), the master of the free linked-verse and of the 17-syllable haiku, which was its product.

In his conversations with his disciples, Bashō declared that the two principles of his school of poetry were change and permanence. This statement is made more intelligible by a knowledge of the two perils by which Japanese poetry was always menaced. The first of these, and the graver, was staleness and sterility, the result of an excessive study and imitation of earlier masterpieces. Bashō insisted that his style of poetry should “change with every year and be fresh with every month” as he put it. He said, moreover, “I do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; I seek the things they sought.” That is, he did not wish to imitate the solutions given by the poets of former times to the eternal problems, but sought instead to solve them for himself. This was what he meant by his second principle, that of permanence. When, as under the influence of the new movements in seventeenth-century literature, all traditions were cast aside, and Japanese poets revelled in their freedom, the results were often chaotic. For Bashō both change and permanence had to be present in his haiku. In some of his greatest poems we find these elements present, not only in the sense just given, but also, if we may state the terms geometrically, as an expression of the point where the momentary intersects the constant and eternal. We find it, for example, in what was perhaps his most famous haiku:

furuike ya	The ancient pond
kawazu tobikomu	A frog leaps in
mizu no oto	The sound of the water.

In the first line, Bashō gives us the eternal component of the poem, the timeless, motionless waters of the pond. The next line gives us the momentary, personified by the movement of the frog. Their intersection is the splash of the water. Formally interpreted, the eternal component is the perception of truth, the subject of countless Japanese poems; the fresh contribution of Bashō is the use of the frog for its movement, instead of its pleasing cries, the hackneyed poetical image of his predecessors.

If the “perception of truth” is indeed the subject of the poem, we may recognize in it the philosophy of Zen Buddhism, which taught, among other things, that enlightenment was to be gained by a sudden flash of intuition, rather than by the study of learned tomes of theology, or by the strict observance of monastic austerities. When an acolyte enters the Zen priesthood, he is made to sit for long hours in a prescribed position, with his eyes half-closed, and his mind on the Great Nothingness. As he sits there gently swaying, hearing the monotonous incantation of a priest intoning a sutra, and breathing the heavy fragrance of incense, he will suddenly be struck from behind with a light wooden stick, and then, if ever, can occur the flash of enlightenment. But any sudden perception may lead to this state; it was the appearance of the morning star which gave enlightenment to Buddha himself, according to Zen believers.

The images used by Bashō in capturing the moment of truth were most often visual, as in the haiku about the frog, or the equally famous:

kareeda ni	On the withered branch
karasu no tomarikeri	A crow has alighted—
aki no kure	Nightfall in autumn.

This verse presents so sharp an image that it has often been painted. But Bashō did not rely exclusively on visual images; the moment might equally well be perceived by one of the other senses:

shizukasa ya	Such stillness—
iwa ni shimiiru	The cries of the cicadas
semi no koe	Sink into the rocks.

And sometimes the senses were mingled in a surprising modern way:

umi kurete	The sea darkens,
kamo no koe	The cries of the seagulls
honoka ni shiroshi	Are faintly white.

As these examples indicate, the haiku, for all its extreme brevity, must contain two elements, usually divided by a break marked by what the Japanese call a “cutting word” (kireji). One of the elements may be the general condition—the end of autumn, the stillness of the temple grounds, the darkening sea—and the other the momentary perception. The nature of the elements varies, but there should be the two electric poles between which the spark will leap for the haiku to be effective; otherwise it is no more than a brief statement. That is the point which has been missed by such Western imitators of the haiku form as Amy Lowell, who saw in the haiku its brevity and suggestion, but did not understand the methods by which the effects were achieved. Here are two of Miss Lowell’s haiku:

A Lover

If I could catch the green lantern of the firefly
I could see to write you a letter.

To a Husband

Brighter than the fireflies upon the Uji River
Are your words in the dark, Beloved.^[6]

In these examples the words are poetic, but the verses do not have the quality of a haiku, for the reason I have given. They suggest rather the shorter links of 14 syllables in a linked-verse series, which, however, never stand alone, and cannot be considered complete poems. There is an art to writing these shorter links as well, and although Bashō today is famed chiefly for his haiku in 17 syllables, he was also a master of the 14-syllable link. As I have mentioned, the haiku itself originated as the opening verse of a linked-verse series, and it in fact never lost the potentiality of serving as a poetic building block. Thus, to Bashō’s haiku, “The ancient pond, a frog jumps in, the sound of the water”, his disciple Kikaku added a link in 14 syllables:

ashi no wakaba ni	On the young shoots of the reeds
kakaru kumo no su	A spider’s web suspended.

This link fulfils the purpose of complementing the opening one. In the mention of the young shoots it tells us that the season is mid-spring, not specified by Bashō, and in the image of the spider’s web strengthens the impression of stillness suggested by the words “the ancient pond”. But, as we might expect, it was Bashō himself who composed the second verse, which is generally considered the model of its kind. His pupil Kakei had given the opening verse:

shimotsuki ya	November—
kō no tsukuzuku	The storks tentatively
narabi ite	Standing in a row.

To this Bashō added:

fuyu no asahi no	The winter sunrise
aware narikeri	So touching a sight.

In adding this link Bashō not only supplied a new image of his own, but greatly increased the effectiveness of the opening verse. The red winter’s sun, rising over the landscape, casts its harsh light on the miserable little flock of storks, uncertainly standing in the cold. If it had been said directly of the storks that they were a “touching sight”, it would have killed the suggestion of the image, but the unexpectedness of referring to the sunrise as “touching” gives freshness and force to the statement, and the unspoken comparison is left to the reader.

It may be wondered how often it was possible to assemble a group of linked-verse enthusiasts capable of producing a series of real merit. It cannot have been very often. Bashō, in his travel diary, The Narrow Road of Oku, gives us the circumstances of one series:

“As it was our plan to sail down the Mogami River, we waited at a place called Ōishida for the weather to clear. The seeds of the old school of haikai had been scattered here, and the days of its flowering, unforgotten, still brought the sound of the northern flute to the solitary lives of the poets of Ōishida. They said, ‘We are groping ahead on the road of poetry, uncertain as to whether to follow the old or the new way, but here no one can guide us. Will you not help?’ I was unable to refuse them, and joined in making a roll of linked-verse. Of all the poetry-gatherings of my journey, this showed the most taste.”

We may imagine the effort put forth by the local poets to be worthy of the honour of joining with the great master, and they did not do badly. Bashō began the series with:

samidare wo	Gathering seawards
atsumete suzushi	The rains of May, coolly flows
Mogami-gawa	Mogami River.
kishi ni hotaru wo	The little fishing boats tie
tsunagu funagai	Their firefly lights to the bank.
	Ichiei.
uribatake	The melon fields
izayou sora ni	Wait for the moon to shine from
kage machite	The hesitant sky.
	Sora.
sato wo mukai ni	Going off towards the village
kuwa no hosomichi	A path through the mulberry-trees.
	Sensui.

These verses have charm and blend with one another suitably to describe scenes in Ōishida during the spring rains. But often, even when Bashō himself was taking part, the linked-verse tended to break up into unrelated fragments, and one has the impression then that the participants are more anxious to express their happy thoughts than to fit links into a poetic chain. This may be illustrated by the beginning of another series:

tsutsumi kanete	The wintry shower
tsuki toriotosu	Unable to hide the moon
shigure ka na	Lets it slip from its grasp.
	Tokoku.
kōri fumiyuku	As I step over the ice
mizu no inazuma	Lightning flashes in the water.
	Jūgo.
shida no ha wo	The early huntsmen
hatsu karibito no	Tie fronds of the white fern
ya ni oite	To their arrows.
	Yasui.
kita no mikado wo	Pushing open the northern
oshiake no haru	Palace gates—the spring!
	Bashō.
bafun kaku	Above the rakes
ōgi ni kaze no	For sweeping horse-dung, the air
uchikasumu	Appears hazy.
	Kakei.

This is unhappily a more representative example of linked-verse making than any I have given thus far since, in the nature of things, it was almost impossible to produce a really successful series. Here, some of the links have great individual merit, but the connections between them are poor. Thus, the image of the lightning flashes, a characterization of the familiar jagged white patterns left around footprints in the ice, is made the more brilliant by the overtones of the sharp sound of the cracking ice, and the apprehension aroused in the walker, like that on hearing thunder. But the verse has unfortunately nothing to do with the case, as far as the total poem is concerned. The next three verses are ostensibly linked because they all treat of early spring; it is then that the hunters decorate their arrows with fern, and then, too, that a haze appears in the air—although the conceit of having the fumes of the horse-dung called haze certainly does not come off so successfully as the lightning image. If one recalls the effortless flowing beauty of the poetry composed at Minase, these carefully contrived bits hardly seem to be worthy of the name of linked-verse. It is small wonder, then, that this form of poetry gradually died out. For linked-verse to be as successful as those made at Minase, it was necessary for at least three poets of exceptional talents to join efforts, and to try, in so far as possible, to subordinate every other consideration to the perfection of the whole. We are reminded in this of a string quartet, where the music can as easily be spoiled by the ostentatious virtuosity of one member as by the incompetence of another. The man who composed the verse about the lightning flash was thinking mainly of creating an effect with his brilliant image; a true master of linked-verse would have foregone this pleasure in favour of the harmony of the entire series. At its best the linked-verse was a unique medium for the expression of the successive images evoked in the minds of different poets, a multiple stream of poetic consciousness, as it were, producing an effect akin to music. The fact that it lacks the formal structure of more conventional kinds of poetry was of help to the Japanese, who have never been strong on the construction of poetry or prose, and who were enabled by the linked-verse to extend their lyricism beyond the brief compass of a tanka or haiku without danger of formlessness. That is, as long as each verse fitted securely into the next, and the poetry was maintained at a high evocative level, there was no need for a carefully worked-out beginning, middle and end, a development and a climax, or any such requirement. But when the art of properly fitting the verses was lost, linked-verse dropped immediately to what it had been at its inception, a parlour game, and as such was abandoned by the important Japanese poets. Such men as Issa (1763–1828) preferred to devote their energies to the haiku, which became and has remained the favourite poetic form of the Japanese people.

It was the haiku also which first attracted the attention of Western poets, particularly those of the imagist school. Almost all the poets represented in the first imagist anthology were fascinated by the miniature Japanese verses with their sharp evocative images, and some composed imitations.^[7] Richard Aldington tells how

One frosty night when the guns were still
I leaned against the trench
Making for myself hokku
Of the moon and flowers and of the snow.^[8]

Slim volumes with such revealing titles as Pictures of the Floating World and Japanese Prints indicate how congenial these poets found the haiku, and, although the main thesis of this school, that poetic ideas are best expressed by the rendering of concrete images rather than by comments, need not have been learned from Japanese poetry, it is hard to think of any other poetic literature which so completely incarnates this view.

1. The Tale of Genji (translated by Waley), one-volume edition, p. 457.
2. Ibid., p. 497.
3. Ibid., p. 94.
4. Waley, The Life and Times of Po Chü-i, pp. 145–6.
5. Strictly speaking, haikai was the general name for the informal type of poetry exemplified by Bashō and his school; hokku the name of the opening verse of a linked-verse series; and haiku (a more modern term) the name given to an independent verse of the haikai school. However, the three words are very often confused.
6. From Pictures of the Floating World. Miss Lowell’s best haiku are probably the ones on modern themes in What’s O’Clock?
7. F. S. Flint wrote in 1915 about the origins of the imagist school of poetry, “I think that what brought the real nucleus of this group together was a dissatisfaction with English poetry as it was then (and is still, alas!) being written. We proposed at various times to replace it by pure vers libre; by the Japanese tanka and haikai; we all wrote dozens of the latter as an amusement.” (Quoted in Hughes, Imagism, p. 11.)
8. The Complete Poems of Richard Aldington, p. 86.