The Haiku Masters of Japan drop in for a visit [by David Lehman]

Thanks to Bob Hass, I'm
reading the haiku masters
of Japan -- Basho,

Buson and Issa --
in one essential book: The
Essential Haiku,

published by Ecco,
with smart intro and useful
notes by Mr. Hass.

Examples follow.
(Translators do not observe
strict syllabic count).

Here is Basho as
rendered by B. Watson in
fifteen syllables:

"It's not like anything
they compare it to --
the summer moon."

And now for Buson,
trans. by Yuki Sawa and
Edith M. Shiffert:

"I go,
you stay;
two autumns."

Issa, the last of
the three, wrote the following
(trans. Robert Huey):

"Children imitating cormorants
are even more wonderful
than cormorants."

Perhaps most famous
Japanese haiku has frog
poised to leap in pond.

Here it is with five
syllables in line one then
seven and then five:

"Into the old pond
the young frog jumps and there is
the sound of water."

Throw away the rules
and you get something better.
At least I think so:

"Pond.
Frog.
Splash." -- DL

Comments

[Laura Orem]

I like this very much indeed!

[Emma Trelles]

I love this book; great post!

[Michael Dylan Welch]

Please note that Hass's book attributes the "two autumns" poem to Buson incorrectly. It is actually by Shiki, but was misattributed to Buson by R. H. Blyth more than sixty years ago (in the second volume of his four-volume book titled "Haiku"), an error that was repeated by Harold Henderson and other translators. Blyth corrected himself in his later two-volume book, "A History of Haiku," attributing the poem to Shiki, also providing the anecdote that Shiki wrote the poem for Soseki. Burton Watson's translation (from Columbia University Press) correctly attributes the poem to Shiki, as does a book on Shiki from the Shiki Museum in Matsuyama. Unfortunately, many translators have perpetuated the error that Blyth seems to have started. Bob Hass has told me that he's aware of this problem and will make sure that the poem is removed (reluctantly, he told me, because it's an extraordinary poem) if the book ever goes into a new edition.

[Michael Dylan Welch]

I should also point out that the “two autumns” translation in Hass's book is actually by Hass himself, not Yuki Sawa and Edith M. Shiffert.