Haru – Spring

Haru, 春 is the Japanese word for Spring.

It is everyone’s favorite season. The willow trees are turning green, the cherry trees blossom, and the birds sing their joyful songs. Let us compare several Spring haiku written decades apart.

**Spring budding, 春のつぼみ, harunotsubomi**

Haru kaze, 春風

First, 1668, the poet, simply known as Matsuo Munefusa, age 24.

春風に吹き出し笑ふ花もがな
haru kaze ni / fukidashi warau / hana mogana
A Spring breeze is blowing
I’m bursting with laughter
— wishing for flowers
Matsuo Basho, Spring, 1668

Next, Matsuo Basho, now three decades old, has changed from a joyous expectation to a mournful recognition of the passing seasons. Names must have been on his mind. In 1680, he was known as Tosei, the unripe peach. By now, 1684, he had gained a following in Edo. He had moved from the city-center to the more rural Fukagawa District, taken up residence in a simple cottage. A banana plant (Basho) was given to him as a housewarming gift, and this was the inspiration for his new name Matsuo Basho.

春なれや名もなき山の薄霞
haru nare ya / na mo naki yama no / usugasumi
Is it already Spring?
In these nameless mountains
And misty haze
Matsuo Basho, Nozarashi kikō, Spring, 1685

I have included the following (undated) haiku because it speaks of sakura, cherry blossoms, the one true sign of Spring. In Edo (Tokyo), Basho often went to the temple grounds of both Ueno and Asakusa to enjoy the cherry blossoms. Likewise, around Japan and on Lake Biwa there are spectacular displays of the popular spring blossom.

春の夜は桜に明けてしまひけり
haru no yo wa / sakura ni akete / shimai keri
This Spring Night
Ending with dawn
And cherry blossoms
Matsuo Basho, Spring, date unknown

Harusame, 春雨

The following haiku reminds one of Henry Wordsworth Longfellow’s “Into each life some rain must fall.”

Spring 1694, Matsuo Basho, now 51 years old, has returned to his cottage in the Fukagawa District in Edo. Basho wonders what he has to look forward to. Little does he know, it is his last spring. Matsuo Basho will die in November of 1694.

春雨や蜂の巣つたふ屋根の漏り
harusame ya / hachi no su tsutau / yane no mori
Spring rain
Dripping from a wasp nest
And a leaky roof
Matsuo Basho, Spring, 1694

Ukuraina ni heiwa o

The world over one experiences Spring with reverence, with hope for new beginnings, for peace the world over.

For Peace in Ukraine.

ウクライナに平和を.

Birds, busily singing
When, the sun, gloriously rising,
Ah, then, suddenly silent
Bashō no yōna, March, 2022

Bird and Cherry Blossom, III, Hiroshige, 八重桜に鳥, 広重

Our two lives – inochi ni

Lake Biwa, Shiga Province, Spring 1685

For millions of Japanese, the annual cherry blossom viewing is a time of surprise and delight. After an absence of 20 years, Matsuo Basho came across his friend and disciple, Hattori Dohō (服部土芳), and composed this haiku.

Our two lives coming together at Cherry Blossom time!

Inochi Futatsu no Naka ni Ikitaru Sakura kana

命二つの中に生きたる桜かな

Hattori Dohō

Hattori Dohō (服部土芳) was younger than Basho by a dozen years. After Basho’s death, Dohō composed Sanzōshi, Three Books, ca. 1702, a poetic treatise on Bashō’s haikai. Haikai meaning the linked verse, commentary, and poetry that Basho popularized.

Haiku came to mean standalone poems. Haibun came to mean multiple verses.

In one of his haibun, Bashō states, “Only when one identifies with the feelings of the things in nature and can express them in words, only then is he a master of poetry.”

Our two lives, inochi ni, is a wistful recollection of a friend.

In this haiku, Basho combines the two lives, his and Dohō’s, from inochi 命 life, to be alive, plus futatsu 二 two. These lives separated by time and place come together at Lake Biwa during sakura 桜 cherry blossom festival . Basho adds the kireji, the cutting word in the double kana, かな, expressing the joy of meeting such a friend.

On the subject of separate lives

Our two separate lives, as Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin put it bluntly in a song from 1985, is a sadder version about the separation of former lovers. Cher gave us a similar sentiment in 1988, “… sooner or later we all sleep alone.”

Until then, enjoy the cherry blossoms. Sakura kana!

Read about the entire journey in Donald Keene’s translation of Journey of 1684.

The Karasaki pine tree – Karasaki no matsu

The Karasaki pine tree is mistier than the cherry blossoms

Karasaki no matsu/ wa hana yori/ oboro nite

辛崎の松は花より朧にて

Karasaki Pine Tree

“The Karasaki Pine Tree (Karasaki no matsu) stands on a walled esplanade in Karasaki village, 5 MN of Otsu near the steamer landing. Its 300 or more immense horizontal boughs, upheld by wood crutches or stone pillars, curve awkwardly, and at the top – 25 ft or more from the ground – tin and wood copings have been placed as a protection against the weather. These arms, some of which measure 200 odd ft. from point to point, reach out like those of a gigantic and repulsive spider, and are almost bare of foliage.”
– Terry’s Japanese Empire, T. Philip Terry, 1914

In the eighth moon of 1684, Matsuo Basho left Edo to visit his birthplace in Ueno. The occasion was the death of his mother in 1683. As journeys go, this one involved many stops and visits along the way. Previously, we left Basho on the path from Kyoto to Otsu, on Lake Biwa. On the mountain path, Basho discovered a violet growing in the grass, and took the occasion to write a haiku.

Now he was nearing Lake Biwa.

Descending from his mountain path to the lake, he views Otsu and its well-known pine tree in the distant mist. The ancient horizontal limbs are supported by pillars. Otsu also offers many sublime cherry blossom trees for viewing. For practical reasons, Basho found the pine tree more to his liking. Or maybe he just found it a bit hazier or mistier, oboro 朧, if he arrived in the early foggy April morning.

Meaning of the poem

The meaning of the haiku is itself obscure on its face.

Likely, Basho is making a reference to the poem by Prince Konoe Masaie (1444-1505).

In the night rain its green fades
Serene in the evening breeze
Stands the pine tree
Of Karasaki.
— Prince Konoe Masaie (1444-1505)

That however does not explain the mention of the cherry blossoms.

There is a well-known idiom, hana yori dango, which translates as preferring dumplings over flowers. This also means to prefer the practical over the beautiful. A secondary meaning is that viewers of the cherry blossoms prefer the wine and food over the blossoms themselves. A pine tree, it seems to me is more practical than a cherry blossom. It provides protection from the elements and material for building.

Like California’s Sequoia’s the Karasaki pine tree is ancient. Even in Basho’s day, it was believed to be one thousand years old. A new pine tree has since been planted from a cutting of the old Karasaki pine tree.

For reference, see: Basho’s Journal of 1684, translated by Donald Keene (page 143)

old pine of karasaki — **old pine of Karasaki**

Saddle my horse, uma ni kura

The Dutch too are coming,
To see the flowers blossom,
Saddle my horse

阿蘭陀も花に来にけり馬に鞍

Oranda mo/ hana ni ki ni keri/ uma ni kura

A Close Encounter of a Dutch Kind

In a closed society (sakoku, 鎖国), as Japan was, strangers would elicit a curious look.

The Dutch with their bearded faces and yellow hair would have been doubly strange to the Japanese. Not quite a close encounter of a third kind, but alien no less.

Since 1633, the Shogun in Edo had banned foreigners from entering Japan and Japanese from traveling abroad. Only the Dutch were permitted a trading post in Nagasaki harbor on the small island of Deshima (Dejima). The island was ” 82 ordinary steps in width and 236 in length through the middle,” according to Engelbert Kaempfer who spent two years there with the Dutch East India Company. The Japanese were still curious about western ways and each spring, the Dutch brought tribute to the Shōgun in Edo, bringing news of the world and bearing gifts: weapons, clocks, telescopes, medicines and rare animals.

It must have been quite a spectacle.

[From Engelbert Kaempfer: The History of Japan (1727), based on observations made between 1690 and 1692 with the Dutch East India Company. Image Wikipedia.]

Hanami

The Dutch trip to Edo occurred in April when Japan was in the midst of its Hanami festival (花見, flower viewing festival). We associate this festival with the well-known cherry blossoms (桜 sakura), but they would have also included flowering plum.

Notes on translation

阿蘭陀 Oranda, Holland, The Dutch
も mo, too, also
花 hana, flower
馬に鞍, uma ni kura, saddle my horse, literally put the saddle on my horse

Important Sources

Matsuo Basho – WKD Archives
Cherry Blossom Epiphany, page 145
Dutch Encounters, excerpt from Kaempfer’s observations

Do cherry blossoms wonder

I remember many, many things,
do cherry blossoms,
I wonder?

さまざまの事おもひ出す櫻かな

Samazama no koto omoidasu sakura kana

Sakura matsuri

In Japan, in late March and early April, they celebrate the Sakura matsuri, or cherry blossom festival.

All eyes will be on the light pink florets as they fill the city sidewalks, public parks, and temple gardens with quivering bursts of color in the gentle breeze of early spring. Picnicking under the blossoms is an ancient tradition. Then, all too soon, the petals begin to fall, and the scene becomes a distant memory.

One explanation of Basho’s haiku is that he is recalling that he abandoned the way of samurai and decided to live the way of haiku. Or simply that cherry blossoms encourage random thoughts.

Memories

さまざまのこと思い出す桜かな
Samazama no koto omoidasu sakura ka na

The sibilant repetition of the “s” and “z” sounds (samazama, omoidasu, sakura). The repeated consonants of “k” (koto, sakura, kana) produce a melodic sound to Basho’s phrase. “Do you remember many things?” is today’s colloquial understanding of the phrase. A more literal translation is, “Various things, they call to mind, ah, cherry blossoms!”

Notes on translation

さまざま samazama, various, many, many
事 koto, thing, matter
櫻 sakura, cherry blossoms
かな kana, I wonder