Reading Haiku from a Haiku History and Communication Perspective
In the previous article , I discussed haiku created by AI. This time, I would like to discuss the relationship between haiku and communication.
History of Haiku
Haiku has its roots in renga. In renga, a number of renshu (people who attend renga and renku gatherings and recite together) take turns reading the first (575) and last (77) verses of a 31-character waka poem to each other and compose 100 verses.
For example, in 1582, Akechi Mitsuhide, a sengoku bshyo who built Tamba-Sasayama Castle and was mentioned in “Kaido yuku – The Tamba-Sasayama Road,” recited the poem “Toki wa ame ga shitaaru mayuki kana(It’s May and it’s raining all the time)” as the “first syllable” (the first five-seven-five syllables) of a renga poem at Itokuin Temple on Atagoyama. Since this renga performance took place just before the Honnoji Incident, the above phrase has been speculated to be an indication of his determination to rebel.
It is said that renga was started by aristocrats composing waka poems during the Heian period (794-1185) as a form of entertainment for private occasions. In the Muromachi period (1333-1573), renga was regarded as a formal public form of poetry and became closely related to politics. Many military commanders, such as Akechi Mitsuhide, Mori Motonari as described in “Kaido yuku – Geibi no Michi” and Takeda Shingen as described in “Kaido yuku – Koshu kaido“, composed renga before battles to pray for victory, and dedicated the poems to shrines. Since renga was performed by several people over a long period of time, it also served as a valuable political information tool, for example, to find out what was going on in the center of the country (Kyoto).
As renga became established as a high form of public renga, the number of rules and manners for reciting poems increased. In contrast, “haikai renga” became popular among common people who thought that “there should be a freer and more interesting way to compose poems. Haikai” is a word that expresses comicality and humor, and haikai renga is a poem that has a more playful and folkloric style with laughter as its core. Throughout the Edo period, haikai became popular not only among people of high rank but also among townspeople and farmers, and spread in a secular manner different from the original renga, which came to be called “haikai.
In the early Edo period (around 1680), the haikai poet Matsuo Basho appeared, whose works are described in “Strolling along the Highway in Akita, Matsuo Basho, Sugae Masumi, and Ningyo Dosojin” etc. Matsuo sublimated haikai, which had been based on humor, into a high quality literary art. Basho’s unique philosophy of “sabi” (loneliness) and “shiori” (delicate lingering emotion), and his compositions of the beauty of nature and the sorrows of life in silence, such as “Kankasasa ya iwa ni shimiiru semi no koe” (quietness and the voice of cicadas penetrating rocks), are known as “correct style in a haiku” which respects the ethereal and tranquil, and is still considered one of the principles of haiku today. In the Edo period (1603-1868), there were many haiku poets who admired Basho and pursued haikai, such as Buson Yosa, whose haikai poem “Toba-dono e furoku-ki ni nosugi nosogi (A rider rushes to Toba-dono)” and Issa Kobayashi, who wrote “Come with me and play, parentless sparrow.
Especially in the late Edo period, haikai, which had spread mainly in urban areas, penetrated to Noe village, and Kobayashi Issa appeared as if to symbolize this. Kobayashi Issa was a haiku poet from a peasant background, which was rare in those days, and his poems about the sorrows of life behind the humor gained popularity.
In the Meiji period (1868-1912), there was another major change in poetry. Shiki Masaoka, a newspaper employee at the time, criticized the common haikai style of haikai performances and haiku gatherings, writing that it was “gekinami-shiki,” and he made only the first five-seven-five-seven haikai independent from the five-seven-five-seven haikai. Masaoka Shiki declared that the essence of haiku lies in the small, everyday realities that until then had not been considered beautiful in Japanese poetry, and that if one writes about what he or she sees, touches, and is moved by, it will become literature as it is.
After Shiki’s commentary, the term “haiku” came into common use and the modern “haiku” was born. Shiki called realistic haiku “sketching,” and brought the terminology of art into haiku and made haiku a new form of literature. The bell tolls when I eat a persimmon at Horyu-ji Temple.
Shiki’s haiku theory was innovative, interweaving Western thought, and particularly attracted young haiku poets, among whom were such writers as Kyoshi Takahama, “The speed of the flowing daikon leaves,” Hekigoto Kawahashi, “Red camellia, white camellia, and falling down,” Kusatao Nakamura, “The stone cliff at Yuzakura Castle is dark,” and Hago Ishida, “Onnai to obi maki iru hyakkaiben,” among others.
Later, the “free form haiku” school of haiku emerged, which advocated a freer style of expression unrestricted by the 575 syllables and seasonal themes of haiku, such as “Coughing, but alone” by Ozaki Houya and “Aoi Yama (Blue Mountain)” by Taneda Yamatoka.
Haiku Reading and Communication
Unlike novels, in which a single person creates his or her own worldview, haiku, which originally originated as renga, has many elements that are based on collaborative work.
In other words, haiku content is meant to be “read. The way haiku are read by an unspecified number of “readers” influences the “way” of writing haiku, which is based on the assumption that readers exist. On the other hand, changes and variations in the “way of writing” also expand and transform the “way of reading” on the part of the readers. Based on this view of haiku, it can be interpreted as a paradigm shift that has occurred recursively, i.e., the mode of “how to read” has been shifting in a way that reflects on itself.
Such views differ from person to person, and there is no absolute truth to them. Rather, it is precisely because of such differences that communication occurs, and we come to feel the breadth of haiku reading.
In haiku, sound and rhythm, or rhyme, are considered to be the most fundamental elements. To put it provocatively, haiku is a game in which the words are arranged according to the number of syllables (about 17 syllables). And the important thing is that the 17 syllables are not in a flimsy stick form, but can be somehow sliced into three parts: 5/7/5.
In fact, as a terminology, the first five notes are called “Kamigo,” the middle seven are called “Nakashichi,” and the last five are called “Shimogo-go. This name can be varied according to the number of notes, for example, if the center is eight notes, it may be conventionally called “middle eight” and if the end is six notes, “lower six”.
As these terms are used, the fact that haiku are divided into three parts of five-seven-five works very important for prosody. This is because the subtle pauses between the upper five and middle seven, and between the middle seven and lower five in a sequence of 17 syllables, the blank spaces that are like glue or folds, define the rhythm of the haiku.
The sound of water as a frog jumps into an old pond Matsuo Basho
When Basho’s haiku, which are assumed to be the most universal among Japanese speakers today, are read aloud, even those who are not familiar with haiku usually find a rest between the top five lines (koikeya) and the middle seven (frogs jump in), and a light pause between the middle seven and the bottom five lines (mizu no otto). Moreover, the pause in the former is slightly longer than the pause in the latter.
These unconscious rhythms and inflections make the mere bar-shaped 17 syllables into a rhyme scheme full of ups and downs. The reason why many beginning haiku students tend to write haiku in a “split-stroke” style, inserting a space between the upper seven, middle seven, and lower five syllables, is that they have, in a sense, “faithfully” followed this unconscious rhythm. The de facto standard is to not use spacing unless it is conscious.
A pause leads to some change in consciousness there. The most amenable and conscious mechanism in the structure of haiku is the “break. Many of the primitive “breaks” are triggered by a rhythmic break (also called a “haiku break”), which can lead to a break in the meaning of the haiku.
There are also “kiriji” (cut characters) associated with “kiri. Typical examples are “ya,” “kana,” and “keri,” which clearly suggest the writer’s awareness of the ugliness of the composition.
Kiri-hitoha (paulownia leaves) fall while being exposed to the sun, Kyoshi Takahama
Kyoshi’s haiku is an exclamation on the verb “to fall. The subject’s consciousness is drawn to the scene of a large paulownia leaf falling. That is why the description “while the sun shines” and the slow rhyme scheme are so effective, and we even feel the illusion that the moment of falling leaves is stretched out as if in slow motion.
Season words” contribute to make a haiku of about 17 syllables three-dimensional and full of ups and downs. Seasonal words are key words that allow the writer and the reader to share at least a serpentine image from various aspects such as seasonality, geography, scene setting, and sentiment.
The importance of seasonal words in haiku is not a logical inevitability, but they still effectively suggest the circumstances, feelings, and interests surrounding the subject of the haiku within a short number of syllables. In general, the fact that most haiku contain only a single season word, and that many haiku poets and readers avoid “seasonless haiku,” which contain no season words, and “season overlapping haiku,” which contain overlapping season words, are inextricably linked by the incentive to avoid an excess or deficiency in information content.
Haiku is the accumulation of the “deeds” of people who have struggled with the formality of its unusual brevity, who have played with the formality, and who have tried to put the formality in their perspective.
As stated in “About Communication” communication refers to the process and methods by which people exchange information, opinions, and feelings, and understand each other through various methods, and communication is an important element in forming and deepening human relationships. In addition, “What is the goal of philosophy?” from the special lecture “Socrates’ Defense” it is said that philosophy is to create a concept that people can share and recognize through this communication, and to create this common understanding, one should not start from an abstract concept, To create this common understanding, one should not start with an abstract concept, but rather, one should match the phenomena that each communicating individual is experiencing in reality.
The thoughts and feelings expressed in haiku are abstract strings of words, but by applying seasonal words and other restrictions to these words, they are made into a form that can be shared by many people. Haiku is a form of haiku that can be shared by many people.
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