[Japanophiles] Sample from Mangajin's "The Essence of Modern Haiku"

[Trading Department]

The Essence of
MODERN HAIKU
300 Poems by Seishi Yamaguchi

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橇行や
Kyôkô ya
Journeying by sleigh -

氷下魚の穴に
komai no ana ni
a hole cut for ice fishing

海溢る
umi afuru
brimming with the sea.

Composed 1927.
Recalling Sakhalin. People were fishing through holes in the ice in  
Ôdomari, and I, a middle school student, went to watch.  When a  
sleigh went by, the ice buckled, and water brimmed from one of the  
holes in the ice.

Season Word:  komai, "fish commonly caught under ice." Winter, animals.

Vocabulary:
  • kyôkô is written with kanji for "sleigh" (橇, by itself read  
sori) and "go" for a word meaning "going/traveling by sleigh."   
Though describing an action, it functions as a noun.
  • strictly speaking, komai is the name for a kind of cod, but  
since it's written with kanji meaning "ice" + "under" + "fish," it  
can be thought of as a generic name for any fish that is fished  
through holes in the ice.
  • afuru is the classical form of modern afureru, "overflow/brim  
over/flood."  The last line is equivalent to umi ga afureru in modern  
Japanese, "the sea brims over."

Published by Mangajin, only a few dozen copies remain in print.   
Translated by Takashi Kodaira and Alfred H. Marks

A book of poetry from Mangajin. Breaking free from centuries of  
poetry limited to nature themes, the late Seishi Yamaguchi added  
modern touches while retaining the elegant beauty of the classics.  
Presented in both the original Japanese and in English translation,  
this collection has appeal for students of Japanese language and  
culture as well as haiku lovers everywhere.

Yamaguchi Seishi is a poet who broke like a cyclone on the world of  
the new haiku founded by Shiki and Kyoshi. That fact has been made  
abundantly clear by the authors of this book. His subjects are fresh.  
His style is organized and plastic. The feeling of his poetic  
expression is above all modern. For these reasons, lovers of haiku  
and lovers of art everywhere would find themselves in tune with  
Seishi's haiku.

n 1988 Fujiwara Noboru published A Selection from the Poems of  
Seishi, which introduced 88 poems, with the poet's notes, in English  
translation. We are now given 300 of the poems in English, all  
selected and annotated by the poet — valuable aids in the  
comprehension of the poems, needless to say.

Of course, the two distinguishing features of the haiku are its  
brevity and the tight music of its seventeen sounds. A little longer  
and it becomes verbose; a little shorter and it loses its rhythm.

Consequently, the principal problem of translating haiku comes down  
to a matter of the paucity of vowels, and thus syllables, in the  
English word. When one attempts to translate into seventeen English  
syllables, one is apt to be forced to conflate the meaning of the  
Japanese

R. H. Blyth has suggested a meter of alternating feet in a 2-3-2  
rhythm, which seems to satisfy the rhythmic requirements of speakers  
of English. Poets in Europe and the United States, however, often  
compose in syllabic patterns close to those of the Japanese, and even  
the renowned English poet James Kirkup goes on writing poems with the  
5-7-5 beat.

Let us remember, too, that nowadays musicians in Europe and the  
United States are being drawn to the subtle rhythms of gagaku and the  
shakuhachi.

With all this in mind, the translation of haiku into English poems of  
seventeen syllables might be said to have a startlingly new quality.

Thus the work of Kodaira Takashi and Alfred H. Marks seems to me to  
have been very successful. The translation of the poems and of the  
annotations is faithful, and the rhythmic quality is sensitively  
reproduced.

Thanks to this book, therefore, the poems of Yamaguchi Seishi of  
which Japanese are so proud can be properly appreciated abroad. I  
anticipate that this will do much for the understanding of haiku in  
general.



UCHIDA SONO
President, Haiku International Association


AVAILABLE AT ROLOMAIL.COM
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"A wonderful book! For the first time western haiku poets have a  
chance to read, study, and savor a comprehensive collection of haiku  
by a major Japanese poet..." — Elizabeth Searle Lamb, Former Editor,  
Frogpond

"Seishi [is] the foremost elder haiku poet now writing..." — James  
Kirkup, President, British Haiku Society

"For any serious student of haiku, this is an invaluable text." — L.  
A. Davidson, Charter Member, Haiku Society of America

"... gives us some of the best poems written in any verse form." —  
Makoto Ueda, Dept. of Asian Languages, Stanford University

TAKASHI KODAIRA is professor of American Literature at Yokohama City  
University in Japan.

ALFRED H. MARKS is professor emeritus of English at the State  
University of New York at New Paltz.
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