Haiku Travels
Shodo Island (Kagawa)
nothing to put it in
I receive with both hands
iremono ga nai / ryote de ukeru
いれものがない両手でうける
Hosai
[Angel Road, Shodoshima]
Shodoshima is a beautiful island of about 153 square kilometers (59 square miles) in the Seto Inland Sea, lying west of the larger Awaji Island and right between Kagawa prefecture on Shikoku and the eastern part of Okayama prefecture. It has a population of about 28,000 and is connected by ferries to Takamatsu, Himeji and Okayama, as well as (with lesser frequency) Osaka and Kobe.
Shodoshima is known as the setting for the novel Twenty-four Eyes (Nijuyon no hitomi) by Tsuboi Sakae - who was born on Shodoshima -, and its (more famous) film adaptation by director Kinoshita Keisuke. Set between 1928 and 1946, it is the chronicle of a teacher's dedication to her students, her profession
and her values, which she tries to maintain in the face of an
increasingly aggressive militaristic government. Free from a contrived plot, the film reflects life with great fidelity and shows how ideals are shattered and compromised. The film was shot on location and has Takamine Hideko in the main role of the teacher..
Something else the island is today well-known for are its olives, a tree not native to Japan. The first imported olive trees were planted in Kobe in 1878 for obtaining olive oil, but for various reasons (such as the expansion of the city) Kobe's Olive Garden which originally counted 3,000 trees, finally shut down in 1908. After that, olive trees were planted on several other locations in (mainly) western Japan, and from 1910 on Shodo Island became the major cultivation area - so much that it even has earned the name "Olive Island." Olives are now a popular tourist item, but Shodo Island also has a more traditional product in its soy sauce.
There is also a mini-course of the Shikoku Pilgrimage which attracts white-clad pilgrims and some great scenery at the coast (the Angel Road sandbar) as well as the famous Kankakei Gorge with its maple trees. And finally, Shodo Island was also where the haiku poet Hosai lived in the mid-1920s...
[Kankakei Gorge, Shodoshima]
Ozaki Hosai (1885-1926) was born in Tottori and although he first worked as an insurance executive (with a law degree from the University of Tokyo), at a young age became interested in haiku. His great example and later also mentor was the pioneer of free verse style haiku, Ogiwara Seisensui, who rejected the seventeen-syllable form and seasonal themes. Hosai worked in the insurance business in Tokyo and Osaka between 1911 and 1922, and then tried to find a job in the same field in Korea and Manchuria, but failed, also due to his heavy drinking. In 1923 he joined a nonsectarian religious commune in Kyoto, but could not cope with the monastic regime due to his physical frailty. After that he stayed at various Buddhist temples, as Sumadera in Kobe and Jokoin in Obama (Fukui prefecture). His last refuge was the Nangoan hermitage of Saikoji temple on Shodoshima - he was allowed to stay here thanks to the introduction of his haiku teacher Seisensui. Here he mainly composed haiku, besides reading the scriptures and offering candles to the Buddha. He lived extremely frugally on a diet of toasted rice and water, subsisting on the alms received from pilgrims, who mainly came by in the spring. He died in April 1926, only aged 41. His haiku and prose writings were posthumously published by Seisensui under the tile Daiku, "The Big Sky." Today, Hosai is regarded as one of the great free verse haiku poets and he is often coupled with Taneda Santoka, likewise a drinker and mendicant Zen priest. Hosai's colloquial haiku are permeated with loneliness, but also a sharp observation of everyday objects, which catches the essence of things.
The above haiku is extremely simple, but also a deep expression of Buddhist humility: lacking the customary begging bowl, the poet gratefully receives the alms offered to him in both hands. There is nothing that doesn't fit in your hands - even the world fits in them.
[Hosai's Nangoan hermitage now houses a small literature museum dedicated to him, the "Shodoshima Ozaki Hosai Kinenkan." In neighboring Saikoji is the poet's grave]
Information about Hosai gleaned from Right under the big sky, I don't wear a hat by Hiroaki Sato, Stone Bridge Press, 1993
[Photos in this post all via Wikipedia]