Haiku Travels (16): Sogi and Hakone Yumoto

Haiku Travels

Hakone Yumoto

life in this world:

just like taking shelter

from a winter shower

yo ni furu wa / sara ni shigure no / yadori ka na

世にふるはさらに時雨の宿りかな

Sogi

[Hakone Yumoto]

”Shigure" is a shower in late autumn or early winter, a kigo in haiku and frequent term used in poetry. A "shigure" suddenly falls, after the sky starts unexpectedly being cast over, but is usually soon over as well, so you don't have to shelter for a long time. Coming fast and going fast, "sheltering for a winter drizzle" is employed here as an image for the shortness of life. That can be brought out in the translation, for example by adding "as short as" in the second line, but to my feeling making it too explicit takes the poetry away. I prefer to translate it literally.

Hakone Yumoto is the oldest part of Hakone. Already in the Kamakura period its was developed into a spa town - one of the more than twelve in the Hakone area. It lies about 100 meters above sea level at the confluence of the Sukumo and Hayakawa rivers, on the east side of the Hakone mountains. It is also the terminal of the Odakyu Railway from Shinjuku through Odawara. The hot springs here contain few minerals, but are said to be beneficial to nervous ailments, rheumatism and chronic diseases of the digestive organs.

Sounji was founded in 1521 as a mortuary temple to commemorate Hojo Soun (1432-1519), who was one of the greatest lords of his time. The present structures date from the second half of the 18th century. The temple gate stands on the old Tokaido, the rest of the temple sits further back. The plaque with the mountain name of Sounji, "Kintozan" or "Gold Bath Mountain" was written by a Korean ambassador in the middle of the 17th century. The Main Hall has some good paintings of a dragon and a tiger (wrongly) ascribed to Kano Motonobu, but is off-limits to casual visitors. At the back is a small garden, which can be seen from around a corner; it has rock formations in the form of a turtle and crane and also a dry waterfall. Near the garden is the graveyard, with the graves of Soun and four other Hojo lords. The present small size of the temple obscures the fact that in the 16th c. Sounji was one of the largest Zen temples of the Kanto area. Destruction was brought by Hideyoshi, who camped here when attacking the Hojo clan in Odawara in 1590, and the temple never fully recovered.

[The haiku stone with the traveler's "hat"]

The haiku stone (kuhi) stands in front of the Main Hall of Sounji and is carved in a stone shaped like a traveler with a large straw hat. The author, Sogi (1421-1502), was a Buddhist priest and the greatest master of renga, linked verse, of his age. His masterwork in that respect is the renku sequence Minase Sangin (Three Poets at Minase). Born in humble circumstances, he first served as a Zen monk in Kyoto's Shokokuji temple before becoming a renga master in his thirties. Besides renga, he also studied waka in which he received the so-called "Kokin Denju", the initiation into the undisclosed interpretation of the poems in the Kokinshu. In 1488, he became the Chief Poet of the Kitano Shrine Renga Party Organization, which was the highest position a renga poet could strive for. Sogi played a pivotal role in developing the hokku, the first couplet of the renku, which under his hands already resembles what we would call a 'haiku.'

[Gate of Sounji temple]

Sogi died here at Sounji (or rather, another temple that stood here and that was the predecessor of our Sounji) while on his travels, on the 30th day of the 7th month of 1502; there is a small monument to commemorate him, a kuyoto. He continuously traveled around Japan, like Basho after him. In the present haiku, 'passing through the world' can also be translated as 'life in this world' - the reader is meant to notice both these meanings. In other words: life is just as short as a shelter from a brief winter shower. The same sentiment is struck in a waka by Sogi:

people are just dreams
I realize
the dwelling abandoned
the garden shelters
butterflies

The butterflies are of course from the classical Chinese philosophical text Zhuangzi, where the philosopher dreamed he was a butterfly, or was the butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi?

Basho greatly admired Sogi's poetry, as well as his way of life. Of course, the difference between both was that Sogi was a renga master who worked in the classical style, while Basho adopted the haikai style in renga. As a form of homage, Basho borrowed Sogi's hokku to make his own poem:

life in this world:
just like Sogi's
rain shelter

yo ni furu mo | sara-ni Sogi no | yadori kana

Basho basically just changed "shigure" in Sogi", to create a haiku that forms the highest level of praise of the great renga master.

Yumoto is always crammed with tourists, but Sounji, on the Old Tokaido, stands in a quiet spot, although not far from the center of the town. Another interesting temple is nearby Shogenji, associated with the Soga brothers, two tragic heroes who are popular in No and Kabuki. At the west end of the town is a stretch of pavement from the Tokaido (you can hike the whole of the Old Tokaido from Moto Hakone to Hakone Yumoto in about half a day; start in Moto Hakone so you can go down instead of having to climb up - this takes about half a day). Some history of Hakone can, finally, be found in the Hakone Town History Museum (Hakone Choritsu Kyodo Shiryokan), but you'll need some Japanese ability to properly enjoy this. See here for general tourist information about the Hakone area.

Hakone Yumoto is 1.5 hrs from Shinjuku by Odakyu Romance Car; an option is to take the Shinkansen (Kodama) to Odawara (30 min) and then the Hakone Tozan Railway or a bus to Hakone-Yumoto.

[The photos in this post are my own]

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