Shiki: Sickbed Snowfall

Four haiku

translated by Ad Blankestijn

it is snowing!
I see it through a hole
in the paper door

yuki furu yo | shoji no ana o | mite areba

雪ふるよ障子の穴を見てあれば

again and again
I ask how deep
the snow has gotten

ikutabi mo | yuki no fukasa o | tazunekeri

いくたびも雪の深さを訊ねけり

all I can think of
is that I am lying
in a house in the snow

yuki no ie ni | nete iru to omou | bakari nite

雪の家に寢て居ると思ふばかりにて

open the paper doors
let me take a look at
the snow of Ueno

shoji akeyo | Ueno no yuki o | hitome min

障子明けよ上野の雪を一目見ん

[Shiki, by Nakamura Fusetsu]

Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) in his short life single-handedly brought the genres of haiku and tanka into modern age. He wrote 20,000 haiku and is regarded is one of the Great Four, together with Basho, Buson and Issa. Shiki was born in Matsuyama, but later moved to Tokyo. Shiki turned haiku into a legitimate literary genre and argued that haiku should be judged by the same yardstick that is used when measuring the value of other forms of literature — something that was contrary to views held by prior haiku practitioners. His particular style rejected "the puns or fantasies often relied on by the old school" in favor of "realistic observation of nature". Like other Meiji period writers, Shiki was influenced by the dedication to realism in Western literature.

Shiki's achievements are all the more remarkable considering that he suffered from tuberculosis much of his life. In 1888 / 1889 he began coughing up blood and soon adopted the pen-name "Shiki" from the Japanese "hototogisu", the lesser cuckoo, as it was thought that this bird coughs blood as it sings. Shiki's early tuberculosis worsened after he went to China as a war correspondent in 1895. He continued to cough blood throughout his return voyage to Japan and was hospitalized in Kobe (read the haiku he wrote while recovering in Suma).

[Shiki, self-portrait]

After being discharged, he returned to his home town Matsuyama and convalesced in the home of the famed novelist Natsume Soseki. During this time he took on disciples and promulgated a style of haiku that emphasized gaining inspiration from personal experiences of nature. In 1897 a member of his group established a haiku magazine which was called Hototogisu after Shiki's pen name - a magazine which today still is going strong.

In Tokyo Shiki worked as haiku editor for the newspaper Nippon. Bedridden by 1897, Shiki's disease worsened further around 1901. He developed Pott's disease and began using morphine as a painkiller. During this time Shiki wrote diaries and other autobiographical works, as Bokuju itteki, "A drop of ink," and Byosho rokushaku, "The 6 foot long sickbed." He died of tuberculosis in 1902 at age 34.

Snow was something special for Shiki as in his native Matsuyama it rarely snowed, so he is as excited as a child about the white world he can see from his sickbed.

Translations and studies:
Masaoka Shiki, Selected Poems, by Burton Watson (Columbia U.P.);
The Winter Sun Shines in: A Life of Masaoka Shiki, by Donald Keene (Columbia U.P.);
Masaoka Shiki: His Life and Works, by Janine Beichman (Kodansha International);
Masaoka, Shiki, Songs from a Bamboo Village: Selected Tanka from Take no Sato Uta, translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda, Tuttle, 1998
If Someone Asks..., Masaoka Shiki's Life and Haiku, Matsuyama Municipal Shiki-Kinen Museum.
e-texts of Shiki's works (Japanese) at Aozora bunko
In Matsuyama is an interesting Shiki Memorial Museum,

Photos: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Japanese Poetry Index