This world of dew
is a world of dew--
and yet, and yet
Kobayashi Issa's animal poems are memorised by Japanese schoolchildren (who won't encounter Basho and Buson until time has deepened them -- not the poets, who are beyond deepening, but the students, whose bodies may well incorporate the poet's dust as well as words). Issa's life was not without sorrows: his mother died young (young for her and for him), his stepmother was, by all accounts, straight out of a traditional fairy tale, he was financially impoverished, his children predeceased him and his second marriage was a misery (a misery and therefore to misery).
Issa lived from 1763 to 1827 or 8, depending on whom you ask. If you hear about Kobayashi Yataro or Nobuyki (the name his parents gave him), you're hearing about Issa, so it's well to know him by his words and not by name alone. He was born to a farmer in Kashiwabara and studied under a local poet (Shimpo) before moving to Tokyo (which was then Edo) and studying with Mizoguchi Sogan and Norokuan Chikua. He may be a member of the prodigy collection. It's said that he was a child when he wrote
Issa lived from 1763 to 1827 or 8, depending on whom you ask. If you hear about Kobayashi Yataro or Nobuyki (the name his parents gave him), you're hearing about Issa, so it's well to know him by his words and not by name alone. He was born to a farmer in Kashiwabara and studied under a local poet (Shimpo) before moving to Tokyo (which was then Edo) and studying with Mizoguchi Sogan and Norokuan Chikua. He may be a member of the prodigy collection. It's said that he was a child when he wrote
Come play with me,
parentless sparrow.
If Issa had an understandable compassion for the orphaned, he also had an open-eyed appreciation for natural beauty --
Autumn wind --
mountain's shadow
wavers
-- an awareness of inner irony:
All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
killing mosquitoes.
-- and a healthy sense of the wry:
So this is where
I end up living --
five feet of snow.
Where I come from
even flies
bite.
I'm getting ahead of his life. Issa moved to Tokyo when he was fourteen. He may have worked as a clerk in a Buddhist temple, which would have affected his outlook. Certainly, he studied haiku. (For those of you hard-wired to the strictly syllabic translation of haiku -- 5/7/5 -- you might want to close this page. With no ill intention, I am going to offend you.)
He took any job he could find to keep body and soul conjoined until he was accepted by the Kasushika poetry school. Later, he was employed there as a tutor, but the constraints were too narrow and he left. For two years, he travelled. In 1792 changed his name to Issa: a powerful symbolic act in any culture.
He wrote. He acquired a patron, Seibi Natsume and, upon returning to Tokyo, published his first collection. Issa worked in the short form (haiku) and the long (prose). He journeyed around Japan and wrote about his travels. These accounts were published.
His father died at the age of 65 and Issa's step-family disregarded the will. In 1912, Issa returned to his birthplace and his feud with his stepmother and her family. He married. His four children died in infancy. (There's a life in two too-brief sentences.) The poem which opens this entry was written about Issa's daughter. How plaintive: And yet. And yet.
(Yes, he won the contest over the will and inherited his father's lands. I am not having a linear mind.) In 1823, Issa became a widower.
He took any job he could find to keep body and soul conjoined until he was accepted by the Kasushika poetry school. Later, he was employed there as a tutor, but the constraints were too narrow and he left. For two years, he travelled. In 1792 changed his name to Issa: a powerful symbolic act in any culture.
He wrote. He acquired a patron, Seibi Natsume and, upon returning to Tokyo, published his first collection. Issa worked in the short form (haiku) and the long (prose). He journeyed around Japan and wrote about his travels. These accounts were published.
His father died at the age of 65 and Issa's step-family disregarded the will. In 1912, Issa returned to his birthplace and his feud with his stepmother and her family. He married. His four children died in infancy. (There's a life in two too-brief sentences.) The poem which opens this entry was written about Issa's daughter. How plaintive: And yet. And yet.
(Yes, he won the contest over the will and inherited his father's lands. I am not having a linear mind.) In 1823, Issa became a widower.
Issa was not without optimism:
Where there are humans,
you'll find flies
and Buddhas.
For reasons of my own, I am taken with
Cold cold
In the eaves
Evening cidadas and red peppers.
I don't like being cold and cicadas send me into a mindspin, they're so unlikely, peppers joy me in arrays of ways, and the contrast of chill and buzz and pepper-clad heat is all together . . . It's clarity. And that's what haiku should do. A satori moment in seventeen syllables, more or less.
Issa's final child, a daughter who lived, was born shortly after Issa's death. His other progeny include over 20,000 haiku, hundreds of tanka and several works of haibun. They, too, survived.
Issa's final child, a daughter who lived, was born shortly after Issa's death. His other progeny include over 20,000 haiku, hundreds of tanka and several works of haibun. They, too, survived.
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