Haiku and Happiness - - - Happiness and Haiku: July 2000

7/30/2000

Haiku Theory Archives

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Contents of my HAIKU THEORY archives

My advise for starters

keep the three lines : short long short
use one season word (kigo)
use one cut marker (kireji)

Write about a personal experience, not a philosophical thought or idea.
Try to pay attention to the small things in life with all their details,
the seasonal changes of your daily human life.
Every moment of your life counts!
Be Here and Now !

7/29/2000

Basics of Composing Haiku

Haiku Theory Archives / INDEX is HERE !

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The Basics of Composing Haiku

First,
Read the Basics of Composing Haiku
by Susumu Takiguchi, Chairman of the World Haiku Club

My Musings on the Essence of Haiku

Once a frog jumped into an old pond and there was a little sound ... that is all what Basho told us about this (not so special) moment

but thus, it is the basics of Japanese HAIKU.

It is very different from the concept of Poetry we have in the West (living in both cultures, I had to learn the hard way).
No unnecessary decoration, no special vocabulary, no forced juxtaposition, no poetic circumlocation, no heavyhanded philosopical implications.
Just three simple lines, telling us what happened there, right now ... and then some, of course!

To catch that special moment, when you are moved beyond words, and yet convey your awe in words. To say the un-sayable, to express the whole universe in a tiny ant ...

Let nature speak through you in her own language, do not impose yourself on nature with your poetic words.

My Archery Sensei used to say:
If you shoot from your own center (hara), you will hit the target in the center!

It is a great challenge to write my haiku in Japanese language, trying to forget all I learned in grammar school, de-programming the whole of my Western philosophical and logical mind, throw all the concepts out and
... and then jump in the pond of haiku !

For me, it is well worth the effort !

Gabi

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Gabi san, you have showed me the spirit of Haiku.

ガビ蛙俳句の池へ理屈抜き
gabi gaeru haiku no ike e rikutsu nuki

Gabi frog
jump into haiku pond
without logic

Sakuo Nakamura
October 2006, Happy Haiku Forum, #3544

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This is just a simple observation, or not?

after the rain -
clouds chasing clouds
in the autumn sky

For those not so familiar with the Japanese symbolism I am referring to, try to substitute

"thoughts" for "clouds" and
"mind" for "sky" .

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quiet spring day -
the lake a mirror
but aaaa, the clouds !

To get to the Japanese meaning of this one, .. click HERE !

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Takahama Kyoshi stressed the importance of scetching from nature (shasei and kachoo fuuei 花鳥諷詠), but behind any simple sketch there should be the real feeling of a human being, feeling that this person can not express otherwise because of social restraints, but he can clothe it in a haiku ...

My thoughts on SHASEI, scetching from nature

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MA, 間 the Empty Space

Tosa Mitsuoki (1617 - 1691) wrote regarding the use of empty space in regards to painting:

"Do not fill up the whole picture with lines; also apply colors with a light touch. Some imperfection in design is desirable. You should not fill in more than one third of the background. Just as you would if you were writing poetry, take care to hold something back. The viewer, too, must bring something into it. If one includes some empty space along with an image, then the mind will fill it in."

MA is a most important something in Japanese art, and even in Japanese daily life, even nowadays. I once knew a foreighner, who could speak the language perfectly BUT could not insert the necessary MA when it is time to pause and give your partner a time to nodd and make his aizuchi, hmmm, aaaa remarks. Thus each of his dialogs was spoiled soon and ended in a monolog.

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When your haiku is finished:
(some advise from my haiku sensei Michiko in Kamakura)

Ask yourself:
Did I do my best? Or can I do a bit better?
If this was my last haiku to write in this world, would I be proud to leave it as my legacy?
Can any reader, who has not experienced this situation with me, understand what I want to convey? Did I get the meaning right and expressed what I wanted to say clear enough?
Is it not toooo cryptic and ambiguous to be understood properly? (In case it is tooo cryptic, keep it in your private haiku diary for a later re-write.) My German way of thinking had to be re-programmed quite often.

so the facit here is:
Do not write with a special audience in mind,
but write in a way that any reader will understand what you are trying to say.

This leads to the next important point:

Do NOT ask yourself:
Will the reader say WHOW? or rather SO WHAT?
After all, you thought it worth to be a haiku and wrote it carefully in an understandable way. You know, the tastes of readers are manifold. Some like cats and others like dogs.
It is like the pebbles on a beach, some pick up this one and some another one.

I often get varying comments, one saying, what a dumb haiku, the next saying: How great a haiku!

Do NOT say to yourself:
I want to write a haiku to be published in "XYZ Haiku Magazin" or a haiku to win the XYZ contest!
Read my advise about NOT writing haiku to get good points ! (tentori haiku)

Different people of course give different advise on polishing a haiku:
Polishing a haiku after writing it down

In a different context, Noguchi Sensei says:

Quietening the heart, ridding yourself of anxiety, casting out categories of what pleases and displeases, of likes and dislikes, and not thinking in categories of "what is valuable" ..
These judgements cling to the very depth of your heart and prevent you from a full life experience.
The Way to a Whole Life

Judgement, duality, yin and yang and haiku

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QUOTE

winter wind —
a cradlesong sung
in an ancient tongue

Billie Wilson

Haiku is a poetry not of the mind or invention, but of experience. When the subject of a haiku involves a major human emotion such as love, it is the writer’s challenge not to overwhelm the poem. Haiku writing is a way of seeing the world and expressing an insight in a manner as unadorned by the poet’s opinion as possible.

Death, grief, and love are certainly parts of life and as such are subjects for haiku. But what is love? The ancient Greeks used three words for love: eros, agape, and philia. Eros as love should be obvious. Agape was used by early Christians more specifically than “altruism” alone. The word came to mean love of God, or God’s love. In addition to “brotherly” love, Aristotle described philia as showing love by a parent. It is this most basic perhaps original bond among humans that Billie Wilson has indicated to the reader.

Paul MacNeil in
The Heron's Nest, Winter 2006

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Suggested reading

The Haiku Habit, by Jeanne Emrich
in the WKD Library

Guidelines for editing your own haiku, by Lee Gurga
in the WKD Library

Haiku: A Poet's Guide , by Lee Gurga

Traditional Japanese Haiku School
Susumu Takiguchi

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Japanese haiku poets are usually a member of a local haiku club, they are proud of their sensei and write in the tradition of this school, with respect to the Asian poetry culture ... all the way back to China.
(The internet lately provides some changes ...)

In a non-Japanese environment the position of haiku seems different. It falls into a vacuum, since the general categories of Western poetry and lyric did not provide for such a short form. Most haiku poets do not have a personal teacher and use online workshops, where anyone can post an opinion ... and the poor poet has to decide which is qualified and which is not!

Since short is easy, anyone can write three lines of something, declare it HAIKU and here we are ... ! It suits the Western idea of individualism very well.
Sometimes I feel poets are parading their haiku dog, telling everyone "This is my cat."
If you have never seen a real cat (appreciated haiku in the Japanese language), you might tend to believe him / her.

Cross-cultural take-over comes at a prize.

October 2007

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To be added as we go !

BACK TO
Read my Archives about Haiku Theory

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7/26/2000

Translating Haiku Forum

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Translating Haiku

Memos of the Yahoo Forum, founded in April 2006

My experience in the translation business goes back more than 40 years, working as a medical doctor/translator in research programs for the WHO, University of Heidelberg.
Later I studied Far Eastern Art and began to translate texts about Japanese Buddhist Art.

I am born German and live in Japan since 1977. I work as professional translator for scientific and HiTech texts and do cultural translations for my pleasure.

I do not consider myself a poet and translating haiku is rather new to me. Since neither Japanese nor English is my mother tongue, it is indeed quite difficult for me to find the right words.

I will nevertheless try to assist as best as I can to help you understand Japanese Haiku. Apart from the pure language problems, there is a lot about the culture that you might not know and I can provide "footnotes" for this kind of missing knowledge, I hope.

Gabi Greve, GokuRakuAn, Japan
Languages: German, English, Japanese (a bit of French and Latin)

In the translation forum
let us just try to understand the original and present it to the readers who do not speak Japanese (or any other original language for that matter) as best as we can, to give all a chance to understand it better, in its original form and contents.
Considering the old haiku of Japan, we even have to make a time-slip to their use of the language and the culture at that time.

Studying a haiku at the forum includes literal translations and then other versions that might be possible.
Some might read better as poems, others not.
In that way we can show how a short Japanese poem is indeed not so easily transformed into another language.

As I mentioned, we also need cultural background information.
Knowing a haiku is about Manpuku-Ji we need to explain a bit about this important temple and its atmosphere.
"Autumn festival" is a simple translation of AKIMATSURI, but it will not tell you what really happens then and how the Japanese associate and feel about it. So you need more cultural background.

I admire Robin Gill for giving his thoughts and versions while translating a haiku.

In studying a translation by someone else, let us see what other kinds of versions we can come up with. Not as a competition for "Best Version", but for bringing out the broadest meaning of a haiku to more of the haiku friends who do not read Japanese and who are here to study.

Translating Haiku Forum, March 2007

Some haiku are rather wonderful in Japanese but plain and simple in the English translation. Many friends keep asking:

What am I missing ?

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Did you know,
you can polish your Japanese, but not japanese your Polish ?!

I was told so many years ago by a Polish Jesuit priest at the Japanese Language Center in Kamakura.

Many of you are tempted to write their own haiku in Japanese!
I can understand the feeling, but please, take my advise.

First learn the normal Japanese language as it is spoken in Japan (many books teach you "literal" Japanese, which no one speaks).

Once you consider yourself fluent in normal Japanese conversation, start reading about haiku and get your big Japanese saijiki. Learn the vocabulary needed there, get some knowledge abuot the grammar used in haiku. There are plenty of cheap books in Japan.

And then, try to find a Japanese teacher who will kick your shin if you make a mistake.
Do not go for the "backpatting" pet gaijin approach, that will not help you improve your language skills.
When someone tells you "お上手ですねええ” you should know it is time to run, fast ...

And please, please, please, do NOT use Babbelfish or other online translation services.

They may be useful for normal text, but never for poetry !

Writing your own haiku in Japanese only works if you are serious to invest about 5 years of intensive language learning (best spent in Japan) and then the rest of your life for improvements.
So better not start at all and spend your time more efficiently to improve your skills for writing good haiku in English (or whatever your mothertongue is).

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Cross-cultural Musings

When translating, it is not only about words, but of a cultural understanding that might not (and usually does not) exist in the target language.

I will always remember the first missionaries looking at what we now call "Buddha Statues". They only saw hineous fiendish demonic fetishes (Götzenbilder in German) and translated the literature accordingly.
When I started writing about "Buddha Statues" in German, more than 30 years ago, I had to sort of make up my own vocabulary to convey what these things mean here in Japan in their original context and in the daily life of the Japanese.
Consider a statue of a Kannon with 1000 arms and a poor missionary 200 years ago trying to cope with such a monster in his Christian vocabulary ...

What I am trying to say is this

Usually you look into things from the standpoint of your own culture, trying to understand it on YOUR terms, using words of YOUR language.

I try to understand things Japansese on THEIR terms, the Japanese way. This means re-programming the old brain, loosing the European cultural clutter and start from ZERO ... Ichi Ni San ...

Gabi Greve

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Musings by Chibi, November 2008

I am beginning to believe... truly believe, that haiku can only be written in Japanese because it is intrinsically Japaense. I look at it this way. If you are to construct a sake cup made from Japanese wood, of Japanese design, in a Japanese setting filled with sake made in Japan... then how can you do so in another wood, design, setting or drink? By definition, you just can not.

MORE by Chibi
Translating Haiku Forum

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Translating Place names 　
Placenames
I think place names should be used as they are in the original language. If necessary, an explanation about the meaning of the name can be given in a footnote.

東京, this is Tokyo, meaning the "Eastern Capital".
不二, this is Mount Fuji, in the old writing of Issa, Meaning Mount "Not Two".

Here is a haiku with a play on words on the "stone mountain".

Ishiyama no ishi ni tabashiru arare kana

splashing on the stones
of Mount Ishiyama -
these hailstones

Matsuo Basho, Tr. Gabi Greve
Read the full discussion HERE !

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ishiyama no ishi yori shiroshi aki no kaze

autumn wind
whiter than the white cliffs
of this mountain

Tr. Gabi Greve

................... Comment by Larry Bole:

When a Japanese person hears "Ishiyama," do they just hear a name, or do they hear the underlying meaning of that name? I am tempted to suggest they just hear a name, in the same way that English people most likely just hear "Cambridge," and "Oxford," without thinking "Cam-bridge" (a place where there was a bridge over the River Cam), and "Ox-ford," (a place where oxen could ford a river).

So if "Ishiyama" is used in a translation 'as is', I would think it should be footnoted as to its meaning. And if one decides to do that, why not just use the name's meaning in the haiku, and make "Ishiyama" a footnote to that?

I'm also curious about Mt. Asama.
Does "Asama" mean something in Japanese?

Read more of the thoughts on this by
Larry Bole

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Haiku has those two elements,i.e Kanji and hiragana, image and music.

Asama 浅間 is old style Japanese that comes from Ainu.
It sounds softly, romantic, analog and emotional.

Sengen is Kanji itself that is image, reasonable, digital and theoretical.

Read the thoughs of Nakamura Sakuo

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Famous Places, best with a word of information.
The Hepburn Romaji spelling and the spelling used more or less oficcially now can be different. I usually try to reflect both.

東大寺, Toodaiji, Temple Toodai-Ji
利根川, Tonegawa, River Tonegawa
大和田湖, Toowadako, Lake Towada

松尾芭蕉　Matsuo Basho, Mister Pine-Tale Bananas
Pseudonym for Matsuo Kinsaku 金作,
Matsuo Chu'emon Munefusa 松尾忠右衛門宗房

WKD: PLACE NAMES of Japan

WKD: PLACE NAMES of the WORLD

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General problems concerning our haiku translations will be collected here, as they come up.

Spelling Japanese : Please use the Hepburn System.

The Basics of Japanese Haiku Theory - A Long List
Gabi Greve

WKD: Haiku .. Japanese Words in Cultural Context
Reading and Translating the Japanese Haiku Masters

Tips about translating ... Jane Reichhold
Simply Haiku Summer 2008, Basho

WKD: Direct translation versus meaningful translation
chokuyaku versus iyaku

Translating the Poetry of Miyazawa Kenji

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Online Dictionaries, Synonym Dictionaries and more

Tools of the Trade, check our various LINKS here.

Add your favorite language tool LINKS.

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Some theory about translating Japanese haiku

Basho’s Haiku: Selected Poems of Matsuo Basho
David Landis Barnhill
In the introduction, Barnhill mentions some of the problems involved in translating haiku.
http://www.modernhaiku.org/bookreviews/Barnhill'sBasho2005.html

Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!
Robin Gill
The way Gill translates is not only marvelous, it is absolutely revolutionary.
Instead of giving the reader the idea that there is only one way to translate a haiku, he offers a word-for-word translation and then goes into great detail explaining the ambiguities of the Japanese language along with the secrets of Japanese behavior. His final translation is often a series of possible ways of putting the haiku into English. . . .
He is even secure enough to admit when he really cannot figure out what the author was trying to say. . . .
http://www.paraverse.org/flyreview.htm

SHIKI : debate on translating haiku, 1999
Susumu Takiguchi
http://haiku.cc.ehime-u.ac.jp/shiki.archive/9912/1063.html

Can the Spirit of Haiku be Translated ?
Susumu Takiguchi
http://www.worldhaikureview.org/2-1/whcessay_translatedst.shtml

What can I say on translating haiku?
Eiko Yachimoto
http://www.poetrylives.com/SimplyHaiku/SHv1n4/Yachimoto.html

Translation discourse on a haiku by Issa
Darko Suvin
... PDF file achive.vanderbilt.edu/

Obscurity is not something to be emulated, and we should be careful to avoid it in modern hokku.
The issue of translation arises, however, whenever one reads an old hokku put into English. The average reader does not know, first of all, if the original was clear or vague, or whether the English translation simply transfers the meaning from language to language, or if the translator has added considerably from his or her own imagination.
David : ODDITIES OF TRANSLATION / Hokku
. . . . . and more
... reading a word-for-word translation does not mean one is getting the same effect as reading it in the original language.
source : David, Hokku Inn

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As a translator, sometimes you have to make up words as you begin to understand things deeper. Or experiment with spellings to convey the meaning of the CUT, kireji etc.

In January 2007, I came across a kind of re-export for the word haiku in English in a Japanese text from the haiku town Matsuyama in Ehime/Japan:

eigo HA.I.KU 英語ハイク

The katakana spelling of ハイク (in my re-translation: HA.I.KU) indicates this is a foreign word not common in traditional Japanese language.

There is now even a book introducing English language haiku to the Japanese reader:

HAIKUのすすめ―
日本人のための英語ハイク入門
吉村侑久代

　© amazon.com

another book on the subject

俳句とハイクの世界
(The world of haiku and HA . I . KU
星野恒彦 / Hoshino Tsunehiko

MANY More LINKS about 俳句　英語ハイク!!

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Untranslatability
is a property of a text, or of any utterance, in one language, for which no equivalent text or utterance can be found in another language.

Terms are neither exclusively translatable nor exclusively untranslatable; rather, the degree of difficulty of translation depends on their nature, as well as the translator's abilities.

Quite often, a text or utterance that is considered to be "untranslatable" is actually a lacuna, or lexical gap. That is to say that there is no one-to-one equivalence between the word, expression or turn of phrase in the source language and another word, expression or turn of phrase in the target language.

A translator, however, can resort to a number of translation procedures to compensate.

Check it out HERE !
© Untranslatability, from Wikipedia

Add your favorite translation LINKS as a comment here.

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Poetry is language skating on thin ice.
Translators fish through a hole in the ice.

"The Foreignness of Languages" and Literary Translation
Brother Anthony, An Sonjae (Sogang Univeristy, Seoul)
WKD Library

"Buson and
the Language of Japanese Poetry."
by Makoto Ueda
WKD Library

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My Archives about Haiku Theory and General Subjects

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COMMENTS

The discussion on the "cut" has been very interesting and shows another example of "doing your research". The poem "snicked" into place once I realized the meaning of the folding mat and its uses.
This is what I mean about Japanese HAIKU. I have always found it exciting, frustrating, informing, exhausting, etc...(in short a "joyfull struggle") to attempt the translation on my own especially with tools like google combined with membership in groups like this group.

I feel very blessed to know people with such deep interest in Japanese HAIKU.
Thank you all.

ciao... chibi

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Thanks. One of the things I enjoy about being in a group like this, is that it gets me to re-reading things I haven't read in a while,and it is an impetus to study haiku. If I could read Japanese fluently, I would follow in Shiki's footsteps, and study, study, study Japanese haiku, both classic and contemporary.
Such study couldn't help but improve one's own haiku (if one can get beyond "the anxiety of influence," to use the critic Harold Bloom's phrase).

Larry

Back to the Discussion Forum !!!!!

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Translating Haiku Forum

7/25/2000

TIPS for Translating

TIPS for Translating Haiku

Learning a language is one thing, but being a (professional) translator is quite something else.
The fact that you speak English, for example, does not make you an English teacher (unless you happened to be in Japan some 20 years ago. (Smile:o))

Everyone can use watercolors and paint a little enchanted something, but to be a proper painter it takes a bit more !

Here I will collect some tips as they come up in this forum:
... Translating Haiku, a Study Group ....

........................................ Some Simple Advise

Translate only into your mother tongue!

Google or consult your dictionary for all the words before attempting a translation.

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Using two languages in one haiku:
the BUBUBU exchange

Let me take up as example this one from India

rainy day
the muni in silent dhyaana
completely laved ~

Narayanan Raghunathan
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/translatinghaiku/message/17

My advise is to insert BUBUBU for any word that is left in your language. This will enable you to understand your translation as anyone else will understand it who is not able to speak your language.

rainy day
the BUBU in silent BUBUBU
completely laved ~

Now you have two options. Maybe more.

1.
Leave your translation as it is and provide footnotes for the BUBUBU words. The more extensive the better.

2.
Look for translations for the BUBUBU words. With the computer age and GOOGLE, it is quite easy to find out if the word is commonly understood in English or not.
LINKs to Online Dictionaries. Add yours.

Since haiku are soooo short, a lengthy translation inlcuding the meaning might spoil all the meter of your poem. If an appropriate short translation is not available, maybe the footnote will be the final solution.

In cross-cultural context such as haiku translations, I guess we will need a lot of footnotes and tools like the KIGO database, to get as close as we can to the real meaning and associations hinted at in the original.

Here are now the footnotes for the above haiku :

muni ~ One who is silent, a sage ~ [ From Mownam ~ Silence]

dhyaana ~ Dhyaana is now an English word which means roughly meditation.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/translatinghaiku/message/28

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Goals of my translation (in order of importance):
by "chibi" (pen-name for Dennis M. Holmes)

(1) to translate the feeling of the poem

(2) tranform the words from the host language to equivalent words of the Japanese language (transform has in this case a mathematical meaning in that picking the best word/phrase must transform from one culture to another keeping in mind the first goal

(3) construct as closely as possible into the Japanese form for haiku (5-7-5, kigo, and kireji)

Read the full discussion here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/translatinghaiku/message/37

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Some remarks by Larry Bole:

I'm not a translator, but I've read about the problems inherent in translating poetry from one language to another.

I think that one quality a good translation has is to sound good in the target language. That's why some very good translations have been made by poets in the target language who have no working knowledge of the source language. Good poets have a tendency to know what sounds good in their language.

I think that in many cases, literalness needs to be sacrificed in favor of giving the 'spirit' or 'intent' of the original. Since cranes walk in a stately, graceful, solemn way, (as has been noted in other languages, ie. Dylan Thomas' "heron-priested shore"), you need to fill-in what a Japanese person would 'expect' (sasuga).

An explanation of the cultural background of a poem should be footnoted more than it frequently is in many translations of poetry in general.

In the old Japanese calendar, New Year's Day and the official first day of spring come at the same time of year, but don't always coincide. Sometimes the official first day of spring came before New Year's Day. I believe Basho and Issa even wrote haiku about this phenomenon.

The New Year is usually treated as a separate haiku topic from spring, so I would be careful about using the New Year and spring interchangeably in translation.

In "The Essential Haiku" by Robert Hass, he includes "A Note on Translation" which is worth reading.

In "Section V" (subsection 9) of Blyth's first volume of "Haiku," he writes about translation.

Although I've only read some online material by Robin Gill, his books on translating haiku come highly recommended.

Quoted from : Translating Haiku Forum

Reference
First Spring (hatsu haru) and more kigo of the New Year season.

The Poet Robert Pinksy on translations

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One Hundred Frogs

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Matsuo Basho　松尾芭蕉　
Matsuo Bashoo Matsuo Bashō

furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto

古池や　蛙飛び込む　水の音

One Hundred Frogs: Hiroaki Sato

From Renga to Haiku to English
1983

From Matsuo Basho to Allen Ginsberg
ISBN 0834801760

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........................................... mizu no oto　水の音

Some of my musings about translating this line !

Sound of Water, Water of Sound

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Matsuo Basho, Basho Memorial Day and some more of my information：

I especially recomend the book by Toshiharu Oseko　尾迫利治　for translators.

Basho's Haiku
Produced by Maruzen, 1990

Basho Memorial day, Bashoo ki 芭蕉忌

Matsuo Basho Information

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There are no greater clichés among haiku circles than quoting Basho's frog haiku.
Basho's frog haiku is almost definitely the most famous haiku ever composed on this planet.

Read an insightful discussion HERE
©　Susumu Takiguchi

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Quote from the SHIKI archives

A quick note to clarify what seems to be a bit of confusion regarding Hiroaki Sato's "One Hundred Frogs."
by Michael Dylan Welch

David McMurray and Jane Reichhold are actually referring to TWO different books with the *same* title by the *same* author, both published by the *same* publisher.

Sato's original book is titled "One Hundred Frogs: From Renga to Haiku to English" (Weatherhill, 1983). This book is 242 pages long, and contains a history of renga and haiku in Japan and in the English language. Chapter 7 contains one hundred (+) translations of Basho's famous "old pond" haiku. It is *this* chapter that McMurray has seen published as a separate new book.

That second book is called "One Hundred Frogs" (Weatherhill, 1995 -- note *no* subtitle). This book culls all the "old pond" translations from the 1993 book, plus adds a few more (I think there are 130+ now), with no other essays except the introduction. This more recent book is also smaller in dimension, yet it is improved by wonderful illustrations by J. C. Brown -- and if you "flip" the pages, you'll see the drawings of a frog jumping into a pond become animated! (Yup, it's a flip book too, although you have to figure that out on your own...).
Anyway, as you can see, these are two very different, yet overlapping books. I recommend
both.
http://haiku.cc.ehime-u.ac.jp/shiki.archive/9603/0451.html

Discussion about this haiku:
hamaguri no / futami ni wakare / yuku aki zo
http://haiku.cc.ehime-u.ac.jp/~shiki/shiki-workshop.archive/html/199807/0106.html

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Basho in Russian

МАЦУО БАСЁ (1644-1694) 芭蕉 – Bashô
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dmitrismirnov/BASHO_Haiku_Y.html

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More of my LINKS to Basho

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To the Daruma Museum Index

To the Worldkigo Database

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7/13/2000

Translating Haiku

Translating Haiku

The following is part of a discussion from the Simply Haiku Forum in April 2006.

It started here:

14188 concerning metre

in the flame of my lamp
i see just a hint of wind
on a night of snow

Oshima Ryota Ooshima Ryoota
a contemporary of Yosa Buson
translated by Steven D. Carter

I like the lyricism in this haiku (it's metre).
In writing haiku it is important to remember that we are writing a poem and poems are more than a conglomerate of words, a a snapshot of something..... there needs to be that poetic something, that "umph", as demonstrated by this beautifully written haiku.

robert wilson

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Question from a non-native speaker

do you usually say

on a night
or
in a night

by the way, do you know the Japanese original of this haiku?

Gabi

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hakikeru ga/ tsui ni wa hakazu/ ochiba kana

"...a hint of wind ON a night of snow" .... normally it would be IN, but the poet didn't use IN ... and I think, and I am only conjecturing here, that it's due to the imagery the poet is painting.... inside the flame in the poet's lamp is a HINT OF WIND layered so to speak, "on top of a night of snow."

robert wilson

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chibi:

PS... Robert san, I am sorry, but, I did not understand your explanation.

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Robert,

Could you give us a chance to learn the original?
Not that one you gave us, about sweeping and fallen leaves by Taigi, but that one with a lamp, wind and snow.

How can we speak about nuanses used by the poet, if we can see only the translation?
As I know Japanese haiku, I am 99% sure, there is neither "on a night of snow" nor "in a night of snow", but just "yoru no yuki" == "snowy night" = "night of snow".
Anything additional is added by the translator, to make the translation a poem in English.
ON ---> the poet is a painter ?
IN ---> the poet is a sculptor ?

Nonsense, it is nothing to do with the poet.

...

after few minutes...

Looking for "yoru no yuki", I have found haiku about snowy night, looking at the light and seeing the wind:

tomoshibi o
mireba kaze ari
yoru no yuki

Oshima Ryota

The last line means just "snowy night" and it depends on the translator how it will be written in English.

Best ragards,
Grzegorz

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Robert,

Reading the original I can see this haiku quite different than the translator and you.
IMHO "hint", "flame" and "on" used/added by the translator in English translation may cause
damages in the reader's mind.

tomoshibi o
mireba kaze ari
yoru no yuki

Oshima Ryota

background for translation:
---------------------------

The most of Japanese lamps are not transparent, so one can see neither the shape of the flame inside nor its moves caused by the wind.

My translation:
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in the light of the lamp
I can see the wind --
snowy night

Oshima Ryota/tr.G.S.

or

in the light of the lamp
I can see the wind
this snowy night

Oshima Ryota/tr.G.S.

for them who accepts haiku looking like one sentence.

My interpretation:
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After L2 I don't know how it is possible, but after L3 and after 3 marvellous seconds ;-) I know everything.
This haiku is not about a flame or a lamp, but about... snowflakes ;-)

They fall like this:

/ / / /
/ / / / / /
/ / / / / /
/ / / /

If they fall like this:

(a row of straight lines, this BLOG does not show)

the poet could see "no wind" ;-)

Best regards,
Grzegorz

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Inochi wa fuuzen no tomoshibi.
Life is a lamp-flame before the wind.

Japanese Proverb

the meaning of * tomoshibi * is really very deep in the Japanese language. It could be the small flame of a rapeseed oil lamp too.

If the poet is inside his home, why would his flame move in the wind?

.......................................... because

to do yukimi, watching the snow fall in winter, you open your paper sliding doors and enjoy it life (and cold...)

there is more to tomoshibi, maybe later ...

> tomoshibi o
> mireba kaze ari
> yoru no yuki
>
> Oshima Ryota
..........

Well, looking at this Japanese, I must say, the translator has added quite a few meanings of his own ... as I thought when reading the English first.

kaze ari ... just a hint of wind ??? no no no
there is wind

yoru no yuki, as Grzegorz pointed out, simply is snowy night, night of snow, snow in the night or something simple.

by introducing ON in the translation, it looks like one sentence spread in three lines, but in the Japanese, we have a cut (kire) after the ARI in line 2, which is not expressed in the translation below.

genbun o
mireba mondai ari
haru no yuki

looking at the original
there is a problem -
snow in spring

Gabi

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Gabi,

I like your interpretation.

You can see the wind both viewing falling snowflakes (the wind outside the house) and observing the moves of the flame (the wind inside the house).

"Tomoshibi" in my Japanese-Russian ;-) dictionary means just "light" of a lamp or smth. like this.

The translator has to decide to use either "light" or "flame" of the lamp. If he use "light", haiku works ithout any explanation even in XXI c. but it loses a part of your interpretation. On the other side "in the flame" doesn't suggest proper "in the light of the flame" and "in the moves of the flame", but "inside the flame" ;-)

The other thing is, there is no ~pure "in" in L1 of this haiku ;-) In the context of the light/ flame/ lamp I can feel this "o" in the original as something like English "in", "due to",...

That is why I always suggest to put the translation together with the oryginal. Translation is just a help.

Gabi,

Looking at your poem of the same construction as Ryoka's haiku, I understand, that the raw translation of Ryoka's haiku is something like this:

looking at the (light/flame) of the lamp,
there is a wind --
snowy night

of course without strong suggestion, that a wind is inside the flame, but it just exists, blows tonight.

Am I right?

Best regards,
Grzegorz

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looking at the flame
there is wind --
snowy night

that is one possibility.

The wind is not inside the flame or lamp, it is only making itself known trough the flickering of the flame, that is all. I can sense the snow falling gently, this is not a stormy night.

Gabi

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Gabi,

I like your version, however this ruins my attempt at translating and my interpretation ;-)

I think together with such kind of translation, there should be a note added, that Japanese like to observe snow falling, blooming trees, etc., and they open their doors to do it, even at night.

Best regards,
Grzegorz

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The translator is one of the world's leading translators, Professor Steven D. Carter of Stanford University. I suggest you take this up with. And good luck! His experience is translating is extensive, he speaks fluent Japanese and archaic Japanese, and has an extensive understanding of the culture and linguistics.

Translating isn't as easy as some may think.

I have interviewed Professor Carter. He is an amazing scholar and the author of several highly respected books of translations and discourses. I suggest you become familiar with the translator before you take him to task.

robert wilson

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> Robert,
>
> I do not know anybody, who thinks it's easy.
> "Impossible" is a better word, I think, but it is possible to know which words are used by the poet, and which are added by the translator.
> Talking about the poet, let us talk about the author, not about the translator.

> Look at the raw translation by Gabi.
> The translation by Carter strongly suggesting the wind inside the flame is only a little part of wide meaning of L2 in Gabi's version.
> Carter's translation without romaji version is completely useful for me, if I want to translate this into Polish, because it seems to be improper in my sense of haiku.
> And Gabi's version is a base for a good translation if someone doesn't like such raw versions.
>
> My request is still actuall - presenting translations add romaji version. Or just say it clearly - let's talk not about the haiku by Ryota, but about haiku by Carter written after reading haiku by Ryota.

> Then I will say no word, because I'm not interested.
>
> Best regards,
> Grzegorz

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14239 Re: AN APOLOGY by Robert

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See my article about Kumarajiva, the famous Translator .

If you have a problem with translating Japanese haiku, feel free to contact me.
... Haiku Discussion Forum ...

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Please send me your contributions

To the Daruma Museum Index

To the WHC Worldkigo Database

7/12/2000

Two Ideas

One Haiku, Two Ideas

Haiku are short, only three lines as a general rule, so we should not pack too many differing ideas or themes in one haiku.

First,
Read the Basics of Composing Haiku
by Susumu Takiguchi, Chairman of the World Haiku Club

Best is two ideas (sometimes called a fragment and phrase in American Haiku), which can be divided in

first idea in line one
second idea in lines two and three

or

first idea in lines one and two
second idea in line three

The first short idea could well be the kigo for this haiku.

Let me give you an example.

This would be a BAD version with THREE ideas:

cold winter night,
a dog barks,
the stars sparkle.

Now let us trim it to two ideas, keeping the winter night as kigo and use as juxtaposition either the dog or the stars

winter night -
a dog barks
in the cold barn

cold winter night -
the stars sparkle
sooo far away

Each haiku has only two ideas or themes now and reads very smoothely. If you have three lines with three different ideas, they usually read quite staccato and not like a smooth haiku (I do not like the expression "in one breath" very much ...) but haiku should read like the gentle flow of a nice brook on a soft spring day.

Mumbling a haiku to yourself aloud and listening to the flow is one important part when composing haiku.
Make it your habit to mumble to yourself!
If it does not feel like a gentle flow, keep searching for better words.
This was one of the first pieces of advise from my Japansese sensei.

If your original haiku has three separate ideas, search for the two ones you really want to write about and expand one of these ideas over two lines.

Here is one of my recent examples with the short idea in line three.

stepping out
to sunshine and flowers -
January break

January is the kigo, kept in the short third line. The hypen - is used to indicate the break (kire in Japanese) between the two ideas.

Use simple and precise words, poetical or philosophical embellishment and contrived phrases are not suitable for haiku.

State what made you pause at that moment when you conceived your haiku in plain words, like a snapshot with a camera.

haiku seasons -
my simple life
becomes poetry

Gabi, January 2006

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......................... Some of my Haiku Theory

Spelling and Punctuation

One-Line Haiku : three sections, three lines

THEORY : Counting on your fingers: 5-7-5 Cultural Differences

THEORY : Why 5-7-5 ? Or rather, Why Not!

Tips for a GINKOO, a Haiku Walk 吟行

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Please send me your contributions

To the Daruma Museum Index

To the WHC Worldkigo Database

7/11/2000

Technical Support

nnnnnnnnnnnnn TOP nnnnnnnnnnnnn

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Technical Support

Encoding (Decoding) the Language of an Entry

This happens when you work in many languages, as I usually do.
Some computers show the Japanese, some show hyroglyphs instead.

The problem usually lies with the encoding of languages of your own monitor.
Here is how to change it:

On the top of each webiste and even on my email outlook express there is a VIEW button on the top tool bar, in the row of (mine says in Japanese, so I can only hope the words will be used in English thus...)

File... Edit ... View... Favorites...and so on

click on the VIEW option for a dropdown menu.

In my menue it is about the eighth line of options
ENCODE

If you click that, a wide variety of options again are shown.

There choose any form of Japanses (I have three choices for that alone) or European languages (YAHOO uses those mostly) or UNICODE if you use more languags than one, (this BLOG works with UNICODE UTF-8).

I have to constantly switch this button between the BLOG and the YAHOO forums, because they do not automatically adjust to the way a text was input ... ufff .

My Japanese friends sometimes get a blank page where it says on the bottom: "Page displayed". In this case too, if you change the encode system to UTF-8 you can suddenly see the text (even if it is not a Japanese text to start with...).

To read email at YAHOO with Japanese kanji, I have to switch to : 日本語EUC . The Archives at YAHOO need Free Select Japanese.

I call this the "Windows of Babel".

Installing a Japanese Keyboard in your system to input kanji.
Advise from Chibi.

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Converting WORD.DOC to an email or BLOG entry
Advise from a friend

If you use SHIFT ENTER at the end of a line, it will appear as just one space.
> (In the word doc, it is the arrow facing straight downward)
Normal ENTER will make it double spaced (that is the little hooked arrow in a word doc).

Firstly, if you are writing something that is going into an email then preferably use a text editor rather than a word-processor. If you MUST use a word-processor then try to avoid fancing formatting --
use shift-enter to create line-breaks rather than just enter which creates a hard-return (which when copied to an email causes an extra line break).

Try saving text as a .txt file and copy-paste that into an email rather than copying from a .doc file.

Secondly, try setting your email program to send always as plaintext.

Yahoo seems to be trying to get everyone to use their Rich-Text editor. MS ships Word with the default settings of curly-quotes which Mac's can't read; Outlook Express ships with the default setting of something called "printed-quotable" which is anything but.

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insert picture or LINK

V is open triangle, v is close triangle

Vimg src="http:xx/xxx/xxx.jpg"/v

insert picture with a hyperlink

Va href="http://www.xxx.htmlvVimg src="http://www.xxx.jpg"vV/av

insert LINK

Va href="http://xxx.html"v xxxxx V/av

.......... insert ANCHOR

VA NAME="anchorname"v V/Av

link to this anchorname from the same page
VA HREF="#anchorname"vAnchorname or soemthing else V/Av

link to this anchorname from a different page

VA HREF="http://www.different page #anchorname"vAnchorname or something else V/Av

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some color codes

#ffffcc;" light yellow spring
#99CC99 summer Moss green
#ffcc66 autumn orange
#cccccc ; gray winter
#ccffff ;" new year light blue

#ffff99;" strong yellow
#ffccff ;" violett

Detailed Color Codes online
http://www.december.com/html/spec/color.html

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Color Boxes

.. .. .. WINTER

.. .. Season

.. .. Heaven

.. .. Earth

.. .. Humanity

.. .. Observances

.. .. Animals

.. .. Plants

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Inserting SPACES

Use periods for spaces and color them white or the same color of the page you are using.

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Inserting accented letters of foreign languages, to copy from here

http://www.starr.net/is/type/altnum.htm

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Converter for Time Zones and Dates worldwide
http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc

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Framing a photo
Framing

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......................... Some of my Haiku Theory

Spelling and the Hepburn System Romaji

Spelling and Punctuation in English

One-Line Haiku : three sections, three lines

THEORY : Counting on your fingers: 5-7-5 Cultural Differences

THEORY : Why 5-7-5 ? or rather, WHY NOT in English

MORE IS HERE !

My Haiku Theory ARCHIVES

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Please send your contributions to Gabi Greve
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/happyhaiku/

To the Daruma Museum Index
http://darumasan.blogspot.com/

To the Worldkigo Database
http://worldkigodatabase.blogspot.com/

7/09/2000

Spelling and the Hepburn System

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How to write Japanese Sounds with the Latin Alphabet

The Hepburn System

The Hepburn romanization system (Hebon-shiki) was devised by an American missionary doctor in the 1860s to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Roman alphabet (in Japanese, "Roomaji").
It is widely used today both in the English-speaking world and in Japan, where many younger people are most familiar with the Roman alphabet through the study of English and thus find its spelling conventions more comfortable than the official Monbusho romanization standard.
Compared to the Kunrei (Monbusho) system, it compromises with English phonography rather than adheres to Japanese phonological system.
!!!! that is the good point !!!!

Read more here:
http://www.japan-101.com/language/hepburn_system.htm

byoobu　　屏風　
Long vowels should be doubled. That is the easiest to show on any computer these days.
Only in case of well-known words like TOKYO, Kyoto, we can renounce the lenth-indicator otherwise it causes trouble with the meaning:
shuujin, shujin (a prisoner <> my husband)

The use of OU instead of OO comes from the Japanese word processor, which represents the Japanese hiragana spelling, but should not be used for English representations of long vowels. It may lead to a completely different pronounciation of a word.

O with a little hypen above, ō that was always used in the times of printed books, but many wordprocessors do not have this letter. It is therefore usually not found when googeling with it.

Another posibility is to use a little roof-like accent on the o (or u), like this: ô.
Some monitors do not display these letters and show it like this:
o^ u^.
This is a problem of the computer encoding of letters and not a correct spelling of any kind.

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The sound TSU (as in TSUNAMI) is part of the Japanese language. TU is not.
The same thing, you would not spell it TUNAMI in English.

TUTI , that is hard to understand. Here are some hints:

つ = tsu
ち = chi
し = shi

tsuchi つち　土 (it means, the earth)

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Here is a good page about the Hepburn System

All long vowels are indicated by doubling the vowel, e.g. long o is written oo.

This page features all the charts you need for the correct spelling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn

<> Use of roomaji <>
The Hepburn system is now the most widely used romanisation system. Roomaji is the standard way of transliterating Japanese into the Latin alphabet. In everyday written Japanese, romaji can be used to write numbers and abbreviations. It is also used in dictionaries, text books and phrase books for foreign learners of Japanese.

Basic syllables
written from right to left and top to bottom.
a i u e o... ka ki ku ke ko ...

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese_romaji.htm

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This is non-sense:

furuikeyakawazutobikomumizunooto

this is very hard to decipher and harder to understand.
Please better use this spelling, separating the single words, since this is not written Japanese but Japanese written in alphabet type. A hyphen works wonders.

furu-ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

There is a difference in input when you use a Japanese wordprocessor to input hiragana or kanji and when you write some legible roomaji with the alphabet for people who do not speak Japanese (otherwise you would be using hiragana or kanji anyway).

Japanese wordprocessors use the Japanese style, of course, therefore we are stuck with all this confusion. Before the age of wordprocessing, things were simpler｡

Mizunoo, he was an emperor of Japan ! 後水尾天皇
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Go-Mizunoo
http://www.kunaicho.go.jp/ryobo/guide/108/

mizunoo to
mizu no oto

see, it is better to separate.

Enjoy your studies of Japanese Language !
August, 2004

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AAA, the spelling of bentoo in Roomaji!

A friend asked about it, so here are some points to consider:

the correct spelling in Hepburn is　with two oo for the length of the pronunciation

................ bentoo 弁当

The variations for a long oo are
............. ou, oh, ō with a little hypen on top

just one o provokes a different pronunciation and is wrong in my opinion.
But some words, like Tokyo, Basho, are so common now with the short version, we (linguists) keep them as they are used in the newspaper.

the O in front of the bentoo is an expression of honorability, お弁当

the honorable lunchbox

It is short in the pronounciation so one o is correct ： o-bentoo

If you write oobentoo (oo-bentoo) it would mean a HUGE bentoo, since OO 　大　is a word meaning big, large huge, like
oo-ame, huge rain 大雨　(the ones we are experiencing just now... rainy season thunderstorm..)

Since 　o 　お　it is an addition to the main word it should be spelled with a hyphen between the o and the b。

o-cha .. .. .. the honorable tea
o-hayoo ... the honorable morning

The main problem now is the googeling. If you google for bentou you come up with some, but not all entries...

The divergence from the Hepburn system became more frequent with the appearance of the wordprocessor machines in Japan, where they use the ou version to input a word.

I have written about it here above.

For the World Kigo Database, I insist on the Hepburn system, since this is the spelling one would use to google for a word.
I then usually leave some of the other spellings (even put them in brackets myself) to make sure someone will find it when he googles with another possibility.

Gabi Greve, July 2005

Lunchbox (bentoobako) Topic for Haiku

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Reading Romaji Only

Can you understand a Japanese haiku properly if you are only looking at a version in Romaji and not see the kanji/hiragana/katakana it was really written in?

The question arose with this one by Buson

tamakura ni mi o aisu nari oborozuki

AISU ...

ai su ... 愛す short for ai suru 愛する, to love
aisu アイス is short for icecream

手枕に身を愛すなり朧月
temakura ni mi o ai su nari oborozuki

手枕, can be read as tamakura in poetry.

It is essential to see the Japanese writing before translating a haiku, because the same word can be written in Kanji, Hiragana or Katakana (some clever poets now even use the English alphabet), and each one makes for a slight shift in mood and perception of the poem.
This can never be expressed with romaji, unfortunately.

2009

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Read my Haiku Theory Archives

To the Daruma Museum Index
http://darumasan.blogspot.com/

To the Worldkigo Database
http://worldkigodatabase.blogspot.com/

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7/04/2000

THEORY 5 7 5

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5-7-5 ... go shichi go ... in Japanese

short-long-short ... in other languages

This is my simple advise for the problem of adapting the Japanese pattern of 5-7-5 beats to any other language:

In short: ..... NOT ... 5 7 5
in English, German, or any other language.

Here is more about writing haiku in one line or three lines.

... ... ... ... ... ...

five seven five is the rhythm of the Japanese soul !
as one Japanese haiku poet has put it.

Trying to imitate this in any other language will be difficult, if not impossible.
What should be the rythm of English short poetry, that would reflect the soul of an English-speaking culture and its people ?

A Japanese haiku comes in three sections:

kami go (the top five section)
naka shichi (the middle seven section)
shimo go (the lower five section)

One line, one sentence ... or three segments 　

NHK Photo Go Shichi Go 。。　フォト　五　七　五　

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Read more : To much or too little

(excessive syllables) 　jiamari　字余り
(insufficient syllables)　jitarazu　字足らず

The middle line with seven beats is like the obi of a good kimono, it must fit.
For the top and bottom five, we can change the number of beats.

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The following is interesting for people who try to write Haiku in Japanese.

It is essential to know the Japanese language to understand the natural flow of this pattern of 5 -7 - 5.

It is not so mysterious as some want to make us believe, it is really quite a natural flow of Japanese word beats and the <> one breath, onji <> is to some extend the explanation of foreigners (non-Japanese, I should say) and theoreticists which are non-native speakers, trying to grapple with this.
After 10 years in Japan, something like <> yamakaze no <> will flow out of your mouth without even knowing a thing about haiku.

I will try to give you some examples.

In the Japanese alphabet, one hiragana character comprises a sound like a beat, a syllable, for example
ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, sa, shi, su, se, so,
and so on.

Many Japanese words are made of just two of these beats, like SORA for sky, YAMA for mountain, KAWA for river, HIMA for time and so on, you see the point.

Joining two of these words makes another word, like ARA KAWA, wild river, YAMA KAZE wind in the mountain.
Now add a kireji and you got the first line of a Japanese haiku.

Ara kawa ya <> Oh, you wild river
yamakaze ya <> Oh, you wind of the mountains

You can also join two beat words with NO to make one new meaning.
For example,
kiku no hana, the chrysanthemum
ama no kawa, the milky way
And these can now go in the first or last line of a haiku with five beats.
Voila, no mystery.

Next we have many words made up of three beats, like
KAWAZU, frog
WARAJI, straw sandals
Put these in the last line of a haiku and add the kireji KANA to get the 5 beats of the last line. KANA is always used in the last line of a haiku.

In the middle line we use three words with two beats each, using MARU as an example word, you can have

marumaru no maru
maru no marumaru
marumi no marumi
marumi no maru ya

>>> And so on with seven natural beats

Are you now perplexed with so much MARU?

It is the sound we usually use if we can not pronounce a Chinese character (and that is quite often !). That is another pleasure of learning Japanese, you can with some effort understand the meaning of a Chinese character, but you still cannot pronounce the word. Here, MARU is handy.

All I am trying to say, in my experience, the flow of words with short beats like the basic Japanese words brings forth the natural flow of lines with five or seven beats. It is not such a big poetical mystery. And it can hardly be reproduced naturally in any other language.

And the haiku poets make good use of this natural flow, elevate the everyday talk to the poetry level, so to speak, with the introduction of the kireji.

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5-7-5 derives ultimately from the 5-7/5-7/5-7 etc. rhythm of early Japanese poetry. This unit of 12 (5+7) is as natural to Japanese as pentameter is to English.

For translating haiku, we can use a 2-3-2 beat rhythm in English.

More on this by William J. Higginson at his page:
Haiku by the Numbers

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Robin D. Gill: The 5th Season

It is wrong to count syllables in English.
Our first failure - when we tried to mimic our own Classic (romance language) poetry - should have taught us better centuries ago. English syllables are hopelessly irregular and, on average, half-again longer than the Japanese syllabet.

If we would strive for some uniformity in our haiku, we must utilize something that we do have: a good beat. Japanese beat is so weak that some say the syllabets are always equally stressed and / or identical in length. Our beat, if we would teach it (or, them), can even be recognized by children.

I noticed, independently of Blyth - that Japanese haiku, even when the syllabet count exceeds the ideal - usually have 7-8 beats; and, so, I think, should ours."

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Read more about the CUT, kireji, in haiku.

BACK TO
. . . BASICS of my Haiku Theory

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To the Daruma Museum Index

To the Worldkigo Database

One Sentence Haiku

[ . BACK to TOP . ]
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One Sentence Haiku, One Line Haiku

The following was given as an example to support the theory that Issa wrote one-sentence haiku.

my kiku
shows no interest
in her shape or form

kobayashi issa

Well, here we have to ask:

Did Issa write a one sentence poem or did the translator, Ueda Makoto ?

my kiku shows no interest in her shape or form

waga kiku ya
nari ni mo furi ni mo
kamawazu ni

Well, Issa was rehabilitated in my understanding, he wrote a haiku, with kireji, kigo, choice and play of words (ni..ni..ni, mo..mo.., nari..furi.. ) and all, about his young wife Kiku, Chrysanthemum. Among many possibilities, I suggest this translation:

Oh my wife Chrysanthemum !
for her form and features
she does not care

More of this discussion is here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/happyhaiku/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/happyhaiku/

About translating haiku in general,
read my musings here:
Daruma Pilgrims in Japan: Kumarajiva, the Translator

Or better, join me at the forum for "Translating Haiku" !
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/translatinghaiku/

Other haiku by Issa, which are sometimes translated as one sentence, but have a clear CUT in Japanese:

o-nakama ni neko moza toru YA toshiwasure

mikazuki wa soru ZO samusa wa saeaeru

abaraya ni tonde hi ni iru arare KANA

Trying to understand a Japanese haiku in an entirely American/European (add your country) environment, somehow, is like taking a fish out of its water. You can see the dead fish, but not what gives real LIFE to the fish in its own environment.

Sometimes my Haiku friends ask :
What am I missing ?

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Here is another example of a haiku which a friend presented with the implication "Even Shiki wrote one sentence haiku!" (unfortunately my friend did not provide the translator, let me know if anyone does).

my summer jacket
wants to get rid of me
and fly away

(written in 1895 in Suma)

Well, here again, looking at the Japanese solves the problem.

夏羽織われをはなれて飛ばんとす
natsu-baori ware o hanarete toban to su

There is a definite cesura after line one, the sentence does not continue here but has a natural pause.

my summer coat -
it wants to leave me
and fly away

Tr. Gabi Greve
Summer clothing and Haiku

And one more by Shiki, where the translation (　by Janine Beichman ) reads like one sentence.

in the coolness
gods and Buddhas
dwell as neighbors

The Japanese shows a clear cut, YA, after line one

すゝしさや神と佛の隣同士
suzushisa ya kami to hotoke no tonaridooshi

this coolness !
Gods and Buddhas
side by side

Tr. Gabi Greve
Deities (kami to hotoke) in Japanese haiku

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Japanese haiku without a cut and only one idea are called "ichibutsu jitate" 一物仕立て.
In composing them you have to be careful not to make it sound like just a prosa sentence.
A lot of free verse haiku (jiyuuritsu haiku 自由律俳句（じゆうりつはいく）are in this format.

In contrast to this we have the haiku with a combination of two ideas, toriawase　取り合わせ.

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見し夢のさめても色の燕子花
mishi yume no samete mo iro no kakitsubata

Shushiki (Shuushiki 秋色) (1668-1725)

Waking from my dream,
What a colour
Were the iris flowers!
trans. Blyth

I wake and find
the colored iris
I saw in my dream.
trans. Yoel Hoffmann

A question from a friend:
Is the one-sentence structure of this translation true to the original?

Well, this is indeed just one sentence in Japanese, although rendered quite a bit "poetic" with the NO and word positioning, and not in the way we would talk like this in spoken Japanese. The use of 5 7 5 also gives it a taste of classical poetry.
There is a distinct way of writing haiku, quite different from spoken language in Japanese, that is difficult to imitate in English or German, I find.

mita yume kara sameta toki ni kakitsubata no iro ga arimasu

Gabi Greve, May 2008

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One Line Haiku

quoting from a discussion in my Happy Haiku Forum:

A friend wrote (among other things) this part

... about haiku in one continuous line.
So, that begs the question, what do you call haiku in one continuous line?
I have but one answer:
haiku.
The others (two line, three line, multiple line) should be called names with their line count in the name.

........................

Writing haiku in one line or three lines .. this is not discussed often with my Japanese friends, because it does not constitute a problem to them.
Also dividing a haiku in fragment and phrase seems an American approach to formalizing and explaining haiku.

I have gotten another inspiration to this discussion, an approach I usually take when a Japanese cultural phenomenon just does not fit in any other language so easily: give the child a different name.
Let us not argue about the lines, but call them
SECTIONS / SEGMENTS.

A Japanese haiku comes in three sections:

kami go (the top five section)
naka shichi (the middle seven section)
shimo go (the lower five section)

So, given the natural rhythm of the Japanese language, it is easy to recognize these sections when spoken.
( My discussion about 5-7-5 is here: THEORY : Why 5-7-5 ?)

Writing these three sections usually depends on the Japanese paper you are given.

On a small slip (tansaku) it goes from top to bottom.
On a square decoration sheet (shikishi) it goes in three lines, usually from right to left.
NHK Haiku writes in three lines from right to left, name of the artist most left.
Very seldom it is written in three lines from left to right, the Latinized way.
With a wordprocessor, it comes out as one line, from left to right, if not formatted differently.

So, there are many ways to write it in Japanese too, but ALWAYS the three sections are clearly discernable.

Thus, in English it should not be such a big problem whether you write it in one line or in three, but you should take care to make your three sections easily discernable, most probably in a way of using the format of
short * long * short
for the sections as a kind of imitation of the original Japanes haiku parent.

T
UND
RA

Voila, here is my solution to the TUNDRA poem!
(You have to decide for yourself if this looks like a haiku
or not.)

And would you introduce writing your one-line haiku from top to bottom, just to imitate one way of Japanese writing? I have my doubts, but some Americans tried ...

It is of course a discussion taken with a lot of humour.

We even have haiga with one word ...

one word haiku ...
are you sure about it?
I doubt it!

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Here is Susumu Takiguchi on the one line problem :
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/happyhaiku/message/1220

A discussion about True Haiku :
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/happyhaiku/

Bill Higginson about one-line haiku, in SimplyHaiku
WKL

Marlene Mountain on the subject ...
Taken with a grain of salt or two !

Marlene Mountain on the subject again...
More about experimental haiku !

Monoku, one line ku, one-liner, one sentence ku, run-on sentence ku and other expressions are also sometimes used in English.

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Tundra, tsundora ツンドラ .. a topic for haiku

Traditional Japanese Haiku
Some more Theory .. for the serious student. By Gabi Greve

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To the Daruma Museum Index

To the Worldkigo Database

Ginkoo, Haiku Walk

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A Haiku Walk - Ginkoo 吟行

GIN 　吟　means singing, praising, making a poem

KOO 　行　means walking

For your fun :

銀行　ginkoo, the same sound, also means the bank where you put your silver, your money in, but that is only the same sound, a completely different word.

But you can still have a ginkoo at your local ginkoo :o)

For TENTORI, see below.

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What happens at a Ginkoo ?

A group of people walk along a certain area very attentively, make haiku about it and later exchange their haiku in a haiku meeting (kukai　句会).
You can set yourselves a seasonal or topical theme or make free haiku on the things you encounter on the way. A topical theme can for example include haiku with the color white or the emotion of surprize or something about laughter.

The walk usually occurs for two hours in the morning, then you have lunch together and after that, the competition, where everyone presents three haiku anonymously. All can choose their favortites among them and the six (or ten or any number you choose) haiku with the most points are announced.

You then discuss these haiku with the teacher (sensei　先生) present. He will give advise on judgement and improvement of some haiku, thus giving all a lesson. Only after thourough discussion will the persons be asked to step forth who made the winning haiku.

Remember, all the criticism, good and bad, is made before the author is announced. It is the haiku that counts, not the person who wrote it.

My Japanese haiku teacher in Kamakura always said:

Do NOT take pictures, do NOT sketch, but empty your mind and look deeply and not judgemental into anything you see on our walk. Imprint it in your heart and mind and then let a haiku flow out of it easily.

Take notes in your haiku book.

Write as many haiku as come to mind and select your best three later on for the competition.
While you compose your haiku, do not think about the good points you might win afterwards (tentori haiku).

Try to use all your senses. Smell the place, listen to the place, feel the things around there.

Ginkoo can show you how the same people in the same place will find completely different things to SING about afterwards. It is a great community activity.

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Here is a text I wrote a while ago:

a Haiku meeting (kukai 句会) in Japan are usually meetings in the flesh!

Members of a Haiku Group come together with our teacher *sensei*, usually after a *ginkoo*, a walk for some time to a special place where we get an inspiration for our haiku. Some also prepare haiku in advance. But it is always part of the fun to see where the others put their attention when writing about the same place of experience. It sharpens your eyes for detail immensely to do that.

Then the haiku are written on anonymous slips of paper, so you do not know whose is whose and you select three or five of your favorites. Each member reads his haiku selection aloud and makes a little comment about it. Selecting haiku from so many is a good experience too in judgeing a good haiku.
The haiku with the most counts are then announced and discussed, and even corrected by the teacher.

This is the best part, since we do not yet know WHO we are criticizing and everybody tries to help improve the haiku at hand.
Afterwards, the author tells us his name and then only do we know who wrote that one.
Therefore, discussion is a big part of our Japanese kukai.

If it is a big group, the results may be published in the groups monthly magazine, otherwise we gather for the sheer fun of being togehter with our friends and discuss our beloved common interest, Japanese haiku.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/happyhaiku/message/902

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Here are some descriptions from online sources:

Charnwood Arts was delighted to host a visit from Susumu Takiguchi - Chair of the World Haiku Club and Debi Bender, Editor in Chief of the World Haiku Rweview in September 2001. (Susumu sensei is on the right.)

Below Debi gives a brief account of their visit :

"The last of the three major events of World Haiku Autumn Festival, WHC members from different parts of the world participated in this World-Wide Ginko (haiku walk) by sending their poems to Paul Conneally, the organiser.

Simultaneously, in Loughborough, north of Leicester, England, members of WHC and their families enjoyed a country walk in the nearby wood at Beacon Hill. The leaves are just beginning to turn red and yellow, and mushrooms and wild berries added to the autumnal splendour.

On the following day, Susumu and myself were invited to select haiku poems written by local and international poets for Charnwood Arts miniWords 2001 haiku competition. Kevin Ryan of Charnwood Arts was the organiser of the competition, which attracted a great number of entries.

The two-day event proved to be a happy collaboration between a local arts organisation and WHC and at the same time between different local poets across the world.
http://www.charnwoodarts.com/index.php?portalid=7&areaid=0&pageid=738

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Sunday morning was dedicated to "doing haiku."
The weather cooperated and the students and guests enjoyed a haiku walk around campus and to the nearby Fairview Park which resulted in several excellent haiku for the kukai competition.
http://www.millikin.edu/haiku/global/ginko.html

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Ron Moss

Join me on a Ginko [a haiku walk] in Cradle Mountain National Park, Australia, a World Heritage Site.
The 131, 920 hectare park, located in Tasmania, is the last great temperate wilderness remaining in Australia and one of the last remaining in the world. I visited the park in Autumn when the native deciduous beech (nothofagus gunnii or "fagus") puts on its colorful display. This web site contains my impressions shared through photographs coupled with haiku poetry.
http://www.haikuhut.com/MOSS/moss-ginko/

..... Haiku Walk in the Koya Temple, Gabi Greve

..... Haiku Walk in Guilin, China, Gabi Greve

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Tentori　点取り ... writing haiku to get good points

Tentori Haiku, a haiku written with the sole purpose of getting good marks with a certain judge of haiku.
Once you know the style of this judge, you can adjust your haiku so that he will like it and give it good marks during a haiku meeting (kukai).

This is a way of composing haiku, that old Bashoo was also prone to.
BUT
the haiku that became world famous are mostly the ones Basho wrote just for the fun of it, just for himself and his students, just like that, without thinking of any points to win or loose.

ten 点　... means point, as you get points in school for your homework or in a haiku contest for your poems.
tori 取り... is the verb ending form coming from TORU　取る, to take, to get.

so, the meaning is to .. get (good) points ... good is implied in the connection of this , since, who would make an effort in getting BAD points?

Once a friend asked me: can you teach me haiku? so I said YES.
Anther friend asked me: can you teach me haiku that will be accepted in the xxx magazine for publication? so I said NO. This would be to promote .. tentori haiku ... and I am not into this at all.

One other example comes to mind.

When I studied Japanese archery, the sensei (teacher, guru) would like to say:

If you speculate about hitting the target, you will surely miss it.
If you do not speculate about hitting, the arrow will hit the target.
If you hit the target without the proper attitude, your hit means nothing and the teacher will scold you angrily for wasting a precious moment.

The pracitce of Archery is not so much about hitting the target ... at least what I learned from my sensei. It is not even very much about what you do in the doojoo, the hall for practise. After all, you are there only for a few hours during the week.

The most important part is when you leave the doojoo and have no bow and arrow. Then you have to practise in real life ! Once you master this art ...
the enemy within is mastered.

Read more about my musings here: Tentori haiku

QUOTE: Tentori haiku

Some might argue that entering contests and making a name for yourself as a published poet is a good thing, giving others a chance to read your haiku and come to know your poetry. Thus it would provide you with a way to share your poetry with many kindred hearts.
Contests aren't
'bad' in themselves.

More of my thoughts about
Sensei, a haiku teacher

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Quoting Jane Reichhold

When you have a kukai (or a contest judged by the contestants) you have an even wider range of factors as to what constitutes an ideal haiku because you will have people new to haiku along with a few more experienced persons. In any contest, often the poems with human factors in them do win because they more easily touch our hearts and thus, stick in the memory long enough to rise about the rest of the entries. Put in a pitiful cat or dog and your chances are even better.

The sponsor of a contest may set forth certain aspects for the contest but the judges may disregard these and choose what they like and not follow the rules the contestants were given. Also, it is not unknown in large contests for the sponsors to make final judgments, not on the quality of the work, but in order to give the prizes to certain people for the work they have done in the haiku community, to encourage persons where haiku is new, or to payback for old favors.

Even contests with several judges it is too often is not about excellence but who the winner is. If Jack Kerouac and Joe Blow are in a contest, the “wise” sponsor would give the first prize to Kerouac knowing that his fame would then rub-off on the contest and gain more publicity and more entries in the following year than poor Joe’s better haiku would bring. This is a good reason for entering kukai – at least you know what is pleasing to your fellow writers. I did not say they would pick the most excellent poem – I said they would pick what is most pleasing to them.

MORE is here:
©　Jane Reichhold

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Heijooshin, the Even Mind 平常心

When one person criticizes your haiku, you feel upset!
When one person prizes your haiku, you feel happy!

If you send me two haiku, one about a dog and one about a cat, I will surely prize the one with the cat, because I love cats (my tomcat is even called "Haiku kun").
Does that realy mean your DOG haiku was bad ?

As a teacher, one tends to praize a beginner a lot, in order not to discourage him, but rather stick to a sensei who kicks you in the shin than one who pats your back too much.

Try to develope an "even mind", heijooshin 平常心, where positive or negative remarks do not affect you emotionally
and only use them to improve your work.
The thought of getting published in a magazine should not be the ultimate goal of your writing haiku. Try writing haiku with the correct attitude and peace of mind.

Read a bit about Archery and the Unmoved Mind
//www.heijoshin.com/

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......................... Some of my Haiku Theory

One Haiku, two Ideas The Basics

English Spelling and Punctuation

One-Line Haiku : three sections, three lines

THEORY : Counting on your fingers: 5-7-5 Cultural Differences

THEORY : Why 5-7-5 ? or rather, WHY NOT in English!

Japanese Spelling and the Hepburn System Romaji

My complete Haiku Theory ARCHIVES !!!!!

Teaching Haiku to Children / also usuful for adults

***************************

Please send me your contributions

BACK TO
My Haiku Theory Archives !

To the Daruma Museum Index

To the Worldkigo Database

7/03/2000

THEORY : Punctuation

[ . BACK to WORLDKIGO　　TOP . ]
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About Spelling and Punctuation

One of my first haiku in English (around 2004) went like that:

Sitting in Silence -
Daruma meditating
In Japanese.

Later I revised the spelling to this version

sitting in silence -
Daruma meditating
in Japanese

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In an exercise about haiku composition in 2005, I wrote the following:

Sometimes I find haiku that start with a capital letter in the first word, but have no fullstop at the end.

Sometimes I find ones that start with a small letter, but have a fullstop at the end.

Sometimes I find haiku that have a capital letter in the beginning and a fullstop at the end, like a proper English sentence should be. (At least, they are somehow consistent.) But they look like a picture in a very heavy frame to me and have not so much openness.

Haiku without capital first letter and no fullstop, well they are really floating in space.
When you write with a Japanese brush and ink, the image starts in your mind and the hand moves over the paper long before and long after the acutal black ink is left on the paper ... it is an ongoing process in space and time and the "marks on paper" are just a small part of the whole much larger process. Japanese looking at this kind of handwriting can see a lot more than meets the eye, so to speak ... They see the soul of the poet even before the haiku starts and see their own mind wander off with the images after reading the words ...

Therefore if a haiku in English is written with small letters and no fullstop, it can imitate a bit of this ... timeless, spaceless creative poetic process, which would otherwise be missed if written only according to the grammar prescriptions.

Read the examples I am referring to here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/haikucomposition/message/26

"briccone3" answered to this:

"floating in space" (you put it well GABI).
I never realized this quality in haiku until reading the book Classic Haiku: A Master's Selection by Yuzuru Miura. Most of what I had previously read or visualized was either written in English or the Romanized form of Japanese, romaji. In this book the ku are written in these two forms but also in classic Chinese characters.

Those written in the latter truly float in space and have a visual quality or esthetic that neither English nor romaji can replicate. They are truly beautiful to just look at.

Maybe computers just aren't as artistic as a brush on rice paper, but I also fear that English letters are just no match for classic Chinese characters.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/haikucomposition/message/27

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As a translator, sometimes you have to make up words as you begin to understand things deeper. Or experiment with spellings etc.

In January 2007, I came across a kind of re-expport spelling for haiku in English in a Japanese text from the haiku town Matsuyama in Ehime/Japan:
HA.I.KU in Katakana ...

eigo HA.I.KU ... 英語ハイク
(Use : Japanese (EUC) for encoding the kanji.)

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We have "cutting words" kireji, in the Japanese language
and many "cut markers" in the English and other languages

The CUT (kire) used in English Language Haiku and Translations
by Gabi Greve

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. . . . . . The question mark

The Japanese language has a word expressing the quesiton　...
か　KA
ぞ ZO is also uesed, especially in poetry.

お元気ですか
o-genki desu ka
How are you?

It is usually translated as a question mark ? .

Some modern Japanese now use the question mark, but it is not obligatory and KA is still the way to express a question.
The word KA is used in Japanese haiku.

秋深き隣は何をする人ぞ
aki fukaki tonari wa nani o suru hito zo

autumn deepens
and I wonder,
what is my neighbour doing?

Matsuo Basho
Tr. Gabi Greve

WKD : Autumn deeens

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A note on kireji, if you want to write in Japanese

Since kireji are not usually used in non-Japanese-language haiku (what a definition!), I will give you a short review of my memo about them.

As a beginner, use only one kireji in one haiku. Leave the exceptions of the rule to the masters. (This is sound advise from many Japanese Haiku Masters.)

Kireji serve the three purposes of : emphasis, cut or jump.

YA
Usually at the end of the first line. Feels like an exclamation mark:
Butterflies! separating strongly from the next two lines, like stopping your breath for a moment, then say the next two lines about a different topic.

Very seldom it can be used in the middle line. In that case the topic is usually the same without a juxtaposition, so it does not CUT the meaning, but connects it strongly.

kiri saku ya..... will separate from the following lines

kiri saite .. the meaning about paulownina will go on in the following line.

<> My pattern (maru is the prototype of a word)

marumaru ya
maru maru maru no
maru no maru

KANA
Usually only at the end of the last line. Feels like a sigh, Oh, yee butterflies! Does not cut the meaning as strong as the YA, rather connects the first to lines with the last one.

marumaru no
maru no maru maru
marumi kana

KERI
Usually at the end of the last line, but sometimes in the middle line. Cuts the meaning stronger than KANA.

Used in reference of something in the past, something unexpected or very sudden.

marumaru no
maru no maru maru
nari ni keri

My rule of thumb:

If you have a Japanese word with four beats, use <> marumaru ya <> in the first line

If you have a Japanese word with three beats, use <> marumi kana <> in the last line.

Read a bit more of my thoughts on this here.

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