Kawahigashi Hekigoto

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Kawahigashi Hekigoto 河東碧梧桐
(1873-1937) 1873年02月26日 ～ 1937年02月01日
Kawahigashi Hekigodo, Hekigotoo, Hekigodoo



日本の俳人。1873年（明治6年）愛媛県松山市に生まれる。高浜虚子と同級で、虚子とともに正岡子規に兄事した。1893年第三高等学校に入学したが、翌年退学。子規の死後は従来の形式にとらわれない新傾向俳句を唱えて無中心論を説く。1932年還暦を迎えて俳壇から引退した。
代表句「蕎麦白き道すがらなり観音寺」「赤い椿白い椿と落ちにけり」など。
http://www.jinmei.info/data/20050208004.html


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kigo for late winter

Hekigotoo Ki 碧梧桐忌 Hekigotoo Memorial day
"Day when the cold ends", Kan-ake Ki 寒明忌（かんあけき）


. Memorial Days of Famous Poeple .


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Hekigotou Kawahigashi was born 5th son to father, Kon Kawahigashi (his pen name was Seikei), a samurai belonged to feudal domain of Matsuyama, and mother, Sei (her second name was Takemura). His real name was "Heigorou".
In 1887 (Meiji 20), he entered Iyo Ordinary Junior High School. He was in the same class with Kyoshi Takahama.

Hekigotou was taught baseball by Shiki when Shiki came home in 1887 (Meiji 20). Shiki had been asked to hand a ball to Hekikotou by Hekigotou's elder brother, "Kitou" who was Shiki's schoolmate.

Hekigotou had been concerned with Haiku taking advantage of this matter. He became the selector of the Haiku column of Newspaper "Nippon", but he changed his style into "the new trend of Haiku" and made this tendency stronger through a tour of the whole country.
He made up the records of this travel into "Sanzen-ri - Three southands of miles".
As times went on, he had been opposed to Kyoshi's conservatives.

He retired from the Haiku world at his 60th birthday in 1933 (Showa 8).
He died in 1937 (Showa 12) at the age of 65. His grave was located in the precinct of his father, Seikei's Houtouji Temple in Nishiyama, Matsuyama.
http://www.lib.ehime-u.ac.jp/KUHI/ENG/hekigotoeng.html


Another Short Biography

Kawahigashi Hekigodo (1873-1937) was, along with his friend Takahama Kyoshi, one of the most prominent students of the great modern haiku master Masaoka Shiki. Hekigodo was born in Matsuyama, like Shiki, and was the son of a Confucian scholar.

Perhaps the best word to describe Hekigodo is "restless". He dabbled in mountain climbing, calligraphy, Noh dancing, traveled to Europe, North America, China, and Mongolia, and wrote journalism, literary and social criticism, and poetry. At Shiki's death in 1902, Hekigodo succeeded him as editor of the haiku pages in the newspaper Nihon (or Nippon) and for a brief time was the most important figure in the Japanese haiku world.

One of Shiki's radical innovations was to abandon all the rules for writing haiku except for the 5-7-5 count of onji and the kigo, or season word. Hekigodo took the experiment one step further and abandoned the count of 17 onji in favor of "free verse" haiku.
He retained the kigo because he felt it was an essential connection to the natural world.

Hekigodo's students, led by Ogiwara Seisensui (who actually had been fooling around with free verse even before Hekigodo), broke with him and began even more radical experiments. They abandoned the use of the kigo, breaking the last connection with traditional haiku. Takahama Kyoshi, who had left haiku to write novels, came back to poetry and advocated a return to traditional haiku in the pages of the once radical Hototogisu. Caught between these two groups, Hekigodo became an increasingly frustrated and isolated figure in the world of haiku.

Before he died, he increasingly devoted himself to the study of traditional haiku, especially that of Yosa Buson.
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=978050

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Kawahigashi became haiku editor of the magazines Hototogisu (“Cuckoo”; in 1897)
and Nippon (“Japan”; in 1902).


Kawahigashi Hekigoto carried Shiki's reform further with two proposals:
1. Haiku would be truer to reality if there were no center of interest in it.
2. The importance of the poet's first impression, just as it was, of subjects taken from daily life, and of local colour to create freshness.
http://www.preneo.com/nwylde/haikU/haikuresources.html


Shiki left many disciples behind, and these poets of the twentieth century continued to create the legacy of the haiku. Poets such as Kawahigashi Hekigoto still used the tradition form of Basho's haiku, but used new subjects (many Japanese poems are based around a selection of traditional subjects, such as frogs, cherry blossom or the moon)... until he gained a disciple named Ogiwara Seisensui who began to abandon the Basho-school haiku form.
The haiku, under the New Trend Haiku Movement, gained a fluidity, a lack of rules, so that the haiku could capture reality with ease. At least, that was the theory.
In reality, the New Trend Haiku were 'bumpy', and did not flow with the ease of the haiku of Basho.
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1369507



Kawahigashi Hekigoto was probably the most famous of Shiki's students. He was of the younger generation of haiku greats. His earlier poems followed the traditional haiku format. Later in his career he began to abandon the traditional form. He wanted his poems to come as close to reality as possible without the interference of man made rules. He started the New Trend Haiku Movement. He experimented with disregarding the seventeen syllable pattern.

too hanabi
oto shite nani mo
nakarikeri

far fireworks
sounding, otherwise
not a thing

Read more of his haiku with translations here:
http://www.international.ucla.edu/asia/lessons/bnakama/hekigoto.html

The kigo is fireworks .
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The leading disciple of Masaoka Shiki, Kawahigashi Hekigoto visited Saikoji Temple in Wada in 1897. The haiku-loving head priest was greatly impressed by Hekigoto, and switched to writing Shiki-style haiku, even being inspired to start the Etsuyukai poetry society.
"Zoku Sanzenri" contains references to Hekigoto's return visit to Saikoji Temple.


http://www.manabi-takaoka.jp/03/eng/category/detail/1815/1/detail.html

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Kawahigashi Hekigoto, a new wave haiku poet, was one of the most active researchers on Buson. He wrote about Buson's letters included in the 'Collected Letters of Buson' in his magazine 'Heki' .
河東碧梧桐の個人雑誌『碧』

http://www.nime.ac.jp/~saga/images/heki.html


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.....................................Haiku by Hekigoto

From a bathing tub
I throw water into the lake -
slight muddiness appears.

http://www.toyomasu.com/haiku/#kawahigashi

There is no explicit kigo, but the season is definitely summer.

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

akai tsubaki shiroi tsubaki ochi ni keri

red camellia
white camellia
falling down

(Tr. Gabi Greve)

The kigo is Camellia (tsubaki) .

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TWENTIETH CENTURY JAPANESE PHILOSOPHICAL HAIKU:
IV HEKIGODO

by Hugh Bygott

The three poets, Shiki, Kyoshi and Hekigodô were close friends in Shiki’s time. Kyoshi was most faithful to Shiki’s ideals, but Hekigodô developed new ideas. At Shiki's death, Hekigodô succeeded him as editor of the haiku pages in the newspaper Nihon, and for a brief time
was the most important figure among the haiku poets in Japan.
Hekigodo went further than Shiki’s reforms, abandoning Shiki’s strict 5-7-5 form and developing free verse.

If Kyoshi can be called the father of modern Japanese haiku, Hekigodô can be called an innivator in philosophical haiku. In these we see Hekigodô going beyond some of the rules which have become fossilized in modern haiku. I refer specifically to the rule that a haiku must
always be in the present tense.


蝿打つまで蝿叩なかりし
hae utsu made haetataki nakarishi ... 15


There are two verbs in this haiku. I consider the final verb as past tense with the suffix -shi. It is a verb with a negative component and an existential verb. There are two clauses linked by the particle made which indicates a time limitation for actions or events. It is unmistakeably “until.”

I consider Makato Ueda’ s 1976 translation as faultless.

Until I hit the fly, the fly-swatter did not exist.

This haiku is gloriously and unmistakeably past tense.

[I recall the great debates in my philosophical youth; Ryle’s disputing dispositional properties, David Armstrong, my great teacher and protagonist, and the clarity of Peter Geach, now a ninety year who regularly attends Mass at Blackfriars, Cambridge.]

Does the fly-swatter exist potentially? Is the flat swift surface of the instrument a dispositional property?

We see that Hekigodô has abandoned the 5-7-5 = 17 structure. There is a kigo but is there a break with a recognized kireji word? Some might argue that it is the particle made. We have come a long way since Henderson’s silly comment that kireji are meaningless, or Asatarô
Miyamori’s equally silly comment that only ya and kana are important kireji.

Since English punctuation is superior to Japanese kireji, we can easily pause at the comma, and this is expected in English speech.
Do Japanese listeners make the mental break at made?

Quoted from: Translating Haiku

Footnote by Gabi Greve

I was reminded of this haiku above just yesterday, June 28, 2006.
We had human visitors, sitting outside enjoying freshly baked bread. There were also a few visitors from the animal realm. As they grew more noisy, one human took the nearby newspaper, rolled it hard and ... SWAT ! thus ended the life of one fly. And then a few more.

My translation of the haiku, which seems pure shasei (sketching from reality) in this context, would thus be:

until I hit that fly,
this was not
a fly-swatter

Thus it would not be a problem of philosophical existence, but simply one of using and naming things as life proceeds on hot summer days ....

........... nakarishi
... sonzai shinakatta ... did not exist ??
... de wa nakatta ... was not

Read the discussion about the fly-swatter, a tool and a person.
Fly, mosquito and fly-swatter are kigo for summer.

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Memorial Stones (ku-hi 句碑)



温泉めぐりして戻りし部屋に桃の活けてある

back from the hot bath
in my room in the vase
peach blossoms

(Tr. Gabi Greve)
The kigo is Peach Blossom.

http://www.lib.ehime-u.ac.jp/KUHI/JAP/michi4.html

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さくら活けた花屑の中から一枝拾う

from the cherry blossoms
arranged in the vase
I take out one branch

(Tr. Gabi Greve)
The kigo is Cherry Blossom ...


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Japanese Links 日本語のリンク

Haiku
http://www.kagyushinsha.com/roheki.html
http://www.suien.net/hekigodo/kansyo.htm


Life
.........................................His Grave



http://www.geocities.co.jp/HeartLand-Oak/6788/hekigoto.html
http://www.suien.net/hekigodo/
http://www002.upp.so-net.ne.jp/sohtensya/tanshijin.htm
http://www.lib.ehime-u.ac.jp/KUHI/JAP/kuhi143.html
http://joho.ehime-iinet.or.jp/syogai/jinbutu/html/020.htm


........................... His Handwriting


Large:
http://image.blog.livedoor.jp/gabigreve2000/imgs/1/6/1611b858.jpg
http://www.e-tmm.info/gakugei-2.htm

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http://hccweb6.bai.ne.jp/kakimori_bunko/tokuten02-haru.html

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Fly-swatter, hae tataki　蝿叩き,蝿叩　


... how long has the term fly swatter been around?
Carole ...

Read the answer HERE:
Fly-swatter, a kigo in the World Kigo Database 　　　　　　　　　　

Daruma san and many others are using a . fly whiks (flywhisk) 払子,hossu . to get rid of the flies in his sourroundings.

Gabi Greve

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「林檎をつまみ云ひ尽くしてもくりかへさねばならぬ」
ringo o tsumami ii-tsukushite mo kurikaesaneba naranu

munching apples ....
even after all is said,
it needs to be repeated
(Tr. Gabi Greve)

Read a discussion about this haiku by
Hugh Bygott, Translating Haiku Forum


I pick up an apple;
I've said everything that was to be said,
But still must repeat.

Tr. Donald Keene

Read more of the discussion about this haiku


munching apples...
even after all is said,
it gets repeated...

Larry Bole, Translating Haiku Forum


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. Ogiwara Seisensui 荻原 井泉水
(1884 - 1976)



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