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Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) - pseudonym of Masaoka Tsunenori | |
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Japanese writer usually credited with reviving the traditional Japanese poetic form of haiku. Masaoka Shiki was the founder of the magazine Hototogisu and despite his brief life he became a highly esteemed critic in his time. His role as a charismatic literary figure has shadowed his merits as a poet and diarist. Facing away from me When the loofah bloomed Masaoka Shiki was born in Matsuyama in present-day Ehime Prefecture. His father, Masaoka Hyata, was a low-ranking samurai, who died when Masaoka was at the age of five. His mother, Yae, was a teacher. While still at at school, Masaoka started to write prose and poetry. In 1883 he left Matsyama and moved to Tokyo, where he attended University Preparatory College and then studied classic Japanese literature at the Tokyo Imperial University. During this period he traveled around Japan and met Natsume Soseki (1867-1916), who later gained fame as a novelist and short story writer. In 1892 Masaoka's studies were abrupt because of health problems. The rest of his life he devoted to the writing of haiku and waka (or tanka). After withdrawing from the Imperial University, Masaoka was a haiku editor of the newspaper Nippon. In 1892 Masaoka started his reform of the poetic form. At that time the traditional seventeen-syllable verse form was considered incapable of expressing the complexities of modern life. While working as a war correspondent in Chinese-Japanese War in 1894-95, Masaoka contracted tuberculosis, and remained an invalid for much of the rest of his life. Masaoka also suffered from caries of the spine, but he faced his illness and physical pain with dignity ironic humor. On returning to Japan, Masaoka continued to advocate reevaluation the haiku and loosening its tight conventions, which he saw dangerous for its development as an art form. He published several essays on the subject, first attacking the great haiku master, Bashõ, in the newspaper Nihon, but later softened his views. In 1897, he and his disciples founded the literary journal Hototogisu. Next year he turned his attention to tanka in Letters to the Tanka Poets. In the last years of his life, Masaoka was bound to his six-foot sickbed, but his home became a meeting place for his friends and followers, who gathered there to discuss literature. Masaoka Shiki died in Tokyo on September 9, 1902, a few weeks before his thirty-fifth birthday. His essays are still widely read. Initially a prose writer, Masaoka devoted a major portion of his short life to the collection and composition of haiku. He advocated realistic observation based on the technique of "sketching" (shasei) in the presentation of images. Masaoka himself adopted the practice of going out into nature with notebooks and making there "sketches", thus abandoning the traditional subject matter of haiku. His advice for an aspiring poet was, "Use both imaginary pictures and real ones, but prefer the real ones." For Masaoka, the traditional form of poetry was a means for artistic, personal expression. In one tanka he wrote: "people in our world / down their sake / to appear smart, knowing: / me - I devour persimmons / and look like a monkey". In this and other writings Masaoka avoided scholarly jargon. Through Masaoka's work the haiku gained the prestige it had enjoyed during the Tokugawa period in the 17th century. With his followers and influential writings, he also helped to modernize the tanka. Masaoka's most important writings on the subject were DASSAI SHO-OKU HAIWA (1892), HAIKAI TAIYÔ (1895), and HAIJIN BUSON (1897). BASHO ZATSUDAN (1894) was a critical examination of the principles of Bashõ. In Buson Yosa he found an example of a gentleman who was gifted in poetry, calligraphy, and painting. Masaoka's appreciation of visual arts was deepened by his friendship with Nakamura Fusetsu (1866-1943), a Western-style artist, who studied in Paris for a few years. His two diaries, published in 1901-1902, combine qualities of the classical Japanese poetic diary with the self-revelation of modern autobiography. Posthumously appeared a volume called Songs from a Bamboo Village (1904). The recurring theme in his works is the juxtaposition of the author's own inevitable fate with the ongoing life of nature and the human world. Unable to move out of his room, the poet continued to record what he saw around him: "again and again / I ask how high / the snow is". HAIKU: Japan's most popular unrhymed poetic form. Haiku consist of 17 syllables arranged in three lines containing five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. Outstanding haiku masters: Matsuo Bashõ (1644-1694), Buson Yosa (1716-1783), Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827). Haiku's emphasis on the immediate and concrete influenced early 20th century Imaginism in Europe and America, especially through the efforts of Ezra Pound. Both Masaoka and his successor Takahama Kyoshi (1874-1959) saw haiku as a poetry of a single object. - TANKA: A Japanese fixed form of verse of 31 syllables and five lines, the first and third of which have five syllables, and the other seven (5-7-5-7-7). Tanka focuses on the essence of one static event, image, mood. Until the sixteenth century, near all poetry written in Japanese took the tanka form. Shiki's and Bashõ's haiku on the theme of summer: For further reading: 'Masaoka Shiki and Tanka Reform' by R.H. Brower, in Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture, ed. by D.H. Shively (1971); Landscapes and Portraits by D. Keene (1971); Modern Japanese Haiku: An Anthology (1976); Masaoka Shiki by Janine Beichman (1982); A History of Japanese Literature, vol. 3, by Shuichi Kato (1983); Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death by Yoel Hoffman (1998); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 3, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999) - Suom: Shikin runoja on suomennettu antologioihin Kirsikankukkia (1951) ja Japanilaisia runoja (1953). Vuonna 1999 ilmestyi Orientan kustantamana Shikin haiku-runoja, ryhmiteltynä neljälle vuodenajalle. Suomentajina oli Heikki Mattilan johdolla ryhmä Japani-Killan jäseniä: Tanja Häkkinen, Miia Hämäläinen ja Marko Kempas. Ruotsiksi on ilmestynyt Orientan kustantamana kokoelma Masaoka Shiki, Japanska haiku-dikter, ruots. Noriko Thunman ja Per Erik Wahlund Selected works:
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