{"id":130390,"date":"2018-10-26T11:00:06","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T15:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=130390"},"modified":"2018-10-26T10:16:54","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T14:16:54","slug":"my-younger-brother-spreads-his-palms-maple-leaves-yukio-mishimas-haiku","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/10\/26\/my-younger-brother-spreads-his-palms-maple-leaves-yukio-mishimas-haiku\/","title":{"rendered":"My Younger Brother Spreads His Palms, Maple Leaves: Yukio Mishima\u2019s Haiku"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Yukio Mishima.<\/p><\/div>\n

Many are likely to be surprised to learn that Yukio Mishima\u2014yes, the writer who chose to die by dazzlingly public disembowelment and decapitation in 1970\u2014wrote haiku. When you think of it, though, if you go to school in Japan, you will automatically be asked to compose haiku in grammar school or, at any rate, in junior high school. Also, sometimes, but not often, your parents will meticulously preserve every scrap of your school compositions or the school magazines printing your stuff. Both happened to Mishima. As a result, we have about a hundred eighty of his haiku collected among his complete works.<\/p>\n

Mishima was a literary prodigy. With haiku, it also helped that his Japanese-language teacher in the Middle Division of the Peers School was Kur\u014d Iwata. Iwata didn\u2019t just encourage his students to write. After the war, he established his reputation as an authority on Edo haikai. He published, among other things, a large compilation of commentaries on all of Bash\u014d\u2019s hokku.<\/p>\n

One of Mishima\u2019s earliest haiku dates from when he was seven years old, and it reads:<\/p>\n

\u304a\u3068\u3046\u3068\u304c\u304a\u624b\u624b\u3072\u308d\u3052\u3066\u3082\u307f\u3058\u304b\u306a
\nOt\u014dto ga o-tete hirogete momiji kana
\n<\/em>My younger brother spreads his palms, maple leaves<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The \u201cyounger brother\u201d here is Chiyuki, two years old at the time. He went on to become a diplomat, serving as ambassador to Morocco and Portugal.<\/p>\n

Now in English translations, Mishima may not be known too well as a playwright, despite Donald Keene\u2019s translation of\u00a0Madame de Sade<\/em> and Ingmar Bergman\u2019s famous staging of it, my translation of\u00a0My Friend Hitler and Other Plays<\/em>, and a few others. But he wrote more than seventy plays, beginning with the ones he wrote in his early teens, and most of them were staged in his lifetime. In fact, as Donald Richie observed, \u201clife was but a stage\u201d to Mishima, his staging of his own seppuku the most meticulous construct he pulled off.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His first commercial success in theater was a grand costume drama,\u00a0Rokumeikan<\/em>, in 1956, and it had to do with a political and familial intrigue set around the building of the same name\u2014the British-designed, Renaissance-style social center that the Japanese government built at great cost in 1883. The sole purpose of the large building was to encourage social intercourse between foreign dignitaries and members of the Japanese aristocracy. Japan had opened itself to Western nations only about two decades earlier.<\/p>\n

The Rokumeikan, named after a phrase from the Confucian Odes, survived for half a century until 1933, when Mishima was eight. By then, though, it had long been a fading social club for Japan\u2019s high society, a phantom reminder of \u201cthe age of the Rokumeikan,\u201d when copycatting Westerners represented the height of sophistication and social achievement.<\/p>\n

Mishima wrote a set of five haiku referring to the Rokumeikan and its age. He was sixteen, and he was prompted to write them, one is tempted to imagine, when he saw a Western dress and some paraphernalia\u2014remnants from the youthful days of his grandmother Natsuko among the clothes taken out to air for mushiboshi<\/em>, a seasonal word for \u201csummer.\u201d Natsuko famously, or infamously, influenced Mishima as a child, monopolizing him until well into his early teens. But as Takeshi\u00a0Muramatsu has suggested in his perceptive literary biography of his friend, it is highly unlikely that Natsuko attended any of the balls at the Rokumeikan. She was simply too young for that and not aristocratic enough. Here are Mishima\u2019s haiku, preceded by the heading \u201cAbout the Rokumeikan and Such\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u9999\u6c34\u306e\u3057\u307f\u3042\u308a\u53e4\u304d\u821e\u8e0f\u670d
\nK\u014dsui no shimi ari furuki but\u014dfuku
\n<\/em>Here\u2019s a stain of perfume on an old ball gown<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u866b\u5e72\u3084\u821e\u8e0f\u670d\u306e\u307f\u82b1\u3084\u304b\u306b
\nMushiboshi ya but\u014dfuku nomi hanayaka ni
\n<\/em>Airing clothes only the ball gown elegant<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u9060\u96f7\u3084\u821e\u8e0f\u4f1a\u5834\u99ac\u8eca\u96c6\u3075
\nEnrai ya but\u014d kaij\u014d basha tsudou
\n<\/em>In distant thunder horse carriages gather for the ball<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u86cd\u3042\u307e\u305f\u5ead\u306b\u653e\u3061\u3066\u821e\u8e0f\u4f1a
\nHotaru amata niwa ni hanachite but\u014dkai
\n<\/em>Numerous fireflies released in the garden then the ball<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u821e\u8e0f\u4f1a\u9732\u897f\u4e9c\u307f\u3084\u3052\u306e\u6247\u304b\u306a
\nBut\u014dkai Roshia miyage no \u014dgi kana
\n<\/em>At the ball a souvenir from Russia a fan<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Other than mushiboshi<\/em>, each of the four other haiku contains a summer kigo<\/em>: k\u014dsui<\/em>, \u201cperfume,\u201d thought to help dispel the smell of perspiration; enrai<\/em>, \u201cdistant thunder,\u201d because there\u2019s more thunder in the summer than in other seasons (there are about ten kinds of thunder listed as kigo<\/em>); hotaru<\/em>, \u201cfireflies\u201d; and \u014dgi<\/em>, \u201cfan.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fan here is obviously of a decorative variety, and that prompts me to add that before Japan defeated Russia in the 1904\u20131905 war during the period of global imperialistic expansion\u2014has it ever stopped?\u2014or even before the Russian revolution, Japan\u2019s high society looked up to the Russian aristocracy like the aristocracy of any other European country, and treated things from that country as admirable exotica, although I must also add that those decorative fans may well have been made in Japan and exported.<\/p>\n

In the fall of 1968, Yukio Mishima took time out to write an appreciation of the haiku of Hatano S\u014dha when asked by Haiku<\/em> magazine. Mishima had completed serializing his extended essay Sun and Steel<\/em> (Taiy\u014d to tetsu<\/em>), which made unmistakably clear his intent to kill himself with a blade sooner or later. He also made official the formation of the paramilitary Shield Society, one member of which would help him in his seppuku as decapitator. In the meantime, his life remained as full and intense as ever\u2014or, as he put it, \u201cmurderously busy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet when Haiku<\/em> solicited an essay on S\u014dha, Mishima obliged. Even though S\u014dha had published just one book of haiku, The Flower on the Road<\/em> (Michi no hana<\/em>), in 1956, he was Mishima\u2019s upperclassman at the Peers School, where he formed the haiku group Magnolia Society, which he managed with Mishima. In addition, he had sent Mishima every issue of Blue <\/em>(Ao<\/em>) after starting it in 1953. The magazine was based on the haiku group he had started with some students of the University of Kyoto, which he had attended. In 1948, he had become the youngest member of Hototogisu<\/em>, though in less than ten years, he made comments critical of the magazine.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Yukio Mishima and a cat.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mishima agreed to Haiku<\/em>\u2019s request because he was punctilious and courteous to a fault in such respects. One might imagine, too, that he may have wanted to relive the genre he had given up nearly three decades earlier. Mishima wrote in his essay:<\/p>\n

A junior-high-school student, I tagged along with [S\u014dha], taking part in kukai<\/em> [haiku sessions] and going on gink\u014d<\/em> [haiku excursions]. Mr. Ky\u014dgoku Kiy\u014d, a Peers School alumnus and a haiku writer of the Hototogisu<\/em> group, greatly loved him for his talent, which may have been one reason he approached the group. The haiku sessions in Viscount Ky\u014dgoku\u2019s residence were elegant and classical, as they were held in the guest room with its floor covered with a ceremonial scarlet carpet, even in wartime. Finding myself seated at the end of the honored guests, cowed by the atmosphere, I made myself small.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

S\u014dha, at any rate, wasn\u2019t particularly productive as a haiku writer. Mishima wrote his appreciation with the manuscript of what was to become S\u014dha\u2019s second book years later. In fact, the book still hadn\u2019t been published in the late seventies when Ripp\u016b Shob\u014d planned a six-volume set of modern haiku, asking each poet he included, S\u014dha among them, to make a selection of four hundred pieces plus the writer\u2019s own comments on a dozen or so of them. Those comments\u2014called jikai<\/em>, \u201cself-explications\u201d\u2014are often at once revealing and confusing, even as they remind you that reliance on them is a clear violation of the New Criticism\u2019s \u201cintentional fallacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

S\u014dha\u2019s self-explications reveal, for example, that the reading of the Chinese characters \u8217\u9053 in the title of his first book is not the standard hod\u014d<\/em>\u00a0but michi<\/em>. The title derives from the following haiku, he said, casually adding that the last phrase is in five syllables, not six as one might have thought:<\/p>\n

\u91d1\u9b5a\u7389\u3068\u308a\u843d\u3068\u3057\u306a\u3070\u8217\u9053\u306e\u82b1
\nKingyodama toriotoshinaba michi no hana
\n<\/em>Should I drop the goldfish bowl: a flower on the pavement<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The parenthetical \u201cit would shatter into\u201d could be added after the colon for clarity. In the summer, goldfish vendors at street fairs used to sell ball-shaped glass bowls tied with a string to carry your purchase (though later, plastic bags replaced the glass bowls). S\u014dha explains that even though he wasn\u2019t quite sure about this haiku when he submitted it along with a group of other haiku to Hototogisu<\/em>, the manuscript came back with a double-circle (A++) approval on the piece from the magazine\u2019s founder and editor, Kyoshi Takahama. So he decided to use the phrase michi<\/em> (\u201croad, path, pavement\u201d) as the title of his book. One consequence of doing this was the impression among readers that this was his representative haiku, which prompted some to point out the structural weakness of the haiku.<\/p>\n

S\u014dha\u2019s self-explications also cast into doubt both \u201cshasei<\/em>,\u201d recreating faithfully what you see, an approach Shiki\u00a0Masaoka advocated, and \u201cobjective shasei<\/em>,\u201d an approach Kyoshi\u00a0Takahama advocated as head of the Hototogisu<\/em> group. In the sixties, S\u014dha started associating with avant-garde haiku writers. Take these two pieces:<\/p>\n

\u685c\u8c9d\u9577\u304d\u7ffc\u306e\u6d77\u306e\u661f
\nSakuragai nagaki tsubasa no umi no hoshi
\n<\/em>Cherry clam: its long wings among the stars of the sea<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u591c\u306e\u6e56\u306e\u6697\u304d\u3092\u6d41\u308c\u6850\u4e00\u8449
\nYo no umi no kuraki o nagare kiri hitoha
\n<\/em>Flowing in the dark of the night lake a paulownia leaf<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

S\u014dha says he wrote the first by the sea and the second by a lake, both at night, but he also makes it clear that there is really no way of seeing a \u201ccherry clam,\u201d a small pink bivalve (Nitidotellina hokkaidoensis<\/em>), moving about in the sea, or a paulownia leaf afloat on a lake. He explains that the first was a fanciful description of a particularly bright star, and the second a description of what he imagined might be afloat on a lake off the beach.<\/p>\n

In writing his appreciation, Mishima divided S\u014dha\u2019s haiku into four categories: (1) refreshing pieces that had initially impressed him as a member of the students\u2019 haiku group at the Peers School; (2) those representing a kind of symbolism he discerned S\u014dha gained in haiku; (3) those that are demonic or scary; and (4) those expressing the bleakness of life. Let\u2019s look at one haiku from each of Mishima\u2019s categorizations.<\/p>\n

Refreshing haiku<\/em><\/p>\n

\u30c9\u30ec\u30b9\u306e\u80cc\u306b\u3064\u304d\u307e\u3068\u3075\u868a\u3088\u9060\u3044\u6708
\nDoresu no se ni tsukimatou ka yo t\u014di tsuki
\n<\/em>Around the back of her dress a mosquito clings: distant moon<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This falls into 6-7-5, though syntactically the first thirteen syllables form one unit. S\u014dha wrote hypersyllabic haiku often enough.<\/p>\n

Haiku containing symbolism<\/em><\/p>\n

\u7af9\u8449\u964d\u308a\u5b50\u72ac\u3082\u56fa\u304d\u7cde\u3092\u3059\u308b
\nTakeha furi koinu mo kataki mari o suru
\n<\/em>Bamboo leaves falling a puppy too issues solid droppings<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As we\u2019ve already seen, reading Chinese characters when used in Japanese is often problematic. \u7af9\u8449 is here read takeha <\/em>simply because take no ha chiru<\/em> \u7af9\u306e\u8449\u6563\u308b is a kigo<\/em>; otherwise, it can easily be read chikuha<\/em> or even chikuy\u014d<\/em>. In the original, mari<\/em>, given in a Chinese character meaning \u201cshit\u201d or \u201cmanure,\u201d is so read because S\u014dha specified this reading with a ruby<\/em>; otherwise, \u7cde is likely to be read kuso<\/em>. Etymologically, mari<\/em> originally referred to the Japanese equivalent of \u201cpotty,\u201d and it is a euphemism. Some argue that S\u014dha made a cute picture even cuter by specifying the reading for \u201cshit.\u201d What kind of symbolism Mishima saw in this haiku is anyone\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n

Demonic or scary<\/em><\/p>\n

\u87f9\u6b69\u304d\u4ea1\u304d\u4eba\u5b9b\u306b\u307e\u3060\u304f\u308b\u6587
\nKani aruki nakihito ate ni mada kuru fumi
\n<\/em>A crab walks and letters still addressed to the deceased<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This haiku hints that the letters appear in a horizontally written foreign language because a language so written is called\u00a0kaik\u014d-monji<\/em>, \u201ccrab-walking letters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bleakness of life<\/em><\/p>\n

\u96e8\u306e\u9d59\u66f8\u4fe1\u306e\u6fe1\u308c\u3092\u304b\u306a\u3057\u3081\u3070
\nAme no mozu shoshin no nure o kanashimeba
\n<\/em>A rainy shrike as I sorrow over an epistle that\u2019s wet<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The shrike is a kigo<\/em> for autumn. Was S\u014dha echoing the following haiku by Kat\u014d Sh\u016bson?<\/p>\n

\u304b\u306a\u3057\u3081\u3070\u9d59\u91d1\u8272\u306e\u65e5\u3092\u8ca0\u3072\u6765
\nKanashimeba mozu konjiki no hi o oi ku
\n<\/em>As I sorrow a shrike flies in against the golden sun<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sh\u016bson\u2019s piece reminds us that Mishima famously associated the moment of death, violent death, with the word kakuyaku <\/em>(kakueki<\/em>) \u8d6b\u5955, \u201cbrilliantly,\u201d \u201cglitteringly,\u201d as when he described the moment of disembowelment of the young terrorist Isao\u00a0Iinuma at the end of Runaway Horse<\/em> (Homba), the second volume in his tetralogy. He had planned to end his life upon completion of the project, and he did. In this respect, Mishima\u2019s imagination may have been closer to Sh\u016bson\u2019s than to S\u014dha\u2019s.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Born in 1942,\u00a0Hiroaki Sato is a celebrated translator and author who has lived in New York City for fifty years. New Directions published his translation of Sakutaro Hagiwara\u2019s<\/em> The Iceland.<\/p>\n

Excerpted from <\/em>On Haiku<\/a>, by Hiroaki Sato, published by New Directions on October 30.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many are likely to be surprised to learn that Mishima\u2014yes, the writer who chose to die by dazzlingly public disembowelment and decapitation in 1970\u2014wrote haiku. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1631,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[3416,7111,39584,39585,6225,39591,39582,39586,1945,18263,39589,39581,504,39587,5245,39583,8077,165,39590,39588,44,1753],"class_list":["post-130390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-basho","tag-confessions-of-a-mask","tag-death-in-midsummer","tag-edo-haikai","tag-haiku","tag-hatano-soha","tag-hiroaki-sato","tag-hokku","tag-japan","tag-japanese-literature","tag-japanese-poetry","tag-kigo","tag-literature","tag-my-friend-hitler","tag-new-directions","tag-on-haiku","tag-playwright","tag-poetry","tag-rokumeikan","tag-seppuku","tag-theater","tag-yukio-mishima"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMy Younger Brother Spreads His Palms, Maple Leaves: Yukio Mishima\u2019s Haiku by Hiroaki Sato<\/title>\n<meta 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