For Japanese Speakers

Now that the New Year has come----I just want to wish everyone a Happy Hime Hajime!!!

 

Ok---for those of you learning Japanese----hime hajime means 'first princess' or 'the princess' first one' is probably better.

In the New Years everything you do for the first time is significant---even lucky---in Japan. So for example, the fiirst time you boil water is 'hatsu yu.' Hime hajime could also be called-----first congress, first love, first relations, first intercourse, first bonk, first shag, or simply------first fuck-----but that last one seems to especially take that Japanese sacred lucky essence of that first time of the year out of it.

It's now the 4th so for many of you it may be too late-----but Happy Hime Hajime everyone.

 

Over the years, I have composed numerous haiku about himehajime. I will have to find those---However my first haiku of the year (Hatsuku---hakku), coincidentally is on the samee subject, and goes:

Asa hayai
hataraku yuuna
himehajime.

Early in the morning
the working bath house prostitute
--himehajime.

On the surface, this is Senryu, or satirical haiku. But deeper down, it has numerous other layers of meaning. The bath-house prostitute in old Japan was, among prostitutes, nothing like the courtesans or geisha, but rather a low ranking prostitute. My impression is that she did not even have the status, nor possibly even the skill of today's Soapland women, the skillful prostitutes at what used to be known as Turkish Baths (Turkey took offense and forced Japan to change the name from Toruko--which also means Turkey).

So here you have a sacred act, or at least special act, being performed in the vulgar, by a girl who provides this service , easily multiple times a day. I also wrote:

Ganjitsu ni
hataraku yuuna
himehajime

On the first day of the year
the working bath house prostitute
himehajime

But this is too blatant perhaps? Early in the morning, in light of himehajime, already implies January First. This is the most important and special day of the year in Japan. It is a time for family, relaxing, eating good food... But a bath is also very important--and for the poor who cannot afford their own bath, the bath house must stay open. So even on this special sacred day, this sacred act is performed by the vulgar. One must wonder, if that particular copulation is special for either participant. Perhaps through the day and weeks, she will provide the himehajime to many lonely men. But what about her own family? Her own ability to share this once a year moment with a lover, who makes her whole? And was that first customer that was her himehajime, even worthy of such an honor? Alas, she most likely had no choice in the matter-----reflecting that typical Japanese fatalism that defines the plot of so many Japanese stories...



Here is one from a few years ago:

Yuki furi fruri ni
baba to jiji
himehajime

As the snow falling, falling
the old lady, and the old man
himehajime

 

Here are a couple I found that I wrote back in 2000:

Mantsuki no
yukigumo ni
himehajime kana

The full moon
in the snow clouds
Ah! Himehajime.

There is probably a more poetic way of translating that one---because they are the snow clouds of the full moon, or the full moon's snow clouds---a subtlety I did not express in English. (Not that the hailu is neccesarily that good, but...)


Yuki furi ya
robi no hikari ni
himehajime

Falling snow.
by the light of the robi
himehajime

Robi is the hearth in the center of the old farmhouses. It is the fireplace where they would cook, boil water, and in the winter or on cold nights, keep the house warm.

ganjistsu ya
hiru demo denai
himehajime

New Year's Day
don't even step out at noon
himehajime

This is one is a little descriptive, and probably does not make good haiku--maybe it tells rather than hints (maybe not---I don't know...)----but as senryu--sarcastic haiku----I guess it might be fine.

And here is another bath house prostitute one I found from 2002---gotta love the bathhouse prostitutes----such pathos of the human experience:

yuagaru yuna wa
nukui kana
himehajime

the bathhouse prostitute, fresh from the hot water
ah! so warm
himehajime

yuagaru is literally to arise from the hot water. I played around with this one a bit---maybe nukui kana is better at the beginning?

I came up with another one that is similar depending on how you interpret it---

yuagaru no
akagai ya
akikaze suzushi

fresh from the hot water
the red clam!
Cool autumn wind

Akagai, literally red calm, is actually a mussel---and if you want to know why mussel relates to a bathouse prostitute or sex, order mussel the next time you go to a sushi bar, look at it, and tell me what it reminds you of. If prepared properly it tends to be a pretty anatomically accurate depiction of the vulva. The Japanese know that so yes it is a euphemism. Yuagaru could be 'rising out of the hot water;' 'pulled out of the hot water;' 'coming out of the hot water...' That is what is so cool about haiku is that it is so open to your own multiple subjective interpretations/aesthetic-experiences of it.

Speaking of the pathos of the bathouse prostitute, here is another one from late 2002---also a new years, or winter theme:

mochi kui yuna mo
haha no koto
omoidashi

eating a mochi,
the bathouse prostitute
remembers her mother

This one actually needs work---but I just wrote it as an idea---I was thinking about the cooked rices cakes one snacks on in the winter, especially at celebrations and with family. Mochi (rice cake) by itself could mean any kind of rice cake made with sticky rice, and I don't think is a seasonal word---meaning this one does not have one---but I could be wrong---I'd have to check. If it is then the haiku would be fine as is---but you can imagine the sad loneliness of a girl in such situation around the holidays as she remembers and misses her own family.



Mori o me ni
hanei shi
himehajime

Forest reflecting
in the eyes
himehajime


Toutoki ta
tsuki no hikari ni
himehajime

In the sacred field
in the light of the moon
himehajime

In ancient times, and even today, in many old agricultural communities around the world, people would have sex in the fields to make make them fertile. Much of the sacred aspect of sex is that it is deeply tied to fertility.

 

明けましておめでてうなぁ！

 

Arigatou! Omedetou na!

Pray tell---how you could do that in Japanese----I had a Japanese computer in Japan---but it is long lost----do you know how I can get my computer here to allow me to type in Japanese? I can pull it up (except for my Dell is having problems), but I can't input. Hopefully you have a solution I don't have to buy...

 

Japanese IMEをグーグルしたら。　

If you still have your windows OS CD,　Control Panel　＞　Languages >　Install east Asian Languages.　

 

Arigatou. zannen---mou nai to omou ya nen... But I will see what I can find on google---thank you! Homma ni ee yanke--JapaneseIME o google yatte miru sakai--homma ni ee kotcha oshiete-kureta yanke. Okini, Okini, arigatou!. (feels good to sometimes use that Osaka-ben...)

 

^ that's some thick kansai-ben LOL I had to laugh. I've studied there as well.

 

Posting in awesome thread, so I can find it later.
I'm just starting to learn.

 

Wow! Thank you Manservant Hecubus!!!

I guess I'll have to keep the haiku coming!

LOL! I enjoy it---I especially like doing an Osaka drunk---but you have to hear that... Where did you study at? I studied at Kansai Gaidai (Kansai Gaikokugo Daigaku) back in about 1980. My first wife was from Osaka girl and her parents were older---her grandfather was traditional Meiji style, and the family was pretty traditional---we lived in their house (since she was the oldest daughter with no brothers) and had a separate room from the house in their garden. Everyday was not only Osaka-ben, but prewar Osaka-ben. We didn't drink Aisu-Kouhii for example, but reikou. (For nonspeakers---Ice Coffee on Osaka was Reikou, but even young Osaka people in the 80's would never say that (rei comes from the Chinese reading of the Kanji character for cold).

I guess I will have to keep searching for the JapaneseIME, because none of the free ones I found work for Microsoft Word 2003-----Homma ni Akkan wa!! Ano Microsoft barro!! Dokusotare n ya! Ano Bill Gates no do-tama kachiwaru ya de! (Translation for you nonspeakers: "That is too bad. That Microsoft is an organization of poor quality. They are, um, stupid. I would like to explain this to Bill Gates in a non-aggressive constructive manner." Right? Kokujin----that's just how I said it...;-) ) Anyway---you got me on the right track...

For those of you learning Japanese, memorize that saying for extra points in class, and just put in your teachers name in place of Bill Gates and Microsoft... Say your teacher is Mrs Yamamoto: Homma ni Akkan wa!! Ano Yamamoto barro!! Dokusotare n ya! Yamamoto-san no do-tama kachiwaru ya de! Say it loud and fast and roll the r's in barro.

(I have only heard barro used a few times in years of living in Osaka---let's just say they were very heated discussions---it acutally comes from baka yaro---but Osaka people can put a whole lot more feeling into that).

 

Ok---I am going to go off on a tangent here---but it is haiku connected, and winter at that, which is still New Years. But these are some posts I put on facebook after seeing this incredible video---which is actually celtic fiddle over dubstep:


I've always loved experimenting with eclectic music and bringing it together. The Moody Blues did an incredible job of bringing classical music into the Rock realm. Rick Wakeman added synthesizers to the classical music-rock. The Beatles and others introduced the sitar and Indian music into Rock. I've played around with classical themes embellished with synthesizer...

My son just found this dubstep piece---classical violin played over synthesizers playing dubstep. Lindsey Stirling is hot as hell, her music is great--------her dance moves are erotic.... This was filmed here in Colorado (I was thinking Iceland or somewhere in the Scandinavian regions)----but, yeah-----I dig this.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHjpOzsQ9YI"]Dubstep Violin Original- Lindsey Stirling- Crystallize - YouTube


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHjpOzsQ9YI


It is a Celtic style that she plays, and that has always given me a feeling of the spirituality that lies underneath---playing back to the old Celtic and Pictish indigenous traditional ways.

This video immediately made me think back to an old Tanka I composed---experimenting with that traditional style of Japanese poetry. (This is an old style, based on haiku, but using 31 syllables rather than 17). I liked the idea but not the poem because it is too too descriptive----but it was an early experiment. This poem is about Miko, the Japanese shamaness of long ago--Japanese maidens who called down the Shinto Gods---it could be one, it could be a group. The Tanka though I think is too descriptive so I don't like it:

Fuyugasumi
tani butokoro no
furujinja,
Miko kami oroshi ni
mimizuku naru

Winter haze
in a steep deep valley
the old shrine,
As the Miko calls down the gods
cry of the Horned Owl.

Here is another one:

Fuyugasumi
yami no katayuku
Yamahime ya


A winter haze
heading into the darkness...
Ah! A Mountain Goddess

A Yamahime was a Shinto Goddess of the mountain. There was also the Yamatsumi, the God of the mountain. Shinto is animistic, and believes everything is alive. But older, more majestic things especially have gods living within them. In the mountains you could sometimes find little statues of the mountain god and/or goddess, placed in a special place in the forest----the gods within that mountain. Then again, one might encounter the gods themselves...


Another Miko one---

Yama yuki ya
shiranu jinja ni
Miko no uta


The mountain snow!
in an unkown shrine
the Miko's song

The Miko's song, heard from some hidden shrine in the midst of the mountain snow, would be one of calling the gods to come down. If it is accompanied, it would certainly be with a drum, possibly bells and a whining high pitched wind instrument. It is fast paced but with restrained tones. Celtic music too, has a certain restrained tonal quality about it----as if the hidden sacredness underlying all of reality, is at that particular moment, straining to pierce through the veil between the spiritual, and the physical---but for all except the few most deeply in tune, the veil strains, but remains closed, leaving only the slight hint of what lays within.


OK---here's another one I just happened to find---I wrote it in December 2009:

Yamamori ni
furujinja
yuki no yado nari


In the mountain forest
the old shrine
becomes shelter from the snow

Haiku is supposed to be experienced subjectively, and there are many experiences you could derive from this, but picture this, you are hiking through a mountain forest when a snow storm hits. You duck in to an old forgotten shrine, which protects you from the snow, but who knows what old spirits, what old gods, are lurking inside, and safe from the snow you are now in their world...

That reminds me of an old Japanese saying----"you'll never be cursed by the god you don't touch." (Sawaranu kami ni, tatari nashi).

But I think this haiku really fits her video----she's playfully wandering through these ice castles (conjuring up spirits?)---but there is a little hesitation at times, maybe slight moments of fear------what is out there she seems to wonder...

 

Here is a haiku from 2006. It is about the Jizobosatsu. A bosatsu is a Buddhist Boddhisatva. But a Jizobosatsu is a small stone statue of a little standing Buddha. They are placed in shrines and at temples, and so forth. A common place to find them is at a mountain temple along a trail where a rock juts out over an indentation in the side of the mountain creating a natural shrine like covering.

It is especially common to find a bunch of small ones in such places, put there by women who have had stillborns, miscarriaged, or had abortions (which is a fairly common means of birth control in Japan.) They are meant for the spirits of the unborn child.

Yo no yuki ya
furu jizobosatsu
sabishikaro

A snowy night.
The old jizobosatsu
must be lonely...


Here is another one that I will try to relate to you---it is extremely subjective because it has the most meaning to me based on one particular Ramen-seller. In Japan you might find Ramen-sellers--street vendors--pushing their carts of hot ramen through the streets in the evnings and on into the night in many cities and villages (big enough to support them). They carried a fife, and each one had it's own roughly 4-5 second song that it would play as it moved through the streets to call out to customers. You could often hear common versions of these songs on ramen commercials on TV, where they become theme songs for ramen brands.

When I first lived in Japan, I lived in Moriguchi, a suburb of Osaka, between Osaka and Kyoto. The streets were filled with sweat shops, small factories, and machine shops, between rice fields, cheap apartmens, and a share of family run restaurants and bars. One night I heard a song out in the streets coming from a distance--it was a lonely call, almost like a lonely bird calling for its mate. I listened as it grew closer. It would play for about 5 seconds, and then silence, after about 20 seconds or so, it would play again. It got closer and closer until I heard him outside, and looked out the window to see him pushing his cart. I just sat and listened as I heard him slowly disappear in to the distance.

Of all the ramen-seller songs I heard over the years in different parts of Japan, that was my all time favorite. It was also the loneliest of all the ones I ever heard. I don't know what key it was in---I'm not that good at identifying musical keys, but it was played on a fife. It went something like this (starting with C for simplicity):

(C)--------(D)------(F)--------(E-flat)--(D)--(E-flat)--------(F)--(E-Flat)--(D)--(C)--

Maybe it went to (E-natural) instead of (F), but that was the basic tune.


Hitonashi no fuyumichi
ramen-ya no
fue ya

In the empty winter street
the Ramen-seller's
fife!

Hitonashi means no people, or without people.

(By the way, I think Japanese haiku is a great way to aesthetically express oneself even for a non-native speaker, and to use that to learn Japanese as well. A native speaker who composes haiku might find a non-native speaker's poem's to be odd, or poorly composed, or bad haiku in that it is too narrative or has an extra consonant, or is overly heavy on seasonal words, etc, etc, etc. I know that my own haiku can be bad, I don't pretend to be a master haiku composer, and after all Japanese is not my mother tongue. On the other hand, there are plenty of native speakers who compose haiku without really knowing much about it, that could be artistically worse than yours if you follow the rules of haiku aesthetics. And the fact is that Japanese who make a hobby of composing haiku produce a lot of poor haiku themselves---which can be endlessly debated and improved upon and so forth.

Today's Japanese, influenced by the massive thrust to industrialization during the Meiji Era, along with overly objectivistic Confucian Ethics imported from China, have a problem of over-rationalizing things such as haiku, which are of the heart, not of the mind. While I know that I write bad haiku, I also know that I write those that are good. A number of years ago I entered a haiku contest through one of the big temples in Japan. The real purpose was to help people with their haiku. The priest, a recognized expert in haiku, would critique the haiku and provide an alternative. I won that particular contest with the priest saying, "Of all the many haiku I read each month, this one really stood out. This one embodies the spirit of haiku. Because of the katakana non-Japanese name, I assume this is from a foreigner which is also surprising. Very good."

You must also remember that, as a foreigner, a Japanese person already expects your haiku to be flawed. Many Japanese understand their language to be extremely difficult for a foreigner to master (I would say there are plenty of languages far more difficult, and that once you get used to the differences it is actually not that difficult). The implication of this is that, 1.) Some Japanese will be overly complimentary, and praise even poor crude attempts, and overlook mistakes; 2.) Other Japanese will be overly critical and fail to see the value and aesthetic qualities of the haiku.

If you can compose haiku, which you can aesthetically mull over and produce an artistic, or even spiritual experience, especially in multiple subjective ways, then you are succesfully creating haiku----especially if others can gain their own subjective experiences doing the same thing, from your creation.)

 

I think my kansai dialect is a little more young people/modern. I love yours though hah.　Very rough and tough.

俺も関西外大に１セミ（Semester)居たで。。。めっちゃ楽しかったやわ！　ｗｗ

I'll probably use more kansai ben once I"m back,　But at the moment I feel like a poser for using it too much...やけど、自分の日本語はなまりが「関西ぽっくねー？」。。とよく言われるぞ。。　はんまありがたいやわ。。　（笑）

利用出来ているJapanese IMEを見つけたらええやな。　後、俺の場合は大阪弁かあなぁ？　

 

Maybe you already tried googling Japanese IME + Microsoft 2003

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=9801

There's gotta be something!

 

Sou ya nen! Ee gakkou yanke! (I don't know about now though---I have seen it on the internet and it has gotten so big). What year did you go? Did you stay in a homestay?

 

I have written others on the pathos of life referencing the prostitute. These are from November and December 2008:

fuyu no michi
oi no matsu ni
hitori no shoufu

The winter road,
by the old pine tree
a lone prostitute.


fuyu no michi
hitori no shoufu
kaze no koe

The winter road
a lone prostitute
voice of the wind.

The voice of the wind, is of course, the sound of the wind. I remember one early Satruday morning in Tokyo in February, I had missed the last train home (about 1:15) and stayed at a Big Boy restaurant or maybe a Denny's--I forget what it was---somewhere in Shinjuku. They closed for cleaning about 4:45 as I recall, and the first train was a bit after 5:30. It was pretty cold as I made my way towards the train station, and I had to pass an area with its share of love hotels. A middle-aged woman in a purple trench coat stepped out of a corner, shivering, and asked me if I would like to get warm. I thought I heard her but I wasn't sure? 'Sumimasen?' (I'm sorry?) I said to her (Surprised she would even attempt Japanese with me--most Japanese assumed I couldn't speak it). She asked again if I wanted to go someplace warm, adding, with a bed.

She wasn't that bad looking, and I felt sorry for her. But my Filipina wife is a very jealous type and she knew where I was, and what time I'd be home on the first train. 'I'm sorry.' I said, 'my wife's waiting.'

'We could go in there for a short time.' pointing to the love hotel behind her. I took her hand, and held it between mine. It was ice cold. 'I'm sorry. Maybe next time.' I said, and headed on to the train station, leaving her to shiver in the corner of the street, trying to stay out of the wind. I wonder what she would have done if I took her over to a coffee shop and bought her a hot coffee, and let her warm up there. Of course, at 5:00 in the morning, there was no coffee shop open in Shinjuku, at least not back in the late 1980's.


Michi no naka
hitori no shoufu
sokohie ya

In the middle of the road
a lone prostitute
Oh! the deepest cold

Sokohie means the coldest day or time of the year. The point of bitter cold.


Jimon mae
shoufu no shitai
tsuyujimo ya

in front of the temple gate
the corpse of the prostitute
frozen dew!


Michi naka ni
shoufu no shitai
kareno tsuki

In the middle of the road
corpse of a prostitute
moon over the withered moor

This is actually a late fall haiku---the withered moor being a dead dry field.


sokohie ya
yami ni shoufu wa
hotoke nari

The coldest day of the year!
in the darkness the prostitute
becomes a buddha

hotoke is buddha, but it is commonly used to refer to someone passing on. The idea of calling a dead person a buddha comes from a Japanese concept that death purifies a person from the ignorance and lust that taints the living.

Ooh yuki ya
yomichi ni shoufu
hotoke nari

The big snow!
in the night road a prostitute
becomes a buddha


Omoi yuki gumo
chi o haku
shoufu ga matsu

Heavy snow clouds
the prostitute, coughing up blood
awaits.

 

Here is another one from that time---an idea for a haiku, because it doesn't have a seasonal word and is one consonant too many:

Oi no shoufu ya
chi o haku to
enji no kane

The aged prostitute!
coughs up blood
a distant temple bell.


For those of you who do not speak Japanese, 'to' means 'and' which means we could place an 'and' before the distant temple bell. Coughing up blood is never a good sign. In years past, it was usually a sign of advancing tuberculosis. The festering disease was killing the poor soul on a daily basis, as it dissolved the lungs into a dead mush. You knew the end was coming with mucus-filled coughing fits that became more and more bloody, over time you found it more and more difficult to breathe, eventually gasping for air that your lungs, filled with necrotized holes, could barely latch onto to feed into your increasingly oxygen-starved blood stream. In especially advanced cases, you didn't cough up blood tainted mucus, you actually coughed up copious amounts of blood...

One of my attempts to make this into an actual haiku:

Oi no shoufu ya
chi o haku to
kitsune naki

The aged prostitute!
coughs up blood
a fox cries out

The fox is a winter word, placing this back into the winter. The fox, of course is the Japanese trickster, and at a deeper level, it is a motif filled with sexual content. The fox would bewitch unsuspecting men--especially if they were wandering home through forests or the countryside. They would find themselves coming upon a beautiful woman or young girl, who would then seduce him. He would have a night of great sex, only to wake up, the following morning (if he still has enough energy to wake up), near death, to see the fox trotting off in its true animal form. The fox had taken all his yang (which, like for the Chinese, meant semen). They believed that if a man lost all his yang, he would die. (In fact, the secret to eternal life in China---the secret of all those immortals (what the Japanese called Sennin, and in Mandarin was called, Hsienjin) was for the man to accumulate yin, without releasing much yang. In other words, the man would have to bring women to orgasm, without releasing his own seed. If he succesfully accumulated yin and retained his yang, it would cause his skull to grow as all this sexual yin and yang accumulates there. There was a time in China, when all the women of the household--wives, concubines, maids, daughters, were available to the master to help him achieve eternal life. Think about that the next time you see a Chinese statue with a high forehead. On the plus side, at least they placed a lot of focus on making their women satisifed, unlike Western man and his repressed sexuality of the Victorian Age, that left room for plenty of prostitutes, but it was all about satisfaction of the male. For the women, especially the wives, it was simply her cross to bear).

The prostitute was like the fox in many ways. Maybe her partners didn't die, but the money left their hands--and there are plenty of Japanese stories of men who became obsessed with prostitutes. One story, made into the movie, 'In the Realm of the Senses,' was based on a true story, that happened in Japan before World War II. The prostitute was as obsessed with her lover as he was with her, but it eventually led to his death at her hands. Western man had the same motif--the succubus.

But the fox, like any trickster, provides a service and is important to the Japanese. The often very elaborate Fushimi Inari Shinto Shrines are to the fox god---a god of rice, abundance, and fertility. So again there are various levels of experiencing this haiku.

If you have ever heard a fox cry out, it is nothing like a wolf. It is a troubled call--it can include a whine, but it is a shrill, unsettling, troubled call--at least to our human sensibilities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk1mAd77Hr4"]Scream of the red fox - YouTube

or---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk1mAd77Hr4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9Z9JJtZnU"]Weird Noise Ouside ! Fox Barking - YouTube

or---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9Z9JJtZnU

 

This was from December 2009:


Shoufu no shitai
Ohyuki de
Shiroku naru


The corpse of a prostitute
in the heavy falling snow
becomes white


Like so many of these haiku, this can be humorous, or it could be vulgar and disgusting, or macabre. But it could also be an experience of the tragedy of life, the pathos. The snow falls and covers the sad shell of what was probably a sad, pathetic, and tragic life. It covers it without intention, or meaning just as it covers the withered tree branches of winter, or the roofs of family homes where people lie snuggled together in the warmth and love of family. It covers her dead corpse just as swiftly and easily as it covers the lives on that day of her family, if any still live, who themselves are probably oblivious to her whereabouts or her demise. It could even be snowing down on her own children, if she has them, waiting for their mother to come home, and hopefully bring them food…

But it is also a sacred haiku. White is a sacred color of purity in Japan. In a previous post I wrote about becoming a Buddha (hotoke nari), and how death in Japan has a concept of sacred cleansing of the evil and lust of the physical world. Therefore white is associated with death.

One of my favorite samurai TV shows in Japan, Ko tsure Ohkame, was a famous story that was also made into comic books, (manga) and possibly even anime (I watch very little anime). The title doesn’t sound so good in English, ‘The Wolf that takes the kid with him’ or ‘Wolf accompanied by child.’ Part of the problem is it loses its cool sound in English because we cannot modify nouns in an adjectival way with verbs, like ‘Child-taking wolf.’ I know there is an English version of the manga, at least, but I don’t know the English title. Anyway, the story is about a war between two actual samurai families of feudal Japan. In this story the main character’s family has all been killed except his young son of about 2 or 3 years of age. He sets out with his son, on a trip of revenge against the other family. But the complications does not end their---he is blind, and must rely entirely on his samurai skills and sense, and Buddhist spirituality to make his way through this battle against countless foes, all while protecting his son.

In one climactic episode of the TV series, he, and if I remember right (I last saw this in the 1980’s), a woman who occasionally joined him in her own quest for vengeance, were to do battle with the head of the enemy family. Before the battle they both dawned kimono’s, obis (belts), and so forth, of pure white. Then right before entering into battle, with swords drawn, they slipped off their sandals---entering bare foot. This is a powerful death motif in Japan. It said that they knew this could be a suicide mission, and were prepared to die. But they would fight to the death, a death that would be cleansing and carry them into the next world, because, their white kimonos also showed that they had made peace with themselves and the world, and had fully submitted themselves to the cycle of life, whatever it brings them.

Of course, the series had to go on, and I don’t remember the details, but I believe they both lived as did the enemy master.

Even today, you see Japanese take off their shoes as a symbol of their readiness to die. If you happen to be on a roof of a high building, and see a Japanese individual step onto the roof, walk over the edge, and take off his or her shoes----you better have someone call 911, get over there fast.

But getting back to the haiku, I believe this concept of white is not exclusively Buddhist, but Shinto as well. On one level this is a Buddhist haiku. But I am not Buddhist. I have great respect for Buddhism, and if I was to follow an organized religion, Buddhism would be a great contender to be it. But I am an animist—and therefore closer to Shintoism in belief.

Therefore this has significance in an animistic way to me, that is still not alien to a Japanese sentiment: It is nature, in her endless dynamic of birth, life, death, renewal, that cleanses and purifies. The dead prostitute, left to the elements like a pile of rubbish (at least if she had been there for a while, her body not yet discovered, or perhaps not yet removed by the proper authorities), is still cleansed and purified, but not by man, not by his religious institutions, but the eternal never-ending Mother Nature.


Here is another one, that could be Buddhist, but to me it fits my animistic belief system:

Oku eh, oku eh to
Fuyu mori ni
gekko ga…

Deeper, deeper
into the winter forest--
the moonlight…

It is about the moon, which can symbolize enlightenment in Buddhism. There is a death significance to the moon too perhaps, but I do not remember off hand. To an animist, it is a living companion, and depending on the tradition, a god or goddess. ‘Oku’ can mean the center, or deep, or deep within. Oku eh refers to movement towards that inner place.

 

About a year ago I found a book on Chinese poetry. The first poetry I ever appreciated was Chinese poetry, when I was in Junior High, or maybe High School. I never saw myself as a big poetry fan, but I was fascinated with the Orient as a kid. It was later that I learned to really appreciate haiku, and discovered that to be a truly amazing art form through its subtlety and subjectiveness. In addition to haiku and Chinese poetry, there is of course beat or hippy poetry, and then Scottish poetry.

I don't buy too many books on Chinese poetry because, of the ones that are out there, many of them leave out the original Chinese. And Chinese is very open to interpretation especially in translating poetry into English.

Anyway, in this particular book there was a poem that I found to be similar to the last one in my previous post. Chinese poetry refelcts a lot of Buddhist sentiment as well, but it is also heavily influenced by the animistic beliefs of Taoism. This poem is by Wang Wei who lived about 700 a.d. This is my own translation,

The empty mountain, no one can be seen
but voices are heard
The sun's reflection reaches deep into the forest
and shines upon the green moss.


I left out the word person or people in the second verse, which appears in the original Chinese.

Here is another of mine from 2009:

Michi wakarazu ni
yuki no tsuki mo
sabishii

Lost, and
even the snowy moon
is lonely