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Frogpond 32.3 • 2009

Museum of Haiku
Literature Award

Haiku & Senryu

Revelations Unedited

Essay

Haibun

Rengay

Tan Renga

Book Review

From the Editors

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Explicating the Haiku of Mitsuhashi Takajo
三橋鷹女 (1899-1972)

by Hiroaki Sato, New York

Editors’ Note: This article is based on a presentation Hiroaki Sato gave to the Haiku Society of America Quarterly Meeting in New York on June 24, 2009. Haiku translations by workshop attendees are to be found on pages 80-81.

A few years after I arrived in this city, in 1968, I was asked to tutor two American ladies on haiku. These were the happy days when people readily, innocently, assumed that anyone from another country was a cultural emissary of that country, fully informed of all aspects of that country. I was also young, being in my late twenties, and brash—I refrain from revealing my conjecture as to why—and so I agreed, and began teaching haiku, even though my knowledge of the literary genre was close to nonexistent.

The upshot was that I went to either lady’s residence every week and explicated two classical haiku so they might work out their own translations. There were several outcomes to this. For one, I learned to drink vodka. The first evening we met, the ladies took me to a French restaurant. There they asked what I’d like to drink. Because I had never experience anything of the sort in Japan, I looked lost or simply bewildered. Kindly assuming that I was shy or reserved Japanese-style, they summoned a garçon and asked him what drinks were available. He quickly ran down a list, which bewildered me even more, so I said the first one. That was vodka. Then when they saw my glass was empty, the ladies asked if I needed a refill. Because Japanese custom tells you never to say no, I said yes. The rest is history.

What I propose to do today is something similar to what I did in those long-gone days: to explicate a few haiku so that you may work out your own translations.

Mitsuhashi Takajo 三橋鷹女 was born to Mitsuhashi Jūrōbē and Mitsu, in Narita, Chiba. Her father was an executive of the famous temple Naritayama Shinshō-ji 成田山新勝寺 and deputy mayor of Narita. Her original name was Fumiko 文子 but it was later changed to Takako たか子. 1 She initially wrote tanka under the influence of Yosano Akiko 与謝野晶子 (1872-1942) and Wakayama Bokusui 若山牧水 (1885-1932). She married Azuma Kenzō 東謙三, a dentist who wrote haiku, in March 1922. Son Yōichi 陽一 was born in January 1923. Eight months later the region was struck by the Great Kantō Earthquake, killing 50,000 people in Tokyo alone; Takako, with her infant son, was buried under her collapsed house but both were “miraculously” rescued in three hours, with only one of her legs hurt.

Takako switched from tanka to haiku, in 1926, adopting the haiku nom de plume Azuma Fumie 東文恵. In 1928, with her husband and neighbors, she started a haiku gathering named “Waseda Haiku Quartet,” because her husband’s dental clinic was near Waseda University. She changed her haiku nom de plume to Azuma Takajo 東鷹女 in 1934 and published her first haiku collection 向日葵 Himawari (Sunflower), in 1940. When her older brother died in 1942, she, with her son, inherited the Mitsuhashi name; since then she has been known as
Mitsuhashi Takajo.

She published her fifth and last collection 橅 Buna (Japanese Beech; Fagus crenata), in 1970, just a year and four months before her death. Takajo’s complete haiku, Mitsuhashi Takajo zen-kushū (Rippū Shobō, 1976), listed 2,146 haiku. Her complete works Mitsuhashi Takako zenshū (Rippū Shobō, 1989) came in two volumes, with one of them dedicated to a selection of essays on her haiku.

For some time Takajo was counted among the Four T’s, the four outstanding women haiku writers whose names started with T, the three others being Nakamura Teijo 中村汀女, Hoshino Tatsuko 星野立子, and Hashimoto Takako 橋本多佳 子.2 Mindful of this and also mindful that Takajo said, in the brief autobiographical note appended to her first haiku collection Himawari, that she felt “dissatisfaction and bleakness with traditional haiku and started to dare attempt to make adventuresome haiku,” Yamamoto Kenkichi (山本健吉1907-1988) wrote of her:3

You can say Mitsuhashi Takajo is the most distinctive woman [haiku] writer. She entered the haiku world, enchanted by [Hara] Sekitei in his Mt. Yoshino period; but, even as she belonged to various haiku groups, she was never dyed any color, maintaining the sole Takajo tone from start to end. Nurturing dissatisfaction with traditional haiku in herself, she stood outside any of the era’s currents. She was incomparable in her bold timing in seizing a momentary light-footed flash candidly and stating it in unadorned fashion.

So, let us look at three of Takajo’s haiku in detail.

The First Haiku for Explication

虹消えてしまえば還る人妻に
Niji kieteshimaeba kaeru hitozuma ni

The rainbow having vanished I’m back to being a wife

This haiku comes from the 1950 section, “Like Ice,” of Takajo’s third collection Hakkotsu 白骨 (White Bones), published in 1953, and containing a total of 524 pieces. The title, she explained, refers to the fact that she kept writing haiku thinking of the day she would turn into bones. The collection begins with pieces describing her son Yōichi, now 18, going off to the Imperial Army’s Accounting School.

Structure: 2 + 7 + 3 + 4 + 1. A case which, at least syntactically, renders moot the assumption that haiku consists of 5 + 7 + 5 syllables.

Word-for-word: niji (a recent summer kigo): rainbow; kieteshimaeba (compound verb): when or if (something) has completed or completes disappearing or vanishing; kaeru: return, go back to; hitozuma: (someone’s) wife; ni (directional particle): to.

Comments: kaeru hitozuma ni is an inversion; normal phrasing would put it as hitozuma ni kaeru. As often happens, no personal pronouns are given; so who is doing the act of kaeru, “return,” is not entirely clear.

The Second Haiku for Explication

罌粟散ってこころに抱くは鳥獣
Keshi chitte kokoro ni daku wa tori-kemono

Poppies scattered my heart embraces birds beasts

This selection comes from the 1936-1938 section, “Phantom,” of her second collection Uo no hire 魚の鰭 (The Fin of a Fish), published in 1941 and contains 619 pieces.

Structure: 2 + 3 + 3 + 1 + 3 + 5.

Word-for-word: keshi: poppy; chitte: scattering, having scattered; kokoro: heart, mind; ni (particle): in; daku: hold, hug, embrace; wa (particle to specify the sentence subject); kokoro ni daku wa: (literally), what I hold in my heart; tori-kemono: bird-beast. Paraphrase: “Poppies having scattered, what my heart embraces are birds and beasts.”

Comments: Keshi is one of the words that become kigo only when combined with some other words; so, keshi no hana (poppy flowers; summer), keshi bōzu (poppy buds; summer), keshi maku (poppy sowing; autumn). Takajo was obviously ignoring that convention. Also, “poppy” here is any of the varieties grown for their flowers, not for opium: corn poppy, Flanders poppy, Iceland poppy, etc. There is little to go on to begin to guess what Takajo was imagining, what she was describing.

There are two other variations of “poppies scatter”:

罌粟散るを見しより男老い初めぬ
Since seeing poppies scatter the man began to age

けし散りぬ掟は人の世に重く
Poppies have scattered with the Law heavy on human society

The Third Haiku for Explication

The last haiku comes from the 1959 section, “Strait,” of Takajo’s fourth collection Shida jigoku 羊歯地獄 (Fern Hell), published in 1961 which containins 381 pieces. In the years 1959 and 1960, Takajo experimented with wakachigaki, placing space(s) between words within a line.

雪をよぶ  片身の白き生き鰈
Yuki o yobu katami no shiroki iki-garei

Calling snow forth one side white the live flatfish

Structure: 2 + 1 + 2 3 + 1 + 3 + 5.

Word-for-word: yuki: snow; o: particle to specify the sentence object; yobu: call; katami: one side of the body; no: (here a particle to specify the subject); shiroki (slightly archaic): white; iki: live; garei (karei): flatfish. Paraphrase: “A live flatfish, with one side of its body white, calls forth the snow.”

Comments: In Japan, they make a distinction between the fish whose eyes migrated to the right side (karei) and the fish whose eyes have migrated to the left side (hirame).

Editors’ Note: Translations of Takajo’s haiku by three workshop participants occur on the following two pages.

• • •

Alternate Translations by Workshop Attendees of Three Haiku by Mitsuhashi Takajo, Japan, after Initial Translations by Workshop Leader, Hiroaki Sato, New York

Haiku One

The rainbow having vanished I’m back to being a wife

Alternate Translations:

the rainbow fades
into its dark sky then
I am a wife again

Jaxon Teck, New Jersey

                                              the rainbow
                                              lifts me out of myself
                                              then vanishes

                                              Arlene Teck, New Jersey

The rainbow having dimmed I return to my marriage

Marilyn Hazelton, Pennsylvania

Haiku Two (poppy variations)

Poppies scattered my heart embraces birds beasts

Since seeing poppies scatter the man began to age

Poppies having scattered with the Law heavy on human society

Alternate Translations:

wind blows poppy leaves
my heart goes with them to find
birds and wild beasts

Jaxon Teck, New Jersey

                                              poppies having scattered
                                              father puts away
                                              his war souvenir

                                              Arlene Teck, New Jersey

When poppies scatter my heart opens for wild things

Marilyn Hazelton, Pennsylvania

Haiku Three

Calling snow forth one side white the live flatfish

Alternate Translation

With its white side the flatfish calls and snow begins

Marilyn Hazelton, Pennsylvania



1 The biographical information summarized here mainly comes from the chronologies provided in Mitsuhashi Takako zenshū (Rippū Shobō, 1889), vol. 2, pp. 203-207, and Hashimoto Takako, Mitsuhashi Takako shū (Asahi Shimbunsha, 1984), pp. 33-336.

2 The concoction was to correspond to the Four S’s: Mizuhara Shūōshi, Awano Seiha, Takano Sujū, and Yamaguchi Seishi.

3 Gendai kushū 現代句集 (Chikuma Shobō, 1973), p. 503.

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