小言いふ相手もあらばけふの月

if only she were here
my nagging wife...
ah, tonight's moon
—Issa

(kogoto iu aite mo araba kyou no tsuki)

(woodblock print by Hasui Kawase)

The Tragic life of Issa

Another haiku from Issa tonight, this time a slightly sad one. Many of Issa's haiku took a sad tone like this. He led a tragic life. His first child, a son, died soon after birth. His second child, a daughter, died two years later. He had another child, his second son, who also died. Shortly after, his beloved wife fell ill and died. He wrote of this:

生き残り生き残りたる寒さかな

Outliving them
Outliving them all
Ah, the cold

He also wrote the haiku I featured at the top of this post after his wife's death.

He kept a good humor about himself which comes through in most of his poetry, but his sorrow also comes through often. I mentioned before that Issa may well be more popular than the great Basho; it is due to this honesty in confessing his true feelings, his doubts and loneliness in highly personal haiku, that Issa's poems have given consolation to generations of readers and won him so many fans through the years.

The Moon

You may be wondering why I'm posting yet another haiku featuring the moon. What gives, eh?

Well, one of the rules for a traditional haiku is that it should include a reference to the season in the form of a season word (季語 kigo). This season word is suppose to refer to whatever the current season is at the time of the poem's writing. Moon is considered an Autumn kigo, so it is a common topic in haiku written at this time.

(Technically we are in mid-autumn right now, according to haiku tradition, and, yes, there are specific kigo for each part of the season. There is a big rabbit hole to fall down here if you are interested in all the finer details.)

I may change my mind in the future, but at the moment I think I want to stick to posting haiku for the current season.

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Don't miss the other great haiku in the Haiku of Japan series!

#1 - Traveling to the inn
#2 - Childless Woman
#3 - Old Dancing Butterfly
#4 - Seeing the Moon
#5 - Checking the Scarecrow
#6 - Skill of Insects
#7 - The Spider Lilies
#8 - A Thousand Green Mountains
#9 - Falling Leaf Enlightenment

❦

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org.