--- In kigohotline@yahoogroups.com, "Greve Gabi"
<gokurakuatworldkigo@...> wrote:
>
> my gate--
> just six radishes
> remain in supply
>
> waga kado ya tada roppon no daikon-gura
>
>
> by Issa, 1820
>
> Issa later revises this haiku so that only "four or five" radishes
are
> left. Shinji Ogawa explains, "The radishes are not stored in a
storage
> house but are buried in the ground in the late autumn for the
winter.
> In the snow-country, usually a stick is standing to locate the spot
> covered with snow."
>
> Tr. David Lanoue
> http://cat.xula.edu/issa/
>
> ....................................................................
.
>
>
> Here is more about the use of NUMBERS in haiku
> http://wkdhaikutopics.blogspot.com/2007/11/numbers-used-in-
haiku.html
>
>
> Daikon the large radish, a kigo
> http://worldkigodatabase.blogspot.com/2006/06/radish-daikon.html
>
> GABI

Gabi san,

Speaking of numbers in haiku, I've thought of two more you might want
to include. The first one is by the American haiku poet Marlene
Mountain. I can only approximate the spacing here, but I will provide
a link so the original spacing can be seen:

on this cold

spring 1

2 night 3 4

kittens

wet

5

Here is the url to show the haiku's original spacing, as well as a
discussion of this haiku by a student in the Global Haiku course at
Millikin University:

http://www.millikin.edu/haiku/writerprofiles/SoderbergOnMountain.html
(about halfway down the page)

And the second haiku is one of Shiki's "most famous and
controversial," to quote Janine Beichman:

"teizen"

keitoo no juushigohon mo arinubeshi

"Before the Garden"

cockscombs
must be 14
or 15

trans. Beichman


Cockscombs--
I'm sure there are at least
Fourteen or fifteen stalks.

trans. Donald Keene


Cockscombs;
There should be
Fourteen or fifteen.

trans. Blyth


Being controversial, there is much commentary given by the three
translators, which I am going to have to edit down for the sake of my
typing. LOL


According to Beichman:

The headnote of the poem indicates that Shiki was on the veranda
looking out at the garden. The poem is a comment on the cockscombs--
he has tried to count them and this is his estimate.

Cockscombs are a brilliant red autumn flower, about two feet tall and
very straight. Their petals, bunched close together, look like masses
of stiff, ruffled velvet, and they grow in clusters that would make
it difficult to count their precise number. A group of them gives the
impression of a fiery blaze of red.

Shiki wrote the poem at a haiku meeting attended by eighteen of his
disciples on September 9, 1900. Only two of those present chose it as
the best, which made it the least popular of all the poems submitted
at the meeting. Takahama Kyoshi did not even consider the piece worth
including in the collection of Shiki's haiku, 'Shiki Kushuu', that he
compiled shortly after Shiki's death. The poem was first praised by
Shiki's tanka disciple Nagatsuka Takashi (1879-1915) and later by the
greatest tanka poet of this century [20th-century], Saitoo Mokichi
(1882-1953). It remains a controversial poem even today, however,
with some critics maintaining that it is no more than a commonplace
description in which the details of number and the variety of flower
are purely arbitrary, and others asserting that it is extremely
moving.

[end of excerpt]

And according to Keene:

...ignored by most professional haiku critics for years, [this haiku]
is now often acclaimed as his masterpiece...

This verse unfortunately loses everything in translation, but even
the original excited derisive remarks from various poets who,
questioning the absoluteness of its terms, made such substitutions
as "seven or eight stalks" or "withered chrysanthemums"
for "cockscombs." One critic defied anyone to define the difference
between seven or eight stalks and fourteen or fifteen stalks; but, as
Yamamoto Kenkichi pointed out, the sound of the words is important,
and anyone who argues exclusively on the basis of meaning does not
understand the nature of poetry. The slight differences in shading
(rather than of meaning) given the haiku by the grammatical particles
and verb endings also communicate overtones to a sensitive Japanese
reader that cannot be analyzed in translation. Yamamoto wrote:

"Every masterpiece is a flower on a precipice to be picked only with
spiritual danger. The risk is life itself. It is too much to hope
every poetry-lover will unfailingly grasp all subtleties of the
creative act, but no artistic masterpiece exists without the danger
of its being misunderstood. It is a tremendous assertion for the poet
to have said, 'There must be fourteen or fifteen stalks of
cockscomb.' After we read this poem we cannot imagine the possibility
there could have been more or fewer cockscomb than fourteen or
fifteen."

[end of excerpt]

And Blyth comments:

This is one of the most debated verses of Shiki, written in the 33rd
year of Meiji during his last illness. ... Kyoshi and Hekigodoo, the
editors of Shiki's verses, omitted this haiku, apparently thinking it
was of no worth. The first to perceive its value was the poet
Nagatsuka Takashi, who said to Saitoo Mokichi, "There are no haiku
poets now who can understand this verse." However, this kind of haiku
is not in the style of Buson or even Basho. We feel the weakness of
Shiki compared with the violence of the red flowers. There is also
the way in which Shiki transcends his own weakness, and even wishes
to intensify the strength of the plants by increasing their number.

[end of excerpt]


After all this, I think it makes an appropriate denouement to quote
the following haiku by Shiki:

keitoo no mina taoretaru nowaki kana

Cockscombs--
all of them knocked flat
in the autumn storm

Shiki, trans. Burton Watson


--Larry