Just a short remark, Larry san,
sitting here in the middle of the rainy season.

In a time before air conditioning or electric fans, it must have been pure
hell.
Imagine being in a sauna for 24 hours ...
It is humid everywhere, mold is growing everywhere ...the sky is dark the
whole day (that can hit your mood after about two weeks)
... for me, thinking of hell has become not one of fire but one of permanent
rainy season conditions ... hahaha

I remember well during my first years in Japan (around 1980) travelling in
the countryside, all the old womenfolk would sit there bare-brested like the
menfolk and have supper, it was just tooo hot and humid to do otherwise.
Now the ladies in our countryside have very very very thin cotton shirts
for summer to done, where you can still see all the female beauty, but it is
officially all covered up.

Got to go fix some more things outside, since supertyphoon number 4 is
approaching fast now, will be here in full splendour by afternoon .....

GABI
http://haikuandhappiness.blogspot.com/2007/07/typhoon-nr-04.html


> I wonder if it has anything to do with the rainy season? Is the
rainy season also a hot and humid time of year?
>
> I remember reading somewhere that in the Tokugawa era, men commonly
stripped to the waist when relaxing at home on a summer evening, to take
the evening cool--a privilege denied to women. And that this practice was
even a minor topic of haiku. I know I've read a few about it.
>
> I can't find any more explicit than the following:
>
> yuusuzumi yoku zo otoko ni umaretaru
>
> The evening cool;
> How glad I am
> I was born a man!
>
> Kikaku, trans. Blyth
>
> Of this haiku, Blyth says:
>
> "What Kikaku meant was that being a man enabled him to sit
> practically naked and cool himself in the evening breeze. ..."
>
>
> And yet there is the following senryu:
>
> ko ga dekite kara wa arawa ni hada o dashi
>
> After she has a baby,
> She openly
> Exposes her body.
>
> Shoushi, trans. Blyth
>
> Blyth says about this senryu:
>
> "Japanese women, after they have had their first child, will expose their
breasts in public without a second thought [for breast feeding, as an
accompanying drawing illustrates]. This is a national custom, and perhaps a
good one."
>
> So, what does Nobuko mean by 'usa'? Can 'usa' mean "distraction" as well
as "gloom?"
>
> Is Nobuko distracted by having breasts? Are they a sexual distraction
when she wants to concentrate on something else? I don't think she
> wants to be a man, but she might want to be free of the restrictions that
are placed on women which aren't placed on men--including the
> restrictions during her lifetime regarding female haijin not being taken
as seriously as male haijin, although it sounds like that isn't the case
anymore.
>
> Larry
>
>
see the rest of the discussion here
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/translatinghaiku/message/1869


> > >
> > > > futokoro ni chibusa aru usa tsuyu nagaki

Katsura Noboku (1914 \2004)

Her Biography
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-BfzpZ0EmdLRDdKKhEty08iA-?cq=1&p=172


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