Sakuo san,

I think Issa's emotions in writing this haiku:

one for the dog
one for the crow...
rice cakes

are amusement and empathy. I think he has a humorous appreciation of
the expertise in thievery displayed by these opportunistic
scavengers. We know in advance that at least a couple of the rice
cakes we are laboriously making are going to end up with the dog and
crow, but even knowing that, we aren't going to begrudge them their
share.

And I think there is an underlying empathy in that, by stealing rice
cakes, the dog and crow are celebrating the New Year along with us in
their own way.

Larry

--- In translatinghaiku@yahoogroups.com, "Sakuo Nakamura"
<sakuo.3.sun@...> wrote:
>
> Larry san, thank you for your precious information on rice cake
that has
> caused
> long discussion.
> My problem is getting to concentrate toward Issa's emotion at the
time when
> he made this rice cake's haiku.
> Was he gloomy ? Or was he happy?
> To bound rice is happy ceremony, but why he should talk it with dog
and
> crow?
> I am confused now.
>
> sakuo.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: translatinghaiku@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:translatinghaiku@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of lbolenyc
> Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 3:47 AM
> To: translatinghaiku@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [Translating Haiku] Re: Issa : pounding rice .. mochi
tsuku... < my
> suspicion ? sakuo>
>
> Sakuo san,
>
> There is another rice cake haiku by Issa which R. H. Blyth
interprets
> in much the same vein as you:
>
> mochitsuki ga tonari e kita to iu ko nari
>
> "The rice-cake makers
> Have come next door,"
> Says the child.
>
> Blyth says about this haiku:
>
> "'Mochi' is made from a special kind of rice, boiled and pounded
into
> a [glutinous] mass. Japanese people all enjoy it very much; it
> corresponds (in feeling, not in taste) to Christmas pudding in
Europe
> and America. Pounding the rice is hard work and needs a very large
> mallet etc., and specialists, so to speak, go from house to house
> making it. Some are too poor to afford it, and of such is the child
> who is speaking. He runs in to his mother and tells her that the
men
> who make the mochi have come to the house next door. The mother
> cannot answer; there is nothing to say. They cannot afford it, and
> other children must have the happiness forbidden to hers. ..."
>
> David Lanoue, on the other hand, translates it and then says:
>
> "The rice cake man
> is next door!"
> the child announces
>
> "The reader need not see it this [Blyth's] way. The child bubbles
> over with excitement and anticipation--feelings that Issa and his
> adult readers share, as they remember their own childhoods."
>
> Lanoue's reading is more in the spirit of another of Issa's haiku:
>
> ako ga mochi ako ga mochi tote narabe keri
>
> "This is sonny-boy's rice-cake,
> This is sonny-boy's rice-cake too."
> Piling them up.
>
> tr. Blyth
>
> my child's rice cakes
> my child's rice cakes...
> all in a row
>
> tr. Lanoue
>
> It's interesting to me that Blyth's interpretation comes at a time
> when both England and Japan were suffering post-war food shortages,
> whereas Lanoue's interpretation comes from someone living in a land
> of (relative) plenty, in one of its most plentiful times.
>
> From reading through the 'rice cake' haiku on Lanoue's translastion
> site, it seems that besides the New Year, rice cakes are also
> associated with the Girl's Doll Festival, and with a 12th day of
the
> ninth month celebration honoring Nichiren.
>
> Issa also has several haiku about rice cakes being stolen by dogs
in
> one way or another.
>
> And what are we to make of left-over rice cakes?
>
> There is Basho's justly-famous haiku:
>
> uguisu ya mochi ni funsuru en no saki
>
> Ah! the uguisu
> Pooped on the rice-cakes
> On the verandah.
>
> tr. Blyth
>
> a bush warbler
> dropped poop on the cookies
> at the edge of the verandah
>
> tr. Jane Reichhold
>
> bush warbler--
> a dropping on the rice cake
> at the veranda's edge
>
> tr. Ueda
>
> Basho is quoted as saying about this haiku [in a letter to Sampuu]:
>
> "This hokku shows the kind of innovation [karumi] I am trying to
> achieve nowadays."
>
> Yamamoto says:
>
> "This hokku presents a scene of moldy rice cakes placed in the
> sunlight on the veranda several weeks after the New Year. Suddenly
a
> bush warbler flew in from the garden and let a dropping fall. This
is
> an idyllic scene filled with spring sunshine."
>
> Would old, uneaten holiday rice cakes be put out for the birds and
> other animals to eat?
>
> --Larry
>
> --- In translatinghaiku@yahoogroups.com
> <mailto:translatinghaiku%40yahoogroups.com> , "Sakuo Nakamura"
> <sakuo.3.sun@> wrote:
> >
> > Gabi san, when I read the haiku of pounding rice, I felt it
curious.
> > We as country farmer, rice is very precious thing. In old time,
as
> pre-war
> > or Edo era,
> > Farmer couldn't eat rice, they eat soba or awa.
> > So it is unnatural that one for dog, and one for crow, we pound
> rice for
> > animal.
> > In my boyhood of World War second, adult man ordered me to pick
up
> rice
> > grain in the field one grain by one with my hand.
> > It was poor story but general talk.
> > For the boy of pre-war,
> > Who can give specially rice cake to dog and bird? It is crazy
> happening.
> >
> > This is my suspicion.
> >
> > sakuo.
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: translatinghaiku@yahoogroups.com
> <mailto:translatinghaiku%40yahoogroups.com>
> [mailto:translatinghaiku@yahoogroups.
> > com] On Behalf Of Greve Gabi
> > Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2006 1:50 PM
> > To: translatinghaiku@yahoogroups.com
> <mailto:translatinghaiku%40yahoogroups.com> ; vallance2@
> > Subject: Re: [Translating Haiku] Re: Issa : pounding rice ..
mochi
> tsuku...
> > beautiful! If you would like to hav
> >
> > *Dear Richard,
> > please keep this kind of information off list !
> > GABI*
> >
> > On 8/30/06, Richard Vallance Janke <vallance2@
> > <mailto:vallance2%40yahoo.com> > wrote:
> > >
> >
> > > Re: Issa : pounding rice .. mochi tsuku... beautiful! If you
> would
> > > like to have this lovely haiku published in the autumn issue of
> > > Canadian Zen Haiku canadien ISSN 1705-4508, please let me know,
> and I
> > > will also send you a complimentary copy of our lovely journal
for
> > > every issue in which you are published.
> > >
> > > If you would like this haiku published in CZH, please forward
it
> to me
> > > at:
> > >
> > > vallance2@ <mailto:vallance2%40yahoo.com>
> > >
> > > Thanks
> > >
> > > Richard
> > >
> > ..................................................
> > > >
> > > > Daily Issa
> > > > >
> > > > > one for the dog
> > > > > one for the crow...
> > > > > rice cakes
> > > > >
> > > > > inu no mochi karasu ga mochi mo tsukare keri
> > > > >
> > > > > ¸¤¤ÎÌß±¨¤¬Ìߤâ¤Ä¤«¤ì¤±¤ê
> > > > >
> > > > > by Issa, 1819
> > > > >
> > > > http://cat.xula.edu/issa/ <http://cat.xula.edu/issa/>
> <http://cat.xula.edu/issa/ <http://cat.xula.edu/issa/> >
> > > >
> > > > .....................
> > > >
> > > > "pounding rice" for the rice cakes is a kigo for mid-winter
> > > >
> > > > http://worldkigodatabase.blogspot.com/2006/04/pounding-rice-
> <http://worldkigodatabase.blogspot.com/2006/04/pounding-rice->
> mochi-
> > > > <http://worldkigodatabase.blogspot.com/2006/04/pounding-rice-
> <http://worldkigodatabase.blogspot.com/2006/04/pounding-rice->
> mochi->
> > > tsuki.html
> > > >
> > > > From my experience in rural Japan, where the pounding of rice
> is
> > > > made outside in the farm yard, I can imagine more than one
dog
> and
> > > one crow
> > > > waiting for the cakes to be ready ...
> > > >
> > > > pounding rice ...
> > > > rice-cakes for the dogs
> > > > rice-cakes for the crows
> > > >
> > > > Gabi
> > > >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>