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The Importance of Season-Words
At the present time some five thousnd haiku magazines, most of them monthlies, are being published in Japan. Almost all of them belong to one or another school of haiku, though some declare themselves to be independanto.
The oldest of schools is Hototogisu, founded by Masaoka Shiki; other large schools are Tenro, founded by Yamaguchi Seishi; Banryoku, led by Nakamura Kusatao; Shibugaki, organized by Matsune Toyojo; and Kanrei, headed by Kato Shyuson. All of these schools observe, more or less strictly, the rule regarding season-words ("kigo" in Japanese), but there are a number of minor schools who rebel against convention in haiku and who disregard either the 5-7-5 form or the use of a season-word or both. However, even those who omit the season-word reveal in their haiku some consciousness of season. Personally, I adovocte the orthodox way that gives due regard to the season-word; it was a principal ingredient of the haiku when it was differentiated from linked verse(renga) and gained independant stature, and it has remained an essential ever since.
The Japanese seem to be more season-conscious than Western peoples. From its earliest stages, Japanese literature has been rich in words concerning the seasons. Certain descriptions of the seasons are much admired. For example, Sei Shonagon, writing in the late tenth century, opened her "Pillow Book (Makura no soshi)" in this way:
"In the spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful...In summer the nights...In autumn the evenings...In winter the early mornings."--giving her reasons for each pronouncement [translation by Ivan Morris].
And in the fourteenth century Yashida Kenko in his Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa) debated the merits of each season in a celebrated pasage that begins:
"The changing of the seasons is deeply moving in its every manifestation. People seem to agree that autumn is the best season to appreciate the beauty of things. That may well be true, but...[translation by Donald Keene].
In Western languages the names of the four seasons became complete only a few centuries ago. Words for winter and summer appear quite early but in English "spring" came to be used as the name of the season as late as the sixteenth century, and in German 'fruhjahr', "spring" appeared about the same time. Similarly, in India "hemanta(winter) and vasanta(spring)" appear in Sanskrit literature very early, while other seasonal terms come much later.
Because Japanese literature is so rich in seasonal terms it was not difficult for early haiku masters to select and estabilish certain words as a special vocabulary to denote the seasons.
All through Japanese history until well into the Meiji period (1868-1912) the Japanese regulated their lives and celebrated their festivals by the lunar calendar. When the Gregorian calendar was adopted it caused some difficulty in the choice of season-words. For almost a century, both calendars were used side-by-side, and even today some events are governed by the luner calendar, especially in the countryside. As a result of this change of calendars many other old season-words that fit the luner caalender do not fit the new calendar, but we continue to use them. On the other hand, many other old season words have been discarded and many new ones adopted; changes take place contunually. The number of season-words for Japanese haiku has never been constant, varying from tree to five thousand at different times and according to different authorities.
We use a glossary of season-words to check whether a word can be used to denote a season. Glossaries are of two kinds: kiyose, which merely lists seasonal terms, and saijiki, in which each term is accompanied by examples showing proper usage by well-known haikuists. Because the saijiki is more helpful, it is more widely used. Since the middle of Edo period (1600-1868) great numbers of these books have been published.
Most haiku practitioners rely on a saijiki. It usually takes a beginner five or six years to learn how to identify and use season-words properly. In the process, the consciousness of seasonal transition and its significance is deepened, and the student is introduced to a new and alluring realm of poetry.
Saijiki are available in pocket edition, usually of five to six hundred pages. These contain the words that occur most frequently, usually limited to about fifteen hundred. Larger books contain two or three times that number.
Zusetsu Haiku Dai-Saijiki (Great glossary of season-words illustrated) was published in 1974 by Kadokawa Publishing Company. This is the most authentic and comprehensive season-word glossary ever published in japan: about forty scholars participated in compiling it. Almost every season-word used from the Edo period to the present is included with a full explanation and examples of its usage from both classical and modern times. An outstanding feature of this glossary is the abundance of illustrations; they cover about a third of every page. Edo period drawings, prints, and paitings are shown, and there are also numerous photographs, so that the reader can see the things and places reffered to. There are five voluumes, headed New Year, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Each volume is divided into sections: weatherand climate, heavenly bodies, geography, human affairs (subdivided into court events, popular events, clothing, diet, dwellings, sports and games, etc.), religion, animals, and plants.The entries are in the Japanese alphabetical order and each volumes make them a good companion for any writer of haiku, advanced or beginning.
As the section in these volumes indicate, season-words are not lomited to aspects of nature, nor do most of them have to do with flora (trees, flowers, grasses) and fana. To illustrate this I have counted the season-words in each category in the first two volumes:
Volume I VolumeII
The New Year Spring
Astronomy 14 59
Climate 31 63
Geography 5 38
Human Affairs 406 300
Religion 201 156
Animals 9 155
Plants 22 339
As is evident, human affairs together with religious rites and rituals predominate in haiku. For instance, October is the time for the Harvest Fesival. Here in Matsuyama for three days beginning October 5, men and boys parade and young women in gala clothes come to watch them. This is Omatsuri, The Great Festival; Omatsuri is a season-words.
During the Edo period more than fifteen hundred season-words were assigned to human affairs. Volume V, Winter, of this saijili has 408 season-words relating to human affairs and 147 relating to religion, but only 106 relating to plants. These figures seem to indicate something about the nature of haiku in general,though it is taking liberties to judge haiku by graceless mathematical calculation.
I think it is interesting to note that Japanese saijiki list no season-words relating to domestic aimals or birds; chikens, dogs, and cats (except for cats' love-making) are excluded.
Another important pubication I should like to call to your attention is Kindai Haiku Taikan (A comprehensive survey of modern haiku),published in 1974 by Meiji Shoin Publishers. This is a volume of 781 pages in large format, compiled by five haiku scholars,including Ono Rinka, and supervised by three prominent haikuists: Tomiyasu Fusei, Mizuhara Shuoshi, and Yamaguchi Seison. Included are representative haiku by a great many authors from the time of Shiki to the present. An exhaustive explanation of each haiku makes the book a good text for the study of haiku. The indication of the season-word used in each haiku is very useful. The appendix gives a short biogaphy and bibliography for each author, a list of important collections of haiku by modern authors, and a short history of modern haiku. There in an index to all the haiku included.
Perhaps I am mistaken but it appears to me that most Westerners think that every season-word relates exactly to the time of year it denotes. In haiku this is not the case:
many season- words have only an arbitrary connection with their season. For instance, koromo-gae, "changing clothes," is a haiku term arbitrarialy assigned to early summer. De-gawari is an old term meaning a change of servants, when an old servant leaves the master's house and new one comes as replacement; traditionally, such a shift took place either in March or in September, but in haiku de-gawari was assigned to March. "Moon", used without a modifier, means only the moon of mid-autumn. The same plant can stand for different seasons when the name is given a prefix: hasu (lotus) stand for midsummer; maki-hasu ("curling lotus," when the leaves roll up on the water) signifies early summer; yari-hasu ("broken lotus," when the leaves are broken and torn) indicates autumn and kare-hasu ("withered lotus") indicates later winter.
As a rule, only one season-word is used in a haiku, although two are allowed in certain circumstances.
The season-word has manifold functions. For one thing, it affects style, because almost all season-words have a literary flavor.
As the late Professor Terada Torahiko emphasized, the seaon-word establishes time and place. Very often the names of local fesivals appear in a season word glossary. When one of these is used we understand where and when something is happening without further comment: the haiku thus conforms to the fundamental principle of "here and now" with economy words.
The season-word evokes associations in the mind of both the writer and the reader, and this too enables us to express ourselves in fewer words. After all, no matter how elaborate a language, one can say just so much in seventeen syllables.
Whithout the structure that the season-word provides, a haiku is likely to become centrifugal, to fly apart, because time and place are vague. The late professor Yamada Yoshio set forth a new theory concerning the adverb: that in a certain context it modifies not just a verb, an adjective, or another adverb, but the entire sentence, In like manner, the season-word modifies the entire haiku, giving it proper depth and width.
I have been informed that the American Haiku Society did not accept my recommendation that the concept of season be included in its definition of haiku. The reason given was the wide difference in latitude accross the continent. But in Japan, Hokkaido in the north and Okinawa in the south are very diffent in climate, flora, and fauna, yet we all use the same season-word glossaries. For those who are only concerned with composing an English poem in the guise of a haiku, any definition will suffice, but those who want to write a haiku that comforms to the principles of Japanese haiku must consider the use of the season-word.
Let me also point out that modern Japanese season-word glossaries contain a number of words of foreign origin, such as Christmas, April fool, May Day, ice cream, biiru (beer), as well as Fukkatsu-sai (Easter), kosui (perfume), and juken (taking an examination for admission to a high school). As I have tried to explain, many season-words, like these, have nothing to do with latitude.
It seems to me that it is this tricky bussiness of a season-word, with its semantic and fomal functions, that, more than anything else, marks the difference between American and Japanese haiku. In this connection I should like to call attention to the theories of the American Benjamin Lee Whorf and his brilliant followers, who created metalinguistics, the study of the relation of a language to its cultural context--to the way its users well in comparing the haiku of two countries and in discussing the distinctive traits of the season-word.
More on Season-Words
The cherry blossom season is here in Matsuyama. On a sunny day recently I climbed Siroyama, the hill on which our castle stands. I took a path bordered by cherry trees, and the blossoms were very beautiful , shrouded in the thin spring fog whitch is usual at this time of the year.
There are many season-words relating to cherry blossoms, showing how much we make of them in Japanese haiku.
The time of year denoted by the season-word doesn't necessary coincide with the actual climate. This is particularly strinking in the case of cherry blossoms. In Okinawa, the southernmost part of Japan, the cherry blossoms are already gone, here in Matsuyama they are in full splendor, while farther to the north, in Tokyo, they are in tight bud or just beginning to open. Blossoms time in the south of Japan is at least a month earlier than in the north, but this difference is not bothersome in haiku. When season-words were first established, they were based mostly on the climate of Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan. In my judgement this was a good compromise because Kyoto is in the middle of the country and it was for many centuries its cultural center.
In considering some of the well-known season-words relating to cherry blosoms, I must first mention hana, which in ordinary Japanese means a flower or blossom of any species, but in tanka (also called waka, the thirty-one syllable form) and haiku is a synonym for sakura, cherry blossom. Hana and sakura, both major season-words, have many variants that are also season-words.
Higan-Zakura and shidare-zakura have hanging twigs (sakura becomes zakura in a compound word); hitoe-zakura has single petals; yae-zakura has double blossoms; the flowers of uba-zakura are accompanied by tender leaves; inu-zakura (literally, dog-cheery) bears no blossoms but is fragrant; niwa-zakura are cheery blossoms in the garden; oso-zakura are late-blooming cherry blossoms; yo-zakura are cherry blossoms at night; yu-zakura are cherry blossoms in the morning; hatsu-zakura and hatsu-hana both mean the first cherry blossoms.
We Japanese attach great importnce to the first of anything, as many season-words demonstrate. Hatsu-hinode is the sunrise of New Year's Day; hatsu-yume is the year's first dream, which is supposed to come on the night of January 2; hatsu-mode are the New Year's Day visits to Shintoshrines to send up prayers for prosperity and happiness all through the year; kaki-zome is the year's first calligraphic exercise, conventionally done on the second day; hatsu-hibari, the first skylark, is a season-word for spring.
Just as Sei Shounagon wrote that "In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful," so cherry blossoms and dawn have been closely associated in haiku and tanka. People adore the glory of the fragrant blossoms shining in the morning sun.
In addition, sakura has many synonymous that are recognized as standard or semi-standard season-words; for example, yume-mi-gusa (literally, "dream-seeing-grass'), kazashi-gusa (a spray of bloom overhead), and akebono-gusa (dawn grass).
Season-words are not exclusively nouns, as some Westerners seem to think. Many are verbs, gerunds, or phrases. Hana warau (smiling cherry blossoms) is a season-word for spring, as are hana chiru (blossoms falling) and hana o matsu (waiting for blossoms). Sakura gari,"blossom hunting," means a picnic under cherry blossoms, sitting on a blanket or straw mat under a cherry tree, enjoying the blossoms and making merry. Naturally, such a party offers abndant motivation for making haiku.
I am happy that some American haikuists have in their reading come across the names that the American Indians assigned to the moons of their calendar, and realize that they might be used as season-words in American haiku. I have long hoped that Americans would establish season-words of their own, perhaps beginning with a single state or group of states with similar climates. Maker of haiku would then become more conscious of the seasonal concept, giving their haiku greater breadth and depth.Japanese seasonal expressions should not be used. Many words will correpond but season-words for so vast a continent must be unique.
(April 1978)
Dr. Gabi Greve
Daruma Museum, Okayama, Japan
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