Haiku of Japan ~ Issa’s Dawn Moon and Bowl Beating
A dawn moon, a chanting monk, and a blossoming plum — what could they possibly have in common? You’d be right to guess “nothing”, but Issa thought otherwise. Read on!
ariake ya ume ni mo hitotsu hachi tataki
by the plum tree, another
monk beating his bowl
—Issa
In winter, monks of the Pure Land sect would beat their bowls and chant for 48 days. The ritual honors Kūya (903–972), who first performed it in commemoration of a deer killed by a samurai. That may seem like a silly reason to make a racket for 48 days, but the deer isn’t really important: compassion for others is the point. Hearing these sounds would have been a familiar feature of life back then.
The haiku itself layers several kigo. We have “dawn moon”, a traditional kigo for late autumn when the moon lingers in the morning sky. It suggests the waning of autumn. Then “plum tree”, a kigo for spring, hinting at new life. Finally, "bowl beating"[1], a kigo for winter.
Maybe Issa wrote this in late autumn, when the morning moon suggested the season’s end and he could imagine the bowl beating soon to begin. Or perhaps it had already started. I’m not sure how precisely these events would have lined up in 1813 when he wrote this.
That year was momentous for Issa: his first daughter was born, only a year after his first son had died in infancy. His household would have been filled with both grief and hope. Maybe thoughts of that were in his mind when he wrote this.
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David is an American teacher 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. Write him on Bluesky. |