Sanzôshi 2 - The White Notebook 2 白冊子

Here's the second part of the draft.

Lord Fujiwara no Teika said this about haikai. “It is cleverness. It must be something whose emotional content is false.  It applies emotional content to something that is without emotional content, and gives expression to what is without expressiveness, in a form that is clever.” In [Ming period poet Pu Yanglai’s 濮陽淶] Yuan-era rime studies compendium (Yuansheng yunxue dacheng 元聲韻學大成) “There was much word play (俳諧 haikai) in the poetic language of Zheng Qi 鄭綮 (d. 899).” “Hai” 俳 means humor; “kai” 諧 means relaxed. In the Tang period, they called humorous verse “haikai.”

There is also the term kokkei 滑稽, humor. The term kokkei was used when Guan Zhong 管仲 (c. 720-645 BCE) went to the State of Chu 楚, his answer to the Chu people was said to be kokkei. In Japan, there is the kokkei humor of Reverend Ikkyû 一休和尚 (1394-1481). Kokkei in this case was evident in the witty responses he made to people, that is to say, cleverness. In Kokinshû, the category haikaika 俳諧歌 was created to classify comic verses. With that as a model, verses that use ordinary language were generally called haikai no renga.

With that, haikai began, and for generations it was only played with as cleverness, and its pioneers remained ignorant of authenticity (makoto 誠). More recently, Baiô 梅翁 of Naniwa [Osaka’s Nishiyama Sôin 西山宗因 1605-1682] became well-known for writing in a free, relaxed style, but he achieved less than half of its potential, and still his reputation for skillfulness rests on his use of word-play.

However, our now deceased teacher Matsuo Bashô took up the path of haikai more than thirty years ago, and was the first to attain haikai’s authenticity (makoto 実). The haikai of our teacher was called by the same name, “haikai,” as was used in the past, but it was not the same haikai as it was in the past; it was the haikai of authenticity. So, although in the past there was a genre called haikai, what was it, since all the years people spent writing it was as useless as the inauthentic verses themselves.

Our teacher said, “We have no predecessors on this Path.” He also said, “If you look closely at the examples of people of the past, you can easily obtain that which you sought. Furthermore, the full range of what I conceive of now will be looked at closely by the people of the future. I fear only the estimation of the people of the future.” He said this repeatedly.

There were many people of the past who had a reputation for poetry written in Chinese and Japanese 詩歌. All of them started from and finished with authenticity (makoto 誠). Our teacher brought authenticity (makoto 誠) to that which was without it, and blazed a trail that will long endure. Authenticity  (makoto 誠) lasts the ages, and even Heaven waited long for the strong spirit of the person who brought authenticity to the haikai of our time. What a person our teacher was!

Renga and haikai share the same source. Renga and haikai both have content (kokoro 心) and language (kotoba 詞). While content  (kokoro 心) may be the same in both renga and haikai, renga and haikai diverge in terms of language  (kotoba 詞). There are many examples from the past that establish this. In the text Haikai Wordless treatise 俳諧無言抄 (Haikai Mugon shô, edited by Sôin, 1674), “Whatever is given voice in words is haikai language 俳言 (haigon). Words that might appear in renga but are pronounced with the Sino-Japanese reading are also haigon. Byôbu (folding screen), kichô (curtain screen) hyôshi (rhythm), richi no chôshi (tuning), rei naranu (irregular), and kochô (butterfly) are of this type. Words that appear once in 1,000-verse sequences, like oni (demon), onna (woman), tatsu (dragon), and tora (tiger), and so on, are haigon. Words that are avoided in renga like sakuragi (cherry tree), tobiume (flying plum tree), kumo no mine (peaks of cloud), kirisame (drizzle), kosame (light rain), kadoide (setting off), urabito (fisher), shidzunome (woman of lowly birth), and so on, appear in Haikai Wordless treatise and transcripts of the teachings of [Satomura] Jôha 里村紹巴 (1525-1602). All words of this kind are haigon.