I've turned my attention to Sanzôshi (Three notebooks), an important collection related to the poetics of the Bashô school. I'm still working on Taorigiku, but for the time being I'm going to get through some passages to get ready for a karon 歌論 workshop on the West Coast in March. As always, this is a draft, so caveat lector.
Compiled by Hattori Dohô 服部土芳(1657-1730) in 1702.
You can find scans of early copies here at Waseda.
Haikai is Japanese poetry ( 歌 uta). Japanese poetry has existed from the time of the creation of heaven and earth. The great female deity and the great male deity (Izanami and Izanagi) came down from Heaven. First the female deity (divinity of darkness) said:
ananiye ya umaji otoko ni ahinu
“Oh, what a lovely youth I have encountered.”
The male deity (divinity of light) said, “
ananiye ya umaji otome ni ahinu
Oh, what a lovely maiden I have encountered.”
We might very well call this Japanese poetry (uta); what is felt in the heart, and emerges in words, that precisely is Japanese poetry. Thus, we regard this as the beginning of Japanese poetry.
In the age of the gods, the number of mora was not fixed. It became so in the age of humans. It became 31 mora from Susano-wo-no-mikoto. This is the verse that established it:
yakumo tatsu idumo yaegaki tumagome ni yaegaki tsukuru sono yaegaki wo
In Izumo, many layers of clouds arise
to live in seclusion with my wife
I will build a many-layered fence
And live behind that many-layered fence
As it is in the style of the land of Japan, it is called waka 和歌.
Within Japanese poetry (waka) there is renga and there is haikai. As for renga, it was given the name renga from the age of Emperor Shirakawa. Prior to having that name, it was called tsugiuta 継歌 : sequential uta. The number of verses was not fixed. In the time when Yamato Takeru no mikoto went east to subdue the barbarians, he recited this verse at Tsukuba Mountain, in Azuma:
Niibari Tsukuba wo koete iku ya kanenuru
since I crossed Tsukuba of Niibari
how many nights
have passed?
When he did, the fire-lighting youth continued the verse:
kaganabete yo ni wa kokonoyo hi ni wa tooka yo
counting them all:
as for nights, nine nights
as for days, ten days
It is said that this is the origin of renga.
In the time when Narihira was in Ise as an imperial hunter, he had this exchange with Itsukinomiya:
kachibito no wataredo nurenu e ni shi areba
since this is a river
over which a traveler may pass
without getting wet . . . .
mata Ausaka seki wa koenan
I wish that I
may again pass through Ausaka Barrier
He wrote the concluding verse with charcoal from a torch on a wine cup, the story goes.
In the era of Retired Emperor Go-Toba, Priest Zenami 禅阿弥 (Zen’a 善阿?) and Kobayashi 小林 (Hokurin? 北林) compiled the guidebooks containing the rules for avoiding repetitiveness and other linked verse regulations. This is called the “Original Canon” 本式. From this, the standards of renga have arisen. Later, there was the “New Canon” 新式.
