Free Haiku by Stephen Addiss Page B

centuries, certain features of Japanese life and thought have maintained themselves as integral features of the haiku spirit. For example, the native religion of Shintō reveres deities in nature, both a cause and an effect of the Japanese love of trees, rocks, mountains, valleys, waterfalls, flowers, moss, animals, birds, insects, and so many more elements of the natural world. Significantly, haiku include human nature as an organic part in all of nature, as in the following poems about dragonflies by Shirao (1738–91) and the aforementioned Santōka, respectively:
    The coming of autumn
    is determined
    by a red dragonfly
    Dragonfly on a rock—
    absorbed in
    a daydream
    In each case, the observation of an insect leads to a deeper consideration of our own perceptions, although neither poem has a “moral” or an obvious message. We may well ask who is judging, and who is daydreaming? In this sense, it could be said that every haiku is at least partially about human beings, if only the one who originally composed it and the one reading and experiencing it now. Perhaps all fine poems are expressions of experience rather than merely “things,” and haiku, above all, elicit our own participation as readers, almost as though the poet had disappeared and left us to determine our own experience.
    There has been some controversy about the influence of Zen in haiku. Certainly some poets (such as Bashō) studied Zen, and a few were actually Zen masters (such as Sengai). Many other Japanese poets, however, followed other Buddhist sects, Shintō, or were completely secular, so we should be careful about claiming too much direct influence of Zen. In a broader sense, however, Japanese culture and the arts during the past seven centuries have been suffused with Zen influence, ranging from the tea ceremony and flower arranging to Noh theater, ink painting, and shakuhachi (bamboo flute) music. In particular, Zen’s insistence on the enlightenment of the ordinary world at the present moment, right here and right now, has both mirrored and influenced the haiku spirit. As Issa wrote:
    Where there are people
    there are flies, and
    there are Buddhas
    The Zen influence in haiku may need more examination, but it has touched Japanese culture so deeply that it can never be entirely absent. What Zen, other Buddhist sects, and Shintō all have in common with haiku is the harmony between nature and humans.
    Regarding This Volume
    The three author-editors of the present volume have previously published a series of five books: A Haiku Menagerie (Weatherhill, 1992), A Haiku Garden (Weatherhill, 1996), Haiku People (Weatherhill, 1998), Haiku Landscapes (Weatherhill, 2002), and Haiku Humor (Weatherhill, 2007). The haiku in this new book are excerpted from those books, with some modifications in translation, along with newly added verses. This anthology includes a representative number of poems by each of the three great masters (Bashō, Buson, and Issa), a generous group of haiku by observant and creative poets ranging in time from the early fifteenth through the later twentieth centuries, and a sprinkling of anonymous comical senryÅ« .
    The poems are grouped into three categories: The Pulse of Nature, Human Voices, and Resonance and Reverberation. Each category moves along a time line, not linearly but rather cyclically, reflecting natural life rhythms.
    These poems are expressions not only of Japanese sensibilities but of age-old human responses to the world around us. We wish all of our readers the joy of experiencing this kaleidoscope of all living creatures and their multifaceted interactions with enveloping nature as expressed by the finest Japanese haiku and senryÅ« poets.

The Pulse of Nature

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    Illustration 2

    Opening their hearts
    ice and water become
    friends again
    â€”T EISHITSU
    The spring sun
    shows its power
    between snowfalls
    â€”S HIGEYORI
    Not in a hurry
    to blossom—
    plum tree at my