Masaoka Shiki

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Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Script error: No such module "infobox".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".Script error: No such module "Check for clobbered parameters".Template:Wikidata image Template:Family name hatnote Script error: No such module "Nihongo"., pen-name of Masaoka Noboru (正岡 升),[1] was a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku poetry,[2] credited with writing nearly 20,000 stanzas during his short life.[3] He also wrote on reform of tanka poetry.[4]

Some consider Masaoka to be one of the four great haiku masters, the others being Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa.[5][6]

Early life

Shiki, or rather Tsunenori (常規) as he was originally named,[7] was born in Matsuyama City in Iyo Province (present day Ehime Prefecture) to a samurai class family of modest means.[8] As a child, he was called Tokoronosuke (處之助); in adolescence, his name was changed to Noboru (升).Script error: No such module "Unsubst".

His father, Tsunenao (正岡常尚),[9][10] was an alcoholic who died when Shiki was five years of age.[8] His mother, Yae,[11] was a daughter of Ōhara Kanzan, a Confucian scholar.[8] Kanzan was the first of Shiki's extra-school tutors; at the age of 7 the boy began reading Mencius under his tutelage.[12] Shiki later confessed to being a less-than-diligent student.[12]

At age 15 Shiki became something of a political radical, attaching himself to the then-waning Freedom and People's Rights Movement and getting himself banned from public speaking by the principal of Matsuyama Middle School, which he was attending.[13] Around this time he developed an interest in moving to Tokyo and did so in 1883.[14]

Education

The young Shiki first attended his hometown Matsuyama Middle School, where Kusama Tokiyoshi, a leader of the discredited Freedom and People's Rights Movement, had recently served as principal.[13] In 1883, a maternal uncle arranged for him to come to Tokyo.[14] Shiki was first enrolled in Kyōritsu Middle School and later matriculated into University Preparatory School.[15] (Daigaku Yobimon) affiliated with Imperial University (Teikoku Daigaku).[16] While studying here, the teenage Shiki enjoyed playing baseball[17] and befriended fellow student Natsume Sōseki, who would go on to become a famous novelist.[18]

He entered Tokyo Imperial University in 1890.[19] But by 1892 Shiki, by his own account too engrossed in haiku writing, failed his final examinations, left the Hongō dormitory that had been provided to him by a scholarship, and dropped out of college.[19] Others say tuberculosis, an illness that dogged his later life, was the reason he left school.[20]

Literary career

While Shiki is best known as a haiku poet,[21] he wrote other genres of poetry,[22] prose criticism of poetry,[23] autobiographical prose,[23] and was a short prose essayist.[11] (His earliest surviving work is a school essay, Yōken Setsu ("On Western Dogs"), where he praises the varied utility of western dogs as opposed to Japanese ones, which "only help in hunting and scare away burglars."[24])

Contemporary to Shiki was the idea that traditional Japanese poetic short forms, such as the haiku and tanka, were waning due to their incongruity in the modern Meiji period.[15] Shiki, at times, expressed similar sentiments.[25] There were no great living practitioners although these forms of poetry retained some popularity.[26]

Despite an atmosphere of decline, only a year or so after his 1883 arrival in Tokyo, Shiki began writing haiku.[19] In 1892, the same year he dropped out of university, Shiki published a serialized work advocating haiku reform, Dassai Shooku Haiwa or "Talks on Haiku from the Otter's Den".[21] A month after completion of this work, in November 1892, he was offered a position as haiku editor in the paper that had published it, Nippon, and maintained a close relationship with this journal throughout his life.[21] In 1895 another serial was published in the same paper, "A Text on Haikai for Beginners", Haikai Taiyō.[21] These were followed by other serials: Meiji Nijūkunen no Haikukai or "The Haiku World of 1896" where he praised works by disciples[27] Takahama Kyoshi and Kawahigashi Hekigotō,[28] Haijin Buson or "The Haiku Poet Buson" (1896–1897[28]) expressing Shiki's idea of this 18th-century poet whom he identifies with his school of haiku,[4] and Utayomi ni Atauru Sho or "Letters to a Tanka Poet" (1898) where he urged reform of the tanka poetry form.[4]

The above work, on tanka, is an example of Shiki's expanded focus during the last few years of his life. He died four years after taking up tanka as a topic.[29] Bedsore and morphine-addled, little more than a year before his death Shiki began writing sickbed diaries.[30] These three are Bokujū Itteki or "A Drop of Ink" (1901), Gyōga Manroku or "Stray Notes While Lying on My Back" (1901–1902), and Byōshō Rokushaku or "A Sixfoot Sickbed" (1902).[4]

Later life

Shiki suffered from tuberculosis (TB) much of his life. In 1888[31] or 1889[32] he began coughing up blood[15] and soon adopted the pen-name "Shiki" from the Japanese hototogisu—the Japanese name for lesser cuckoos.[32] The Japanese word hototogisu can be written with various combinations of Chinese characters, including 子規, which can alternatively be read as either "hototogisu" or "shiki". It is a Japanese conceit that this bird coughs blood as it sings,[32] hence the pen-name "Shiki" (as a symptom of TB is coughing blood).

Suffering from the early symptoms of TB, Shiki sought work as a war correspondent in the First Sino-Japanese War[32] and, while eventually obtaining his goal, he arrived in China after the April 17, 1895 signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki.[33] Instead of reporting on the war, he spent an unpleasant time harassed by Japanese soldiers[34] in Dalian, Luangtao, and the Lüshunkou District, meeting on May 10, 1895[35] the famous novelist Mori Ōgai, who was at the time an army doctor.[33]

Living in filthy conditions in China apparently worsened his TB.[33] Shiki continued to cough blood throughout his return voyage to Japan and was hospitalized in Kobe.[33] After being discharged, he returned to his home town of Matsuyama city and convalesced in the home of the famed novelist Natsume Sōseki.[33] During this time he took on disciples and promulgated a style of haiku that emphasized gaining inspiration from personal experiences of nature.[33] Still in Matsuyama in 1897, a member of this group, Yanigihara Kyokudō, established a haiku magazine, Hototogisu,[4] an allusion to Shiki's pen name.[32] Operation of this magazine was quickly moved to Tokyo. Takahama Kyoshi, another disciple,[27] assumed control and the magazine's scope was extended to include prose work.[11]

Shiki came to Tokyo,[36] and his group of disciples there were known as the "Nippon school" after the paper where he had been haiku editor and that now published the group's work.[28]

Although bedridden by 1897,[4] Shiki's disease worsened further around 1901.[11] He developed Pott's disease and began using morphine as a painkiller.[11] By 1902 he may have been relying heavily on the drug.[37] During this time Shiki wrote three autobiographical works.[4] He died of tuberculosis in 1902 at age 34.[32]

Legacy

File:Shiki Masaoka stone monument is recognized as one of the symbols of Matsuyama-City.JPG
A monument containing a haiku by Shiki, in front of Matsuyama Station

Shiki may be credited with salvaging traditional short-form Japanese poetry and carving out a niche for it in the modern Meiji period.[38] While he advocated reform of haiku, this reform was based on the idea that haiku was a legitimate literary genre.[39] He argued that haiku should be judged by the same yardstick that is used when measuring the value of other forms of literature — something that was contrary to views held by prior poets.[40] Shiki firmly placed haiku in the category of literature, and this was unique.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".

Some modern haiku deviate from the traditional 5–7–5 sound pattern and dispensing with the kigo ("season word"); Shiki's haiku reform advocated neither break with tradition.[5]

His particular style rejected "the puns or fantasies often relied on by the old school" in favor of "realistic observation of nature".[41] Shiki, like other Meiji period writers,Script error: No such module "Unsubst". borrowed a dedication to realism from Western literature. This is evident in his approach to both haiku[39] and tanka.[42]

Baseball

Shiki played baseball as a teenager and was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002.[17] A group of 1898 tanka by him mention the sport.[43]

See also

References

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  1. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  2. ↑ Beichman, Preface, p. i
  3. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Beichman, p. 26
  5. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  6. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  7. ↑ Frédéric, Louis. Japan encyclopedia. Harvard University Press, 2005. Template:ISBN. p. 613
  8. ↑ a b c Cite error: Script error: No such module "Namespace detect".Script error: No such module "Namespace detect".
  9. ↑ Official website of the Shiki-an Template:Webarchive, Shiki's Tokyo residence, page Script error: No such module "Nihongo". (in Japanese)
  10. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  11. ↑ a b c d e Beichman, p. 27
  12. ↑ a b Beichman, p. 4
  13. ↑ a b Beichman, pp. 7–8
  14. ↑ a b Beichman, pp. 8–9
  15. ↑ a b c Beichman, p. 14
  16. ↑ Beichman, p. 9
  17. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  18. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  19. ↑ a b c Beichman, pp. 15–16
  20. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  21. ↑ a b c d Beichman, pp. 18–19
  22. ↑ Burton, Watson. Introduction. Masaoka Shiki: selected poems, p. 11
  23. ↑ a b Beichman, p. 22
  24. ↑ Beichman, p. 5
  25. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  26. ↑ Keene, pp. 195–198
  27. ↑ a b Beichman, pp. 27–28
  28. ↑ a b c Beichman, p. 25
  29. ↑ Keene, p. 202
  30. ↑ Beichman, pp. 26–29
  31. ↑ Keene, p. 198
  32. ↑ a b c d e f Beichman, p. 20
  33. ↑ a b c d e f Beichman, p. 21
  34. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  35. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  36. ↑ Beichman, p. 23
  37. ↑ Beichman, p. 28
  38. ↑ Keene, p. 203
  39. ↑ a b Beichman, p. 32
  40. ↑ Kato, p. 134
  41. ↑ Beichman, p. 45
  42. ↑ Burton, Watson. Introduction. Masaoka Shiki: selected poems, p. 9
  43. ↑ Beichman, pp. 89, 91

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Further reading

  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  • Masaoka, Shiki, Songs from a Bamboo Village: Selected Tanka from Take no Sato Uta, translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda, Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Co. © 1998 Template:ISBN pbk [488 pp. 298 tanka]
  • Masako, Hirai, ed. Now, To Be! Shiki’s Haiku Moments for Us Today / Ima, ikiru! Shiki no sekai. U-Time Publishing, 2003, Template:ISBN
  • Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".

External links

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Template:Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame Template:Authority control

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