Matsuo Bashō

Start Free Trial

Matsuo Bashō and the Poetics of Scent

Download PDF PDF Page Citation Cite Share Link Share

SOURCE: “Matsuo Bashō and the Poetics of Scent,” in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 52, No. 1, June 1992, pp. 77-110.

[In the following essay, Shirane explores the “link by scent” technique used by Bashō, in which a verse “carries the atmosphere of its predecessor,” much as the fragrance of a flower is carried by the wind. This essay originally contained ideographic characters, which have been silently removed for this reprinting.]

Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) was first and foremost a haikai linked verse poet, and it is this poetic form, with its sequence of alternating seventeen and fourteen syllable verses, which lies at the heart of his literature. Bashō composed in a variety of haikai styles—first that of the Teimon school and then that of the Danrin school—before developing his own approach, the “Bashō style” (Shōfū), which continued to evolve until the end of his career. The most salient characteristic of this haikai style, particularly as embodied in Sarumino (Monkey's Straw Raincoat, 1691), the most influential haikai anthology of his school, is the “link by scent” (nioi-zuke), a phrase intended to suggest the way in which a verse carries the atmosphere of its predecessor much as the fragrance of a flower is carried by the wind. What then are the characteristics of nioi-zuke? How did it emerge? How is it related to earlier techniques of linking? What are its implications for understanding Basho's poetry and prose?

Kyoraisho, a record of Bashō's teachings edited by Mukai Kyorai, one of his chief disciples, defines three types of haikai links: mono-zuke (“lexical link”), kokoro-zuke (“content link”), and nioi-zuke (“scent link”).

The Master said, “The hokku has changed repeatedly since the distant past, but there have been only three changes in the haikai link. In the distant past, poets valued lexical links. In the more recent past, poets have stressed content links. Today, it is best to link by transference, reverberation, scent, or status.”1

Bashō associates the three types of links with three different historical periods: the “distant past” of Teimon haikai, the school established by Matsunaga Teitoku (1571-1653), which dominated the haikai world for a half century from 1625 to about 1674; the “recent past” of Danrin haikai, the school founded by Nishiyama Sōin (1605-1682), which flourished from 1673 to 1681; and the haikai of “today,” that of the Bashō school, which came to the fore in the 1680s.

In Kyoraishō, mono-zuke, or kotoba-zuke (“word link”), as it is often called, refers to a link in which the “added verse” (tsukeku) is joined to the “previous verse” (maeku) by some form of verbal association: either by the codified yoriai in which, for example, the “warbler” (uguisu) and “plum blossoms” (ume) are associated by the classical tradition, by the more wide-ranging engo (“word associations”), in which words such as “bow” (yumi) and “to stretch” (haru) are culturally associated, or by some form of homophonic association (kakekotoba). In the kokoro-zuke the “added verse” is connected to the “previous verse” by “content” or “meaning” (kokoro): the tsukeku usually explicates, expands upon, or alters the setting, the dramatic circumstance, or the character presented in the “previous verse.” “Transference” (utsuri), “reverberation” (hibiki), “scent” (nioi), and “status” (kurai) are all terms that can be subsumed under the rubric of nioi-zuke, or “link by scent,” in which the tsukeku is connected to the previous verse by overtones or shared connotations rather than by lexical associations or “content.”

The difference between a kokoro-zuke and a nioi-zuke is revealed in two different responses to a hokku, or opening verse, composed by Bashō in Genroku 3 (1690).

ki no moto ni
shiru mo namasu mo
sakura kana
Beneath a tree:
          clear soup, pickled fish,
                    and cherry blossoms too!

Bashō

asu kuru hito wa
kuyashigaru haru
A spring that brings regret
to tomorrow's visitor

Fūbaku

Apparently dissatisfied with this sequence, Bashō presented the same hokku on another occasion.

ki no moto ni
shiru mo namasu mo
sakura kana
Beneath a tree:
          clear soup, pickled fish,
                    and cherry blossoms too!

Bashō

nishibi nodoka ni
yoki tenki nari
A sun setting gently in the west:
Great weather!

Chinseki

This second attempt pleased Bashō so much that he placed the thirty-six verse kasen at the beginning of Hisago (published 1690), a major Bashō-school anthology. In the first sequence, which is a typical kokoro-zuke, the added verse is direct narrative extension of the “contents” of the previous verse: tomorrow's visitors will be disappointed to discover that the cherry blossoms have already fallen. In the second sequence, by contrast, the tsukeku dilates only on the mood of the maeku, matching the balmy, festive spring atmosphere implied but not stated in the maeku. The result is the mutual resonance characteristic of “scent links.”

Sanzōshi, a record of Bashō's teachings edited by Dohō, gives two examples of nioi-zuke.

akikaze no
fune o kowagaru
nami no oto
kari yuku kata ya
Shiroko Wakamatsu
Fearing the boat
          in the autumn wind—
                    sound of the waves
Where go the wild geese?
To White Child? Young Pine?(2)

The added verse takes up the overtones of the previous verse and gives it expression in a scene.

itachi no koe no
tanamoto no saki
hōkigi wa
makazu ni haete
shigeru nari
Cries of a weasel
beneath the kitchen sink
Never seeded,
          the broom grass has grown
                    high and thick.(3)

Taking up the faint scent of poverty in the previous verse, the second verse expresses it in the thick, unseeded broom grass and the dilapidated house.

(KNBZ 51:586)

In the first sequence someone (a woman?) unaccustomed to travel by sea is afraid of a boat being rocked by the autumn wind. In the added verse, the speaker, watching the flight of wild geese, wonders if they are headed for Shiroko (White Child) or Wakamatsu (Young Pine), two places on Ise Bay. The heart that follows the crying geese (traditionally associated with nostalgia) as they fly over water toward distant places is implicitly a heart that longs for home. The tsukeku creates a nioi-zuke in that it echoes the psychological and emotional implications of the previous verse, specifically the loneliness and fear of a distant journey. In the second sequence, the wild hōkigi (grass used to make brooms), in a similar fashion, suggests the atmosphere of poverty and neglect implicit in the previous verse.

The following sequence (No. 15-17) appears in a kasenIn the Town (Ichinaka wa)—in Sarumino (1691).

uikyō no
mi o fukiotosu
yūarashi
Scattering the seeds
          of the fennel plant—
                    an evening gale

Kyorai

sō yaya samuku
tera ni kaeru ka
A priest growing cold
as he returns to a temple?

Bonchō

saruhiki no
saru to yo o furu
aki no tsuki
Monkey trainer
          passing through life with a monkey—
                    an autumn moon

Bashō

The second verse adds a human figure—a priest growing cold after a day of begging for alms—that corresponds in mood to the lonely autumn scene presented in the previous verse. The third verse, which, by the rules of linked verse, must move away from the first verse (called the uchikoshi) and create a new unit with the previous verse, also draws on the overtones of the maeku. The scenes in the second and third verses—the priest and the monkey trainer, who is fated to pass the rest of his life with a monkey—are directly related dramatically or rhetorically, and yet they are linked by overlapping connotations: the solitude and sadness of those who stand outside the warm embrace of society. The symmetrical juxtaposition of the otherworldly priest and the worldly monkey trainer also adds a touch of haikai humor.

In a fashion typical of traditional poetic treatises, Bashō school commentaries such as Sanzōshi and Kyoraishō do not define and explain the structure of a particular link. Instead, they cite one or more example approved by the Master as models to be studied and emulated by his followers. The only critical term that consistently appears in regard to nioi-zuke is “overtone” (yosei), or rich connotations. As Shikō, one of Bashō's disciples, notes in Jūron'i benshō (published 1725): “What is called an overtone (yosei) in classical poetry is called scent (nioi) in haikai.” According to Kyoraishō,

Kyorai noted, “In the linked verse of the Bashō school, one avoids tsukeku that draw directly on the content of the previous verse. Instead, after carefully assessing the scene and the person, the person's occupation, and the person's circumstances, one should let go of the previous verse.”

(NKBZ 51:508)

In contrast to a kokoro-zuke, which is directly based on the “content” of the previous verse, the nioi-zuke “lets go of the previous verse,” creating a significant gap or distance between the verses. Modern Japanese scholars usually define nioi as a manner of linking in which the mood, atmosphere, or emotion of the previous verse is carried over to the added verse or made to move back and forth between the two. Like “overtone,” however, “mood,” “atmosphere,” and “emotion” are vague terms that refer more to the aesthetic effect of a nioi link than to the structure of the link itself.

Roman Jakobson has argued that literary discourse develops along two fundamental lines of verbal behavior, selection and combination, that is to say, a metaphorical axis, in which words are linked by substitution, similarity, or dissimilarity, and a metonymic axis, in which words are joined by contiguity, particularly as a combination of elements in a grammatical or narrative sequence.4Nioi-zuke excluded linkage by lexical associations, that is to say, metonymy either through yoriai, the codified lexical associations derived from the classical tradition, or through the wider-ranging engo (word associations) found in earlier haikai, particularly that of the Teimon school. An ideal nioi link also did not depend on metonymy in its more general forms of cause and effect, narrative continuity, character portrayal, or dilation on an existing scene.

Instead, nioi poetics favored a more metaphorical juxtaposition in which the maeku and the tsukeku intersected on a shared connotation, often in montage fashion. “Lexical links” (kotoba-zuke) also depended on shared connotations, but these connotations were usually commonplaces, either fixed by literary convention, as in yoriai, or culturally familiar to all educated readers, as in engo. Bashō's ideal link by scent, by contrast, was based on analogies that were distant, that is to say, not readily apparent and non-conventional, but that, once made, were all the more striking, novel, and compelling. Nioi, in short, was a rhetorical trope in which the two linked verses often had the function of mutual metaphors. These were not metaphors in the traditional sense of the word, in which a direct transference was made between one image and another. Instead, the nioi link relied on selective juxtaposition, in which the connections were only suggested.

HIBIKI, UTSURI, AND KURAI

Nioi in the broad sense is a comprehensive term used to describe a cluster of overlapping links—nioi, hibiki, utsuri, kurai—each of which represents a different application of the principle of scent. Nioi in the narrow, restricted sense is a link by scent that is quiet or gentle in mood (such as the priest/monkey trainer or the weasel/broom grass sequences). A link by hibiki (“reverberation”), by contrast, is highly dramatic. Kyoraishō explains:

A hibiki link is like hitting an object so that it reverberates.

kure'en ni
gin kawarake o
uchikudaki
mihosoki tachi no
soru koto o miyo
On a veranda,
          smashing to bits
                    a silver-painted bowl
Watch him twist the blade
of the sabre, ready to draw!(5)

The Master gave this link as an example and explained, his right hand going through the motion of smashing a bowl and his left hand pretending to draw a sabre.

(NKBZ 51:504)

A decorative bowl (kawarake) being smashed on a mansion veranda suggests a dispute in an upper-class setting. This dramatic tension “reverberates” in the second verse, in which a narrow sabre (mihosoki tachi), the type worn by aristocrats, is about to be drawn, presumably in preparation for a violent struggle. In contrast to nioizuke, which is often associated with a subdued atmosphere, a hibiki link implies an excited, dramatic mood in which the second verse reflects the emotional intensity and tension of the previous verse.

Utsuri is written either with the character for “shift/transference” or with that for “reflection”. The former character suggests that the mood moves in one direction, from the maeku to the tsukeku, as opposed to mutual interaction. Sanzōshi gives the following example.

tsuki miyo to
hikiokosarete
hazukashiki
kami aogasuru
usumono no tsuyu
“Look up at the moon!”—
          Aroused from slumber,
                    she blushes.
Attendants fanning her hair,
a thin silk robe wet with dew(6)

The appearance of the woman in the previous verse is transferred to the second verse, which depicts a lady-in-waiting at the imperial palace.

(NKBZ 51:585)

In the first verse, which suggests a Heian tale of love, a woman is awakened by someone (a lover?) asking her to enjoy the moon and finds herself in an embarrassing position. The feminine, erotic mood of the maeku “transfers” to the second verse, where a court lady, wearing only a thin silk robe (usumono), is having her attendants fan her hair dry.

When written with the graph for “reflection,” utsuri suggests that the maeku and the tsukeku “reflect” upon each other, thereby deepening the overtones of both. Yamanaka shū (published 1704), which records Bashō's activities in 1689, gives the following example.

shiba karikokasu
mine no sasamichi
matsu fukaki
hidari no yama wa
suge no tera
Chopping down brushwood
on a bamboo path to the peak
Deep amidst the pines—
          a thatch-roofed temple
                    on the mountain to the left

The Master said, “As a reflection (utsuri) of ‘Chopping down brushwood,’ one should have ‘Hailstones pouring down’ in the first five syllables of the added verse.”

The tsukeku subsequently was changed in accordance with Bashō's advice.7 In the revised version, “Hailstones pouring down” (arare furu), a violent winter image, “reflects” the brute action suggested in the previous verse. When defined as mutual reflection, utsuri becomes synonymous with nioi in the broad sense. Indeed, in Kyoraishō Bashō uses utsuri and nioi together as if they refer to the same phenomenon. Utsuri also becomes inseparable from hibiki when the mood reflected in the link is emotionally or dramatically tense. Indeed, the entire cluster of links could have been referred to as the poetics of “mutual reflection” (utsuri) rather than, as it traditionally has been, that of scent.

Another type of link mentioned in Kyoraishō and associated with nioi-zuke is the kurai (literally, “rank” or “social status”) link in which the two verses are joined by social connotations—deriving from clothing, material possessions, or other signs.

Bonen asked, “What is kurai?


Kyorai answered, “When one grasps the social status of the previous verse and adds an appropriate verse. Even if a verse is superb, if it does not match the social status found in the previous verse, the result will be disharmony. Allow me to explain, using a love verse by the Master.

uwaoki no
hoshina kizamu mo
uwa no sora
uma ni denu hi wa
uchi de koisuru
Even while chopping
          dried vegetables for the rice,
                    her heart was aflutter
On days when he does not take
the horse out, he makes love at home.(8)

In the first verse, the woman is neither someone's wife nor a female attendant in the house of a samurai or townsman. She is a maid working at a post station or a warehouse.

(NKBZ 51:504-5)

Hoshina (“dried vegetables”)—usually dried radish leaves—was placed on top of a bowl of rice to make an inexpensive dinner. Realizing from the food that the person in the maeku is a woman of extremely low station, perhaps a maid working in a warehouse, Bashō matches her with a groom, a man of equally low social stature. Links by scent, reverberation, and transference may also be kurai links. For example, a direct social correspondence (aristocratic background) exists between the silver-painted bowl smashed on the mansion veranda and the slender sword, worn only by aristocrats. And the verse on the weasel beneath the sink echoes that on overgrown broom grass: both suggest lower-class, impoverished life.

Bashō's poetics of scent and mutual reflection may be compared to the montage in modern cinema in which a succession of seemingly unrelated shots are closely linked by connotation or overtone. Sergei Eisenstein, a pioneer in film production and theory, once defined montage as “an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots” and that may result in “emotional dynamization.”9 A montage equivalent of the meditative nioi link—nioi in the narrow sense—might be the scene of a young aristocratic lady strolling across a well-manicured garden followed by a shot of a swan gliding across the water, the subdued but elegant moods of the two gently intersecting. A hibiki montage, on the other hand, with its dramatic tension or emotional intensity, might be the cinematic juxtaposition of an explosion rocking a brick building and a sleepy-faced lion suddenly roaring. A cinematic utsuri (“transference”) link could be a scene of a couple kissing followed by a shot of an avocado being peeled. The second scene, while unrelated to the first, is obviously “colored,” given a definite sexual resonance. The sense of sexuality is transferred from one scene to the next. A kurai link might be the juxtaposition of a shot of a beggar on a city street with the shot of a dog emerging from a mud puddle. In the montage, the second shot deepens a particular emotional effect found in the first shot, or vice versa, the combination often creating Eisenstein's “emotional dynamization,” an emotional reverberation that neither of the shots by itself could produce.10

TOWARD DISTANT LINKS

The poetics of scent should be understood in the larger historical context, in relationship to the development of both haikai and classical renga. Basho's nioi-zuke is reminiscent of the “distant links” (soku) found in classical waka, particularly that of the Shinkokinshū, and then later in the classical renga of the Muromachi period (1392-1573). The terms soku (“distant link”) and shinku (“close link”) were first used in Kamakura-period waka treatises such as Sangoki and Guhishō to define the relative distance between the seventeen-syllable “upper part” (kami no ku) and the fourteen-syllable “lower part” (shimo no ku) of the thirty-one syllable waka. In Sasamegoto (1463), Shinkei (1406-1475), an advocate of “distant links” in classical renga, gives the following waka by Jien in the Shinkokinshū (No. 1780) as an example of a “distant link.”11

omou koto
nado tou hito no
nakaruran
aogeba sora ni
tsuki zo sayakeki
Why does no one
          inquire about
                    my dark thoughts?
When I gaze up:
a clear moon in the sky

The “upper part,” which is highly emotive and subjective, stands at a distance from the “lower part,” which presents a natural scene, thereby causing the reader to bridge the gap, to bring together the overtones and connotations of the two parts (in this case, the implied enlightenment of the moon and the darkness of the human heart). Unlike his famous predecessor Sōzei (d. 1455), a renga master known for his rhetorically elaborate, homophonic, lexically oriented links, Shinkei advocated distant links that eschewed intricate word play, that emphasized the unstated, and that resulted in elegant and mysterious overtones. The following sequence by Shinkei appears in Shinsen tsukubashū (Vol. 1, Spring I, #85-86), a renga anthology compiled in 1495.

urasabishiku mo
haru kaeru koro
moshio yaku
keburi ni kasumu
kari nakite
Somehow lonely
as spring passes away
From the burning seaweed
          smoke rises in a mist
                    where the wild geese cry

Transforming the word “somehow” (ura) in the maeku to mean “bay” (ura), the added verse presents a landscape—the burning seaweed, spring mist, and wild geese on a bay—that distantly suggests, by its connotations, the emotions stated in the previous verse. Sōgi (1421-1502), while often engaging in the kind of verbal play that Sōzei was famous for, further developed the renga of overtones advocated by Shinkei. A good example is the following sequence (verses six and seven) in Minase sangin (1488), a hyakuin (“hundred verse”) sequence composed by Sōgi, Shōhaku, and Sōchō.

shimo oku nohara
aki wa kurekeri
Fields of white frost—
autumn coming to a close.

Sōchō

naku mushi no
kokoro to mo naku
kusa karete
Ignoring the hearts
          of the crying insects,
                    the grass withers

Sōgi

The speaker implicitly wishes to keep listening to the sound of the autumn insects, but the grass, which the insects depend on for survival, heeds neither the insects nor the speaker. The two verses are joined at various levels: by yoriai, “frost,” “insect cries,” and “withered grass” being closely associated in the classical tradition; by scenic extension or “content” (kokoro); and by overtones, by a common mood of autumnal forlornness, sorrow, and sense of transience, which derives in large part from the hon'i, or the fixed connotations borne by words derived from the waka tradition.

Muromachi haikai, specifically that of Yamazaki Sōkan and Arakida Moritake (1473-1549), two haikai pioneers, was essentially close-link haikai and was consciously opposed to soku, to the distant links found in classical renga. Moritake senku (1536-40), a thousand-verse haikai sequence by Moritake, begins with the following verses.12

tobiume ya
karogaroshiku mo
kami no haru
ware mo ware mo no
karasu uguisu
Flying plum blossoms—
          ever so lightly,
                    a divine spring
Crows, warblers, crying
“Me too! me too!”

The hokku, which puns on the word kami (“divine spirit” and “paper”), describes the legendary plum blossoms that flew to distant Dazaifu out of longing for their exiled master Sugawara no Michizane, whose divine spirit caused such miracles: the plum blossoms are flying as lightly (and divinely) as paper. The added verse transforms the word karogaroshiku (“ever so lightly”) to mean “impetuously”: crows and warblers—and implicitly everyone—clamor madly to follow the flying plum blossoms. In Moritake style, the verses are closely linked by engo (“divine spirit” and “crow”) and yoriai (“plum blossom” and “warbler”).

Like Muromachi haikai, Teimon haikai, the first major Tokugawa school of haikai, depended heavily on lexical association. In Tensuishō (ca. 1644), a Teimon secret treatise, Matsunaga Teitoku, the founder of the Teimon school, notes,

In classical renga, the main objective is to create a verse of superior quality even if it is slightly distant from the previous verse. Haikai, however, is different. No matter how good a verse may be, if it does not adhere to the previous verse, one can not consider it a good verse. In haikai, one must compose with the new verse closely adhering to the previous verse even if it means creating an inferior verse.13

By “close links” Teitoku means haikai links based on verbal association, particularly yoriai, engo, kakekotoba, and torinashi-zuke (literally, “taking by force”), in which the content of the maeku is radically altered by homophonic play, a love verse on “resentment” (urami), for example, suddenly becoming a travel verse on “viewing a bay” (urami), or “fields of heaven” (ama no hara) turning into “the stomach of a nun” (ama no hara). In Haikai no chū (1642), Yasuhara Teishitsu (1610-1673), a leader of the Teimon school, asserts that “Haikai must center on links by torinashi.14 Other popular Teimon linking techniques include honkadori, which drew on words from classical poetry, and kokoro-zuke (not to be confused with the “content links” by the same name), which allude to events in classical monogatari and Chinese literature. Teitoku hyakuin dokugin jichū (published 1659), a famous solo hyakuin with self-commentary by Teitoku, begins with:

uta izure
Komachi odori ya
Ise odori
doko no bon ni ka
oriyaru Tsurayuki
sora ni shirarenu
yuki furu wa
tsukiyo nite
Which songs are better?
          Those of the Komachi Dance
                    or those of the Ise Dance?
To which Festival of the Dead
will Tsurayuki return?
Unnoticed by the sky,
          snow is falling beneath
                    the evening moon(15)

In the opening verse, the speaker cannot decide which of two popular folk dancers/songs is superior, the two implicitly being as equally matched as Ono no Komachi and Lady Ise, two famous Heian women poets. In the second verse, the speaker wonders to whose house (the Komachi Dancers' or the Ise Dancers'?) the spirit of Ki no Tsurayuki, who can act as a poetic judge, will return during Bon (Festival of the Dead). Tsurayuki, a famous Heian poet, is linked to Ono no Komachi and Lady Ise by engo as are Bon, “dance,” and “moon.” In torinashi fashion, the third verse, which alludes to the following Tsurayuki poem in the Shūishū (No. 64), takes the yuki in Tsurayuki's name to create a verse about “snow” (yuki).

sakura chiru
ko no shitakaze wa
samukarade
sora ni shirarenu
yuki zo furikeru
Beneath the cherry trees,
where the blossoms scatter,
the breeze is not cold—
Unnoticed by the sky,
snow is falling!

In contrast to Tsurayuki's poem, in which the cherry blossoms scatter like snowflakes, the ground lit by the bright evening moon—where people are dancing at the Bon festival—looks like snow.

As the above example suggests, Teimon links were usually a combination of “content links” and “lexical links.” Indeed, in an effort to raise the aristic level of haikai and bring haikai closer to classical renga, Teitoku disallowed various kinds of close links found in earlier haikai. Teitoku's haikai handbooks—such as Gosan (published 1651) and Shinzō Inutsukubashū (published in 1643)—forbid the use of yū-zuke (“function links”), in which the added verse describes some “function” or “aspect” () of the main “topic” (tai) in the previous verse. (For example, “stretch” (haru), “push” (osu), and “tip” (sue) were considered “functions” () of “bow” (yumi).) Nor should the tsukeku use a homonym (dōi)—such as tamazusa and fumi, both of which mean “epistle”—of a word in the maeku. Identical Chinese characters (dōji) or syllables were also forbidden. Such links, which had also been banned in classical renga, generally failed to create the movement and change that he considered vital to linked verse.

In contrast to the intricate, tightly controlled extended sequences found in Teimon haikai, Danrin haikai links were freer, less bound by rules, and stressed “content links” (kokoro-zuke). It also reemployed some of the close link techniques found in Muromachi haikai but later banned by Teitoku such as yū-zuke and uwasa-zuke (“rumor links”), in which the tsukeku directly explicates the previous verse or resembles it in conception. Danrin haikai was more distant than Teimon haikai in that it gave greater stress to “content links” (kokoro-zuke) over lexical association, but it too continued to rely heavily on engo, kakekotoba, and yoriai, including an occasional torinashi. Perhaps the most characteristic type of Danrin link was the nuke (sometimes called nukegara or nuki), in which the key word or topic linking the added verse to the previous verse is deliberately “left out” (nuke) of the tsukeku.16 The following sequence appears in Ōsaka dokugin shū (1674), in a solo hyakuin by Etsushun, with commentary by Sōin.

aoao to
shikimi wa haru no
ki narubeshi
kasumu yamazaka
michi gojutchō
Deep green,
          the star anise is surely
                    a mark of spring!
Misted mountain road
Fifty blocks long

Atago is fully expressed without being mentioned.17

The word “Atago Mountain” (Atagosan), which was associated with “star anise” (shikimi) in classical poetry and which provides the critical link between the two verses, is deliberately left out. Contemporary readers knew, however, that the phrase “road fifty blocks long” (michi gojutchō) meant the distance up to the famous shrine on the peak of Atago. A more “content”-oriented link, referred to as kokoro no nuke, is the following from Saikaku haikai ōkukazu (1677), an extended solo sequence by Saikaku.

sannin narabi ni
sakite no monodomo
chirimen no
ura fukikaesu
nagabaori
kizukai shiyaru na
myaku ga naotta
Three in a row,
foot soldiers at the front
Wearing a long coat,
          the silk lining exposed
                    by the wind
“No need to worry!
Your pulse is all right now.”(18)

The first and second verses present foot soldiers marching at the head of a daimyo procession. The second and third verses, however, transform the scene into one in which a doctor is attending a patient, though the key figures—the doctor and the patient—are left unmentioned. As a form of “lexical linkage” (kotoba-zuke), nuke represents a further extension of the close links and word associations found in Teimon haikai, but in stressing missing “content”—in suggesting but not stating—the nuke link, particularly the kokoro no nuke, represented a critical step away from Teimon haikai and toward distant links, especially the poetics of “overtones” that was soon to be developed by Matsuo Bashō.

The “Chinese style,” which emerged in the early 1680s, marks the beginning of the transition from the close link haikai of the Teimon and Danrin schools to the distant links found in the more mature Bashō style. The following verses (no. 11-14) appear in a fifty-verse sequence in Jiin (1681) called “Feet of the Snowy Heron” (Sagi no ashi) composed by Bashō and his acquaintances.

kogarashi no
kojiki ni noki no
shita no kasu
Lending space
          beneath the eaves to a beggar
                    in the winter winds

Saimaru

senso o mishiru
shimo no yogatari
Discovering common ancestors
while chatting on a frosty night

Yōsui

tomoshibi o
kuraku yūrei o
yo ni kaesu nari
Dimming the lamp
          and beckoning ghosts
                    back to this world

Kikaku

furuki kōbe ni
katsura hikkake
Placing a wig
on an ancient skull

Bashō (NKBZ 32.361-62)

The sequence creates a narrative montage: a conversation with a beggar, which leads to a hyaku monogatari, in which ghost stories are told by lamp light, followed by the appearance of a ghost placing a wig on an old skull. In the fashion of a kokoro-zuke, each added verse builds on the “content” of the previous verse, amplifying some implied or submerged element of the maeku without relying on lexical linkage. Indeed, the extensive use of Chinese graph compounds and kundoku grammar in this “Chinese style” made it almost impossible to employ the verbal play found in Teimon and Danrin haikai. Instead, the poets depended more on the connotations generated by the juxtaposed images, which tended to be more subdued. The couplet format and parallel lines of Chinese poetry also appear to have encouraged a poetics of mutual correspondence.19

By the Jōkyō period (1684-88), when the Bashō style was established, the distance between the verses had increased to the point where they were called “scent links.” The following sequence comes from the opening of “Kite's Feathers” (Tobi no ha), a kasen in Sarumino (Monkey's Straw Raincoat, 1690), the Bashō school anthology most closely associated with the poetics of scent.

tobi no ha mo
kaitsukuroinu
hatsushigure
Even the kite's feathers
          are tucked in tight—
                    first winter showers

Kyorai

hitofuki kaze no
ko no ha shizumaru
Blown by a gust of wind,
the tree leaves come to rest

Bashō

momohiki no
asa kara nururu
kawa koete
Trousers soaked
          from early morning:
                    crossing a river

Bonchō

tanuki o odosu
shinohari no yumi
Bamboo poles bent back,
set up to scare racoons

Fumikuni

mairado ni
tsuta haikakaru
yoi no tsuki
Vines crawling
          over the lattice door—
                    an evening moon

Bashō

hito ni mo kurezu
meibutsu no nashi
Not offering even the visitors
the famous pears

Kyorai

The hokku suggests a winter scene in which even a tobi, a bird whose feathers are usually puffed out, has pulled in its wings during the “first winter showers” (hatsushigure), a seasonal word associated with loneliness. The second verse develops the overtones of lonely desolation by adding the wet tree leaves that have settled down after the winter showers. The third verse, which presents someone repeatedly crossing a river since early morning, carries on the wet, cold feeling of the previous verse. The fourth verse places the river near a farm or mountain lodge with bamboo poles bent back, ready to scare off racoons. In the fifth verse, the wild vines and evening moon—coupled with the bamboo scene in the previous verse—suggest a quiet, abandoned dwelling deep in the mountains. The sixth verse casts the farmer or mountain dweller in the maeku as an eccentric who does not even offer visitors the pears for which the place is famous. The haikai sequence moves metonymically, from one setting to another, and yet each verse is closely joined to the previous verse by overlapping moods, particularly a sense of quiet loneliness and desolation, an aesthetic inherited from the medieval poetic tradition but expressed here in haikai fashion, with vernacular, “low” words never found in classical poetry.

As this brief survey of haikai linkage suggests, the view of literary history presented in Kyoraishō, which identifies three successive haikai schools—Teimon, Danrin, and Bashō—with three different types of links (kotoba-zuke, kokoro-zuke, and nioi-zuke), represents only a programmatic ideal and is in fact a serious distortion. Teimon poets, while frequently employing lexical associations, also relied heavily on links by “content” (kokoro) and even regarded kokoro-zuke as an ideal. Danrin poets, while stressing links by “content,” particularly in the rapid yakazu solo sequences, continued to make extensive use of “lexical links” and word play. And while Bashō identified his school with “links by scent,” he and his disciples relied extensively on “content links” and sometimes even used “lexical links,” usually mixing all three types of links in the course of a thirty-six verse kasen. Nioi-zuke represented a poetic ideal rather than a constant. In fact, too many successive nioi-type links could seriously retard the progress of a sequence.

Instead of rejecting “content links,” Bashō pushed this particular type of link to the point where it often became a yosei-zuke, a “link by overtone,” in which the primary focus was on the shared connotations rather than on the narrative or scenic continuity. Bashō-school haikai, while creating a form of “emotional dynamization,” differed from cinematic montage in that most verses were a combination of a “content link” and a “scent link.” The following verses (No. 17-18) appear in “Horsebean” (Soramame), a kasen in Sumidawara (Genroku 7, 1694), considered the last great anthology of the Bashō school.

yuki no ato
fukihagashitaru
oborozuki
Lingering snow,
          blown and stripped away
                    beneath a misty moon

Kooku

futon marugete
mono omoi oru
Rolling up the bedding,
sunk in melancholy thoughts

Bashō

The added verse, which suggests the emotions of a neglected lover (possibly an abandoned woman), draws on the overtones of the previous verse, particularly the classical association of “misty spring moon” (oborozuki) with erotic longing, thereby making the spring landscape in the previous verse an implicit metaphor for the feelings of the woman “sunk in melancholy thoughts.” The tsukeku is thus linked to the maeku both metonymically—by scenic extension, in which the woman rolls up the bedding beneath the misty spring moon—and metaphorically, by connotative or emotive associations.

Inui Hiroyuki and Shiraishi Teizō, two modern scholars, have separately argued that classical renga died as an active and influential genre in the Genroku period (1688-1704) and that the emergence of distant-link haikai at this time is related to its demise.20 Until the Genroku period, haikai existed in an antithetical, polar relationship to classical renga, being largely defined by its differences with the classical tradition. For poets such as Matsunaga Teitoku (1571-1653) and Nishiyama Sōin (1605-1682), who were raised and educated in the classical tradition, haikai stood in a problematic relationship to classical renga and waka. (Sōin in fact returned to classical renga at the end of his career.) By contrast, the haikai poets who emerged in the Kanbun era (1661-73) and who matured in the Genroku period were not former waka poets like Teitoku or classical renga masters such as Sōin. Though they probably studied these classical genres, they did not practice or teach them professionally. Unlike Teitoku or Sōin, Bashō was never a renga master and probably never composed classical renga. For these Genroku poets, haikai was a legitimate poetic genre that no longer stood in the shadow of the classical renga. Teimon and Danrin haikai depended on the polarity between haikai and classical renga for its comic inversions. By the 1680s, however, this oppositional poetics had subsided, allowing Bashō to ignore the traditional distinctions and absorb aspects of classical renga into haikai, particularly the notion of distant links and overtones.

But while Bashō drew on medieval poetics and aesthetics, he did not attempt to imitate the classical renga of Shinkei or Sōgi. Instead, his poetics of scent grew directly out of his experience as a Teimon and Danrin haikai poet, particularly his experimentation with the “Chinese style,” and retained the distinctive features of comic linked verse: the use of non-classical diction, including both vernacular and Chinese, the constant search for “newness” in subject matter and approach, and a sense of humor (albeit more subdued and ironic than that of his haikai predecessors). In contrast to classical renga of Shinkei and Sōgi, which recreated the imaginary world of the Heian classics with elegant diction and which was almost completely divorced from everyday Muromachi life, Bashō's haikai drew directly on the language and subject matter of late seventeenth-century Tokugawa Japan. Bashō transcended the long-standing association of classical renga with “high” (ga) culture, elegant diction, and subtle overtones, and haikai with “popular” (zoku) language and society by seeking out the “high” in the “low,” particularly “high” poetic overtones and medieval aesthetics—such as sabishisa, or quiet, meditative “loneliness”—in “low” everyday, commonplace topics and language. Basho generated overtones, or “scent,” out of contemporary words that had rarely been used in poetry, that were even considered anti-poetic, and that did not have the hon'i (“poetic essences”), or fixed associations, found in classical diction.

THE DEMISE OF DISTANT LINKS

Haikai based on distant links flourished during the Genroku period and became the hallmark of the Bashō style, but it was not to last long. By the end of the Kyōhō era (1716-36) haikai linked verse as a whole was in rapid decline.21 The danger of links by scent was that they could easily become incomprehensible, the connections too distant. As the following passage from Kyoraishō suggests, many of Bashō's followers either misunderstood the original intent of the soku link or failed to live up to the difficult ideal established by Bashō.

Shikō said, “A tsukeku is supposed to connect to the previous verse. But today there are many tsukeku that are not joined to the previous verse. The Master's verses never failed to connect.”


Kyorai said, “Unless a tsukeku is joined to the previous verse, it is not a tsukeku. To connect too closely, however, is a vice. Nowadays, poets tend to believe that close connections are to be left to beginners. As a consequence, many poets compose verses that do not connect at all. Afraid of being criticized for a lack of understanding, many informed observers do not criticize a verse when it fails to connect to the previous verse and laugh when a verse is well connected. This is contrary to what I learned from the Master.”

(NKBZ 51:507-8)

As Kyoraishō suggests, Bashō's followers often made the mistake of turning the link by scent into a super-soku, which lost all contact with the preceding verse. This tendency, along with the emergence of alternative practices such as maeku-zuke, a two-verse capping game, led to the collapse of extended haikai linked verse. The poetics of scent, however, continued to live within the form of the independent hokku—the haiku in the modern period—which eventually overshadowed and replaced comic linked verse.

THE HOKKU

The toriawase (“combination”), a juxtaposition of disparate images, is one of the fundamental techniques used by Bashō in his seventeen-syllable hokku and bears a direct relationship to the nioi poetics found in his linked verse. The kireji, one of the formal requirements of the hokku, “cuts” the hokku, severing the semantic, grammatical, or rhythmic flow of the verse and often generating the dynamics of a maeku and a tsukeku within the bounds of a seventeen-syllable hokku, or opening verse. Haikai linked verse requires the reader to move back and forth between the previous verse and the tsukeku. In Sanzōshi, Dohō argues that the hokku should have this same movement, which he refers to as the “spirit of going and returning.”

The hokku is characterized by a spirit that moves in a specific direction and then comes back. An example of this type of poem is:

yamazato wa
manzai wa ososhi
ume no hana
In the mountain village
          the New Year's dancers are late:
                    plum blossoms

After stating “In the mountain village / the New Year's dancers are late,” the speaker reveals that the plum trees are already in bloom. The hokku moves toward the “New Year's dancers” and then suddenly turns to the “Plum blossoms”—a movement that we can call the “spirit of going and returning.” If the poem were simply, “In the mountain village / the New Year's dancers are late,” it would have no more force than an added verse in a linked verse sequence.


The Master said, “One should understand that a hokku combines two or more elements in a single verse.” This is spelled out in a certain haikai handbook. “Finding a good combination of elements within the circumference of the same topic is rare; and even if one does discover something, it is usually old-fashioned.”

(NKBZ 51.592)

The manzai are the costumed performers who make an annual visit to the village to perform songs and dances in celebration of the New Year and as a prayer for long life. The New Year comes at the beginning of spring, when the plum blossoms appear, but no literary or social convention joins the manzai and the plum blossoms. Dohō observes that if one simply writes: “In the mountain village / the New Year's dancers are late,” the verse would be the functional equivalent of an isolated verse in a haikai sequence. If one adds “Plum blossoms,” however, the verse assumes the dynamics of a proper hokku. To borrow Dohō's metaphor, the reader first “goes to” a particular image (the late arrival of the manzai), explores its connotations, and then “returns” by another route (the plum blossoms), seeking to find a common path, or shared connotations, between the two parts. The toriawase thus produces the effect of the maeku and tsukeku within the context of a single verse. Bashō also observes that the two parts of the toriawase should not fall within the sphere of fixed associations (yoriai) possessed by a topic in the classical tradition. A toriawase may take up a popular topic from the classical tradition (such as “plum blossoms”) but the other part (in this case, the manzai) should be drawn from outside the sphere of conventional overtones so as to create a novel, non-canonical link or association. Though neither Bashō nor his disciples used the word nioi to describe the structure of the hokku, Dohō's comments on the process of “going and returning” suggest that the Bashō school conceived of the hokku, or at least one type of hokku, in a similar fashion.

In Metaphor and Reality, Philip Wheelwright makes a distinction between two fundamental kinds of metaphors, which he calls “epiphor” and “diaphor.” The word epiphor comes from Aristotle, who argues in Poetics that metaphor is the “transference” (epiphora) of a name to some other object. In Wheelwright's words, the essential mark of ephiphor “is to express a similarity between something relatively well known or concretely known (the semantic vehicle) and something which, although of greater worth or importance, is less known or more obscurely known (the semantic tenor).”22 By contrast, the diaphor produces new meaning by juxtaposition alone. Wheelwright provides a comic example:

My country 'tis of thee
Sweet land of liberty
          Higgledy-piggledly my black hen.

The poet's intention here is obviously to make an anti-patriotic utterance, but there is nothing unpatriotic about any of the lines taken by themselves. Instead, it is the combination of parts—the juxtaposition alone—that creates the anti-patriotic sentiment. Ezra Pound's “In a Station of the Metro,” which was influenced by Japanese haiku, is a more serious example.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

As Wheelwright shows, metaphors are rarely, if ever, purely epiphor or diaphor but rather a combination of the two. Pound's poem, for example, suggests, in epiphoric fashion, a similarity between the petals and the faces in the crowd. Bashō's toriawase, like his links by scent, tended to be highly diaphoric, avoiding the direct comparison of epiphor and the inherently hierarchical relationship between the tenor and the vehicle. Instead, he relied on the creative power of juxtaposition or verbal montage, which could suggest mutual resemblances or emotional congruence.

The following poem was written by Bashō in 1680.

kareeda ni
karasu no tomaritaru ya
aki no kure
On a withered branch,
          crows have come to rest—
                    evening in autumn

Modern readers tend to read this poem metonymically, as a single continuous scene, in which an autumn evening—or late autumn (aki no kure can be read both ways)—forms the temporal and spatial setting for the crows (one crow?) that have come to rest on a withered branch. Bashō's contemporaries, however, apparently read this poem as a toriawase, a “combination” poem divided by the cutting word ya, in which the two parts—the crows on the withered branch and the autumn evening—reverberate metaphorically against each other. In Hakusenshū (1698), a collection of Bashō's hokku, the poem is preceded by the title, “On Evening in Autumn” (Aki no kure to wa), which makes the verse, specifically the first part, a response to a topic found in classical waka since the time of Fujiwara no Shunzei (d. 1204) and closely associated with “melancholy” (mono no aware) and “loneliness” (sabi). Crows perched on a withered branch, on the other hand, was a popular subject in medieval ink-paintings (suibokuga) and was associated with Chinese poetry and Shinkei's medieval poetics of yase (“the emaciated”) and hie (“the frozen”). Here the two topics, one classical and another medieval, are linked by scent, by overlapping connotations, to create a diaphoric metaphor.

Kyoraishō reveals how toriawase were sometimes created.23

Shimogyō ya
yuki tsumu ue no
yoru no ame
Southern Kyoto—
          Over the white snow gently
                    falls the evening rain(24)

Initially, the first five syllables were missing. Everyone, beginning with Bashō, tried his hand at capping the verse, and the Master finally decided on this version. Though Bonchō acquiesced, he was still not convinced. In response, the Master said, “Bonchō, cap this verse and reveal your talent. If you can find a better alternative, I will never discuss haikai again.”

(NKBZ 51.434-5)

It is tempting to read Bashō's hokku mimetically, as a depiction of a particular scene. The compositional process reveals, however, that the bottom part of the poem does not necessarily describe Southern Kyoto (Shimogyō), the area south of Sanjō (Third Ward). Instead, the relationship between the two parts—“Over the white snow gently / Falls the evening rain” and “Southern Kyoto”—resembles a nioi link. The image of rain quietly falling on a white blanket of snow creates an atmosphere of warmth. The same is true of the place name. In contrast to the aristocratic, northern half of Kyoto, Southern Kyoto was plebeian, occupied by a bustling society of middle and lower-class merchants.

The following poem, composed by Bashō in 1688 and included in Sarashina kikō (Record of a Journey to Sarashina), is also a toriawase.

mi ni shimite
daikon karashi
aki no kaze
Penetrating deep,
          the sharp taste of white radish—
                    winds of autumn

The speaker tastes a daikon, a white radish, which is so sharp and spicy that it seems to pierce the body. The first five syllables, “Penetrating deep” (mi ni shimite), are related not only to “The sharp taste of white radish” (daikon karashi) but to “The winds of autumn” (aki no kaze), which also penetrate the body. The two parts of a toriawase interact in the manner of a hibiki link, in which the emotional and sensory intensity of the previous verse “reverberates” in the added verse. The whiteness of the daikon is also echoed in “The winds of autumn,” traditionally referred to as “colorless wind” (iro naki kaze). The fatigued metaphor of “autumn wind,” a cliché from the classical, “high” (ga) tradition, is here reenergized by the visceral, unusual metaphor of “the sharp taste of radish” (daikon karashi), a haigon from everyday, “low” (zoku) culture. The heterogeneous images combine to form a larger metaphor for the hardship and bitterness of travel.

The influence of nioi poetics is also apparent in the following hokku, composed by Bashō in 1694.

kiku no ka ya
Nara ni wa furuki
hotoketachi
Chrysanthemum scent—
          in old Nara the ancient
                    statues of buddha

The chrysanthemum (kiku), which blooms amidst the bright leaves of autumn, possesses an old-fashioned but refined fragrance. The dignified, elegant statues of buddhas that fill the temples of the old capital of Nara have no metonymic connection to the scent of chrysanthemums—the statues are not surrounded by flowers—and yet the overtones of the two parts fuse: both possess antique and elegant atmospheres. The two parts of the toriawase—the fragrance of the chrysanthemum and the ancient buddhas—are not related by literary or lexical association (as in a mono-zuke) or by dramatic situation (as in a kokoro-zuke) but rather by non-canonical connotations.

A more complex example of nioi poetics is the following hokku, which appears in Oku no hosomichi (Journey into the Deep North).

hitotsu ya ni
yūjo mo netari
hagi to tsuki
In the same lodging
          sleep also women of leisure—
                    bush clover and moon

The poem juxtaposes two toriawase. In the first, the speaker, on a pilgrimage through the Deep North, unexpectedly finds himself lodging with two prostitutes. The second toriawase combines two traditionally unrelated natural images: moon and bush clover. Some readers interpret the last five syllables mimetically, as describing an actual scene before the speaker: a bright moon shining down on the dainty bush clover. Others allegorically equate the speaker with the moon (traditionally associated with otherworldliness and enlightenment) and the women of leisure (yūjo) with the bush clover (hagi). This kind of reading, however, casts the speaker in the unlikely role of a superior being who looks down, with moral condescension, upon the prostitutes. The poem is better understood in terms of nioi, in which the mood created by the unexpected meeting of the pilgrim and the women echoes that created by the heterogeneous natural images.

In some instances, the two parts of the toriawase are closely related by setting or literary convention but stand at enough distance to create a nioi link, as in the following hokku, composed by Bashō in 1691 and included in Sarumino:

                                                            On a picture
yamabuki ya
Uji no hoiro no
niou toki
Yellow mountain roses—
          when the ovens at Uji give off
                    the fragrance of tea leaves

The two parts of the toriawase are closely connected: Uji, a village south of Kyoto, was noted for both its tea and its yamabuki (“yellow mountain roses”). In spring, when the yamabuki bloom, the freshly picked tea leaves were placed in ovens to dry, thus creating a memorable aroma. The headnote suggests that as the speaker gazes at the yamabuki in the painting, he is reminded of Uji and the aroma of tea leaves in the spring. An even more profound connection can be found, however, at the level of a mutual, diaphoric metaphor: the glow of the yellow flowers of the yamabuki (kerria) synesthetically resembles the warm fragrance of the new tea leaves being dried and roasted at Uji and vice versa.

Another striking instance of nioi poetics occurs in the following hokku, composed by Bashō in 1689.

On an evening in mid-autumn, I stopped at Tsuruga. Since it was raining, I wrote:

tsuki izuko
kane wa shizumite
umi no soko
Where is the moon?
          The bell has sunk
                    to the ocean bottom.

According to the headnote, the moon is the mid-autumn harvest moon (meigetsu), which appears on the 15th of the Eighth Month and which was traditionally admired and long awaited. In a stance reminiscent of the classical tradition, the speaker longs for a moon obscured by rain and clouds. The poet seems to have heard about a local bell that has sunken to a depth where it can no longer be recovered. The moon does not—as an allegorical reading would suggest—hide behind the clouds in the same way that the bell lies hidden at the bottom of the sea. Instead, the two parts become mutual, diaphoric metaphors that intersect on the shared connotation of regret. The familiar topos of longing for the hidden moon is revitalized by an unusual desire: nostalgia for a bell that can no longer be heard.

The notion of nioi, of diaphoric metaphor, also informs the relationship between Bashō's independent hokku and their prose headnotes (maegaki). In Haikai mondō (1694), Kyoriku, one of Bashō's disciples, states:

In the past and in recent years, headnotes have been used to explicate hokku. The function of a true headnote is different. A poem that depends on the explication of a headnote is not a good poem. Instead, the headnote should add light to the poem.25

Kyoriku then goes on to give the following headnote (which Bashō added when he inserted the hokku in Sarumino) as an example of how a headnote should “add light” to a poem.

                              Upon parting from a priest
chiru toki no
kokoroyasusa ya
keshi no hana
When they scatter,
          they go quietly, in peace!
                    the poppy flowers

The poem and the headnote may be interpreted allegorically, with the poppy flowers representing the priest, or read like a nioi link in which the quiet scattering of the delicate poppy petals echoes the mood of parting from a priest, whom one will probably never see again. Brief maegaki appear in earlier collections of hokku, but for the most part they function metonymically, simply indicating the time, the place, and the occasion for the poem.26 In Bashō school anthologies, by contrast, the headnotes appear with great frequency, are sometimes of considerable length, and often create, as this one does, a metaphorical resonance.

The same is even more true of Bashō's haibun prose vignettes and their poetry. The following passage comes at the end of Genjūanki (Account of An Unreal Dwelling, 1690), generally considered to be Bashō's finest haibun.

This is not to say that I sought to escape into the mountains and fields out of a love for quiet and loneliness. I am simply like someone who, growing ill, finds it tiresome to be with people and turns his back on the world. When I look back over the years, I am painfully reminded of my shortcomings. I once coveted public office with a tenure of land. At another time, I decided that I should enter the priesthood. But desiring to capture the beauty of the birds and beasts, I was swept away by the floating clouds and drifting winds. For a while that alone was my life. Now, at the end, I cling, without talent or ability, to this one thread: the art of poetry. Po Chu-i, it is said, exhausted his five organs composing poetry; and Tu Fu grew lean doing the same. Needless to say, I have none of their wisdom or poetic talent. But is there anyone who does not live in an illusory dwelling? With those thoughts, I lie down.

mazu tanomu
shii no ki mo ari
natsu kodachi
For now, I will turn
          to the large oak tree—
                    a grove in summer

(NKBZ 41.504)

As a kind of epilogue, the hokku suggests that a shii (large oak) tree stands beside Bashō's thatched hut and that Bashō will turn to this large tree for temporary shelter from the hot sun. When read in the context of the following waka by Saigyō (Sankashū, No. 1401), however, the speaker is a bird coming to rest on a large oak tree.

narabi ite
tomo o hanarenu
kogarame no
negura ni tanomu
shii no shitaeda
Always side by side,
never parting from its mate,
the small sparrow seeks
out a nest in the lower
branches of the oak tree.

In the fashion of “scent link,” the mood of weariness expressed by Bashō in the prose is echoed in the image of the bird (a symbol of the perpetual traveler) coming to rest in a grove of trees. The prose does not, like that of uta-monogatari (poem-tales) or other Heian prose fiction, elaborate on the circumstances for the composition of the poem. Nor does it explain the meaning or significance of the poem. Instead, the prose and the hokku stand apart as separate but metaphorically related texts, forcing the reader to “leap” from the haibun to the hokku and back.

The poetics of scent also informs the relationship between the descriptive prose and the embedded hokku in Bashō's travel literature. The following passage, for example, appears toward the beginning of Oku no hosomichi.

On the first of the Fourth Month, we visited the holy mountain at Nikkō. From the distant past, this holy mountain had been called Futara Mountain. When the Great Master Kūkai built a temple here, the name of the holy mountain was changed to Nikkō, Light of the Sun. Perhaps the Great Master had been able to look a thousand years into the future. Now its holy light shines brightly over the entire land, and its benevolence extends to the most remote corners of the country. The dwellings of the four classes—the warrior, the farmer, the artisan, and merchant—are safe, and the world is at peace. I have more to write, but out of respect, I will stop here.

ara tōto
aoba wakaba no
hi no hikari
Awe-inspiring!
          on dark green, light green leaves,
                    the light of the sun

(NKBZ 41.345)

The initial version of the hokku, recorded by Bashō's travel companion Sora, is:

ara tōto
ko no shitayami mo
hi no hikari
Awe-inspiring!
          Reaching even the dark tree base,
                    the light of the sun

The earlier version, in which the light of the sun symbolically reaches even the darkness beneath the trees, is a direct extension of the prose, paying tribute to the deity at the Tōshōgū Shrine and elaborating on the “content” (kokoro) of the previous passage. The final version found in Oku no hosomichi, by contrast, echoes the prose passage from a distance, by “scent”: the sight of the rays of the summer sun pouring down on the dark evergreen leaves (aoba) and the light deciduous leaves (wakaba) fills the speaker with the kind of awe and reverence that deities inspire.

The relationship between the prose and the poetry in Oku no hosomichi also applies to the prose itself. If the extended clauses of the following passage were placed parallel to each other, they would resemble a haikai linked verse sequence: many of the clauses and sentences are closely tied by imagery or narrative syntax, but others stand at a greater distance, connected only by connotation or emotional congruence.27 The passage immediately follows the famous “Stone Monument” (Tsubo no ishibumi) section.

From there I visited the Jeweled River of Noda and the Rock-in-the-Offing. At Sue-no-matsu Mountain, they have built a temple called Last Pine Mountain. And yet all that is visible between the branches of the pines are graves; the realization that those who, crossing their wings and intertwining their branches, had pledged eternal love were ultimately destined to this fate filled me with sorrow; I heard the tolling of the evening temple bells at Shiogama Bay.

(NKBZ 41:359)

The clauses move paratactically from one subject or place to another—Jeweled River of Noda to Sue-no-matsu Mountain to Shiogama Bay—without any overt explanation or connecting phrases. Indeed, the gap in the third sentence between the clause that ends with “this fate filled me with sorrow” and “I heard the tolling of the evening temple bells at Shiogama Bay” may leave some readers wondering if a sentence is missing. Almost every extended clause, however, has connotations that merge with those in the previous phrase. In the second sentence, Sue-no-matsu Mountain, a famous utamakura (poetic place), reminds the narrator (and, it is hoped, the reader) of the following poem from the Kokinshū (No. 1093).

kimi o okite
adashi kokoro o
waga motaba
sue no matsuyama
nami mo koenamu
If my heart were ever
to turn fickle and leave you
behind for another,
the waves would cross over
Sue-no-matsu Mountain.

The association of Sue-no-matsu Mountain with pledges of eternal love leads to the next clause, which laments the ultimate fate of all lovers. That sorrow, in turn, reminds the narrator of the loneliness of the evening temple bells (a symbol of the impermanence of all things) at Shiogama Bay, an utamakura made famous by poems such as the following by Ki no Tsurayuki (Kokinshū, No. 852).

kimi masade
keburi taenishi
shiogama no
ura sabishiku mo
miewataru kana
Shiogama Bay,
where the smoke has died away
and you are now gone—
With a sense of loneliness,
I gaze across the waters.

Those readers with an intimate geographic knowledge of the Deep North may know that Sue-no-matsu Mountain and Shiogama Bay are adjacent to one another, but for most readers the only bridge between the clause about Sue-no-matsu Mountain and the last clause on Shiogama is the shared connotations of solitude and impermanence.

The aesthetics of nioi is by no means limited to Bashō. It can be found in a variety of traditional Japanese arts, from landscape gardens to architecture to flower arrangement, and forms a part of the larger medieval aesthetics of resonances. The notion of nioi, for example, is critical to understanding gasan, poetry added to paintings, a practice that has a long tradition in China and Japan. Japanese bunjin (literati), who were well versed in Chinese literature and arts, painted on topics found in Chinese poetry. In these instances, the relationship between the Chinese poem and the painting tended to resemble that of kokoro-zuke, in which the tsukeku directly elaborated on the content of the maeku. When a waka or hokku was placed on a painting, however, the relationship often resembled that of the nioi link.28 Haikai poets such as Bashō and Yosa Buson (1716-83) worked in both genres. In many instances, the poem and the painting created a montage effect, in which the poetry and the painting were joined, not by content, but by shared overtones, which often resulted in Eisenstein's “emotional dynamization.”

Notes

  1. Ijichi Tetsuo, Omote Akira, and Kuriyama Riichi, eds., Rengaronshū, Nōgakuronshū, Haironshū, NKBZ 51.503. Dohō's Sanzōshi makes a similar observation: The Master said, “Haikai should be based on links by scent, reverberation, shadow, transference, or conjecture, on links that emerge from no particular form.”

  2. By Kyokusui and Bashō. From a kasen—Ki no moto ni shiru mo namasu mo sakura kana—composed in Genroku 3 (1690) and later anthologized in Hisago.

  3. By Hairiki and Bashō. From a haikai sequence—Arearete sue wa umi yuku nowaki kana—composed in Genroku 7 (1694) and recorded in Kyō no mukashi.

  4. Roman Jakobson, “Two Aspects of Language: Metaphor and Metonymy,” in Vernon Gras, ed., European Literary Theory and Practice (New York: Dell, 1973), 119-27.

  5. By Shigenari and Ryūgen, in a sequence in Izayoi.

  6. By Sora and Bashō, in a kasen—Arigataya yuki o kaorasu kaze no oto—composed in Genroku 2 (1689), during Bashō's journey to the Deep North.

  7. Composed by Bashō and Kitae. For text and commentary of the revised version, a kasen called Uma karite, composed in 1689 (Genroku 2), see Abe Masami, Bashō renku shō, 7 (Meiji shoin, 1981), 446-47.

  8. By Yaba and Bashō. The seventh and eighth verses of Furiuri no gan aware nari ebisu kō, a kasen in Sumidawara.

  9. Sergei Eisenstein, Film Forum Essays in Film Theory and Film Sense, trans. Jay Leyda, A Meridian Book (Cleveland/New York: The World Publishing Company, 1957), 49, 57.

  10. Nose Tomoji, Renku no geijutsu no seikaku (Kadokawa shoten, 1970), 19-20.

  11. Shinkei divides renga links into two broad categories: yoriai, fixed lexical associations, and kokoro-zuke, “which abandons the configuration and words of the previous verse and links only by content.” Kokoro-zuke is divided yet further into “close links” (shinku) and “distant links” (soku). Shinkei regards these three types of links—yoriai, shinku, and soku—to be progressively more difficult, with the yoriai suited for the beginner and the soku for the master.

  12. For partial text and commentary, see Inui Hiroyuki and Shiraishi Teizō, Renku e no shōtai, Yūhikaku sensho (Yūhikaku, 1980), 126-43.

  13. Teimon haikai shū II, Koten haibungaku taikei, 2 (Shūeisha, 1971), 420.

  14. Teimon haikai shū II, 391.

  15. Kaneko Kinjirō, Teruoka Yasutaka, Nakamura Shunjō, eds., Renga haikai shū, NKBZ 32.283. Oriyaru is a haigon meaning “to return.”

  16. The following analysis of nuke links is indebted to Ogata Tsutomu, “Nukefū no haikai,” Haikaishi Ronkū (Ōfūsha, 1977), 108-129.

  17. Katsumine Shinpū, Danrin haikai shū jō, Haisho taikei, 15 (Shunjūsha, 1929), 32.

  18. Danrin haikai shū I, Koten haibungaku taikei, 3 (Shūeisha, 1971), 361.

  19. Nose Tomoji, “Bashō no hairon,” in his Haikai kenkyū, Nose Tomoji chosaku shū, 9 (Shibunkaku shuppan, 1985), 142.

  20. Inui Hiroyuki, “Tsukeai no shōchō,” in his Kotoba no uchi naru Bashō (Miraisha, 1981), 333-72, and Shiraishi Teizō, “Shinku soku no ron,” in Bashō II, Nihon koten bungaku kenkyū shiryō sōsho, (Yūseidō, 1977), 1-10.

  21. Inui and Shiraishi, Renku e no shōtai, 37-38.

  22. Philip Wheelwright, Metaphor and Reality (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962), 9.

  23. The same episode appears in Haikai mondō (“Jitoku hatsumei ben”). Shōmon hairon haibun shū, Koten haikai bungaku taikei, 10 (Shūeisha, 1970), 147.

  24. By Bonchō. The poem appears in Sarumino.

  25. For text and commentary, see Minami Shin'ichi, ed., Sōshaku Kyoriku no hairon (Kazama shoin, 1979), 264-65.

  26. Yokozawa Saburō, “Shōō no geijutsu,” in his Haikai no kenkyū: Bashō o chūshin ni (Kadokawa shoten, 1967), 9.

  27. Asada Zenjirō and Yayoshi Kan'ichi, Bashō: Koten to sono jidai (San'ichi shobō, 1962), 187.

  28. Yokozawa Saburō, “Nioi, utsuri, hibiki,” in his Haikai no kenkyū: Bashō o chūshin ni, 108.

Get Ahead with eNotes

Start your 48-hour free trial to access everything you need to rise to the top of the class. Enjoy expert answers and study guides ad-free and take your learning to the next level.

Get 48 Hours Free Access
Previous

Introduction to Bashō and his Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary

Next

On a Bare Branch: Bashō and the Haikai Profession

Loading...