[In the following essay, Rimer discusses Santoka's life and "laconic, deceptively simple" haiku poetry.]

The reader who believes that art transcends its own times will surely take solace and inspiration from the work of Taneda Santoka (1882-1940), a remarkable Zen priest and poet of our century who produced poetry as personal and profound as that of his illustrious predecessor and spiritual mentor, Ryokan (1758-1831). Like Ryokan's poetry, Santoka's work can best be understood as a record of his quest for spiritual enlightenment, the kind of voyage that can be undertaken in any era. Readers in our increasingly secular age may first be drawn to Santoka out of a sense of nostalgia, but in reading his poetry they will immediately come face to face with a strong will and the personality of a man who, whatever his personal weaknesses, appears quite unafraid to live on the very edge of society, far from its received values and expectations. Santoka explores, or re-explores, realms that are commonly believed no longer to exist.

Santoka (a pen name the translator John Stevens has rendered "Burning Mountain Peak") began his life as an ordinary young man with some interest in literature. His father was a local politician who owned a certain amount of property. Santoka began writing haiku in college, where he also slipped into a pattern of heavy drinking. Married, then separated, he drifted from job to job until, after what may have been a suicide attempt, he was sent to convalesce in a Zen temple. This proved the turning point in his spiritual life, and in 1925 he was officially ordained as a Zen priest. Santoka went here and there begging for his sustenance, short trips turning into longer pilgrimages. Sinking into drunkenness again, he was rescued by friends, who found him a small cottage to use as a hermitage. This served as a base for his walking trips, which took him through many parts of Japan, begging, writing, drifting. Some of these trips were undertaken in order to seek out certain traditional sites holy to Buddhists in Japan, some without apparent destination. A number of his poems were published during his lifetime, and indeed he achieved a degree of fame. But worldly attention was apparently of little interest. He once told a newspaper reporter, "I' m one of society's warts."

Santoka's free-style haiku poetry, like his life, appears stripped to the essentials.

No path but this one—
I walk alone.
 (trans. John Stevens)

Walking into the wind,
heaping abuse upon myself.
 (trans. James Abrams)

Walking, walking, he traveled on. Like his great poet predecessors, stretching back through Basho to Saigyo and beyond, Santoka perceived that movement, in and of itself, provided a sense of elevated awareness that might in turn lead to some higher level of understanding.

Stretching out my feet;
Some daylight still remains.
 (trans. John Stevens)

A steady autumn drizzle,
one road, straight ahead.
 (trans. James Abrams)

Laconic, deceptively simple, these brief vignettes allow the reader to penetrate special instants in the poet's journey, creating an empathy of strong feeling between poet and reader.

For all the timelessness of this spiritual landscape, Santoka is quite able to record our own century when he feels the need.

At the tobacco shop
no cigarettes,
a cold rain falls.
 (trans. James Abrams)

The deep, cool moon
Appears between the buildings.
 (trans. John Stevens)

The moon, traditionally a Buddhist symbol for enlightenment, remains; only the milieu has changed.

Haiku being as difficult as they are to render into English, it sometimes helps to contrast translations of the same poem in order to uncover layers of implicit meaning. Here, for example, is a famous poem in which, by extension, walking may serve as a symbol for the difficult, unending search for self-understanding.

Going deeper,
And still deeper—
The green mountains.
 (trans. John Stevens)

I push my way through,
push my way through,
green mountains
 (trans. James Abrams)

There are few answers in Santoka's poetry, only signs of his continuing search. Success, failure, and frustration are courageously recorded.

Thinking of nothing,
I walk among
A forest of withered trees.
 (trans. John Stevens)

Difficult as Santoka's life and art may be to describe, the reader who examines these haiku with care and sympathy can experience something of them both. The poems are so close to the heart of the man that one seems a reflection of the other. The reader's interest can begin with either.