A Book Review by Robert D. Wilson
and Professor Cheryl Crowley
A Room of My Own Press
ISBN: 978-0-9868947-0-1
Printed in Canada
©2011
moonlight
no wine, reading
Li po
Chen-ou Liu immigrated from Taiwan to Canada to study a profession his conservative Chinese parents had chosen for him. One’s elders in Taiwan are to be venerated and respected. When one strays from these expectations, it is a display of disrespect and can bring shame upon the family. Liu has a love affair with poetry and writing and a deep respect for his elders. The time came when Liu decided to follow the path of his heart; a path his parents would not accept or encourage. On June 4, 1989, at Bejing’s Tiananmen Square in The People’s Republic of China, where the leaders of this communist country ordered the massacre of those demanding democracy, was a heart wrenching event to watch. For the Chinese, living on mainland China or in Taiwan, it was a moment in History that will not be forgotten.
When Chen-ou Liu announced to his parents that he would not continue with the prescribed studies they had chosen for him, it was an emotional confrontation between his desire to follow his heart freely and his parents’ insistence that he obey and respect the path they’d chosen for him. His announcement upset his parents causing a rift that still exists. In essence, his parents severed their ties with Liu and made him a familial outcast.
I like Chen-ou Lin’s poetry. His haiku resonates the Asian spirit, and makes use of aesthetics in a continuum of time that is permanent and impermanent; the process more important than the subjective specificity of object bias found in most Anglo-Western haiku-like poems. His poetry demand to be interpreted by the informed reader. They do not tell all, are not based on an “aha” moment, and have no definitive ending. More importantly they give meaning and voice to the unsaid, the magic inherent in Japanese poetry.
Some examples:
fork in the road...
standing still to hear
the leaves
Pacific shore...
my poem is folded
into a boat
beach bonfire...
nothing left between
the moon and me
Chen-ou Liu’s book is an anthology of his essays and poetry. It’s impossible to write a thorough review on an anthology as the subject matter is varied, layered, and too diverse to be covered without writing a detailed exegesis. I chose, therefore, to review Chapter 7 in the anthology entitled "Reviving Japanese Haikai through Chinese Classics: Yosa Buson and the Basho Revival.”
The article makes excessive use of quotes, relying primarily on the scholarship of Professor Cheryl Crowley, a well- known expert in the field of Japanese poetics. Using quotations is to be expected in any scholarly paper.
Unfortunately, Liu’s article relies too much on quotes and not enough on original thinking. Since his principal source for his paper was Professor Crowley, I asked the professor to review Chapter 7.
The following is her review. Below her review is the article Liu wrote.
“My comments on Mr. Liu's essay "Reviving Japanese Haikai through Chinese Classics: Yosa Buson and the Basho Revival:"
1. There is no central thesis stated at the outset. A title and several epigraphs from other sources don't in themselves explain the main point of the essay. It would be better if the author dropped the epigraphs entirely and replaced them with a paragraph explaining the main point of the essay. (In general, quotations used as they are here at the opening do little to assist in making an author's point -- how does the reader know if the sources cited are actually trustworthy? It's much more persuasive to present material from primary sources as proof of the author's own original assertion.)
2. Re: commentary on Buson's verse "Furu ike no" (the old pond's).
It's not clear why the author presents this verse, since there is no explicit statement of the essay's purpose other than the hint in the title. If indeed the purpose of the essay is to show how Buson aimed to revive haikai through allusions to Chinese classics, this verse is not a good example, particularly if the author is persuaded by the arguments of my book and those of Haruo Shirane. That is to say, if it is true that Buson's verse is an allusion to Bashô's, then it's not an allusion to anything particularly Chinese.
3. Re: paragraphs on the Bashô Revival: The most interesting part of the essay for me is the part when the author explains the wenren/renwen notion. The remainder of the essay makes rather heavy use of my Buson book, and while it's carefully cited, what might be more compelling for readers would be if the author turned his attention to further explication of “how” Buson makes use of the Chinese tradition. That is, if the author was able to select some Buson’s verses that make allusions to Chinese literature (there is an abundance of them) and make those the major focus of the essay, rather than offering a detailed summary of the arguments of other scholars, that would be both more persuasive, and also transform the essay into a piece of original scholarship that makes a valuable contribution to the field.
I am not sure what the author's background is, but if his education was such that he knows classical Chinese literature well, then that would make him exceptionally well qualified as a commentator on Buson's Chinese-derived sources. Such an approach would be particularly welcome, as it is still common for readers to suppose that since Buson was a painter, his haiku was "shasei"-esque (sketchlike). Most readers whose background does not include reading in Chinese are likely to mistake a literary allusion for an unprecedented, painterly observation.
4. The Shôzan/Shôha/ga/zoku section needs better organization. Again, I'd suggest dispensing this with a quick reference (most readers don't care much about the trivia of Buson's social life -- this is where a footnote that says "see such-and-such a book" would do just fine) to allow the reader to get on with thinking about Buson's own comments on the topic -- i.e., the "Shundei kushû" preface, perhaps -- and looking at some key examples of haiku that support the author's assertion.
5. The way it stands now, the explication of Buson's sinophilia is more or less a summary of arguments made in other sources. My guess is that Simply Haiku readers would rather see something new and original, that they can't get elsewhere. For this reason, I would invite the author to revise the piece, drastically cutting back on the secondary-source summary and using his own observations of Buson's poetry to support his views. It may be that my book/article or Rosenfield's book are wrong. Don't depend on our authority, go out and look at the original texts and see for yourself what you think.
CAC
Note: This article was originally commissioned by Simply Haiku for its Winter addition, then rejected, and later picked up by another publication.
Chapter 7
Reviving Japanese Haikai through Chinese Classics: Yosa Buson and the Basho Revival
by Chen-ou Liu
Despite the fact haikai was a native Japanese poetic genre, it was closely linked with the world of sinophile intellectuals that flourished in [the eighteenth century], and the Basho Revival owned much to the ideas and notions that circulated within it.
-- Cheryl A. Crowley, Haikai Poet Yosa Buson and the Basho Revival
Buson’s cultural make-up was essentially bi-national, the Chinese and native Japanese elements woven together in a seamless fabric.
-- John Rosenfield, Mynah Birds and Flying Rocks: Word and Image in the Art of Yosa Buson
Written in the Japanese tradition of honkadori1, Yosa Buson’s frog hokku opens up a window into the lamentable situation of the eighteenth century haikai community.
Soo no ku o osoite Inheriting one of our ancestor’s verses:
furu ike no the old pond's
kawazu oiyuku frog is growing elderly
ochiba kana fallen leaves2
First of all, semantically speaking, the above poem is made up of two parts that are separated by a kireji (cutting word), kana. The first part is that in the old pond there is an aging frog, whose honi (poetic essence) is “suggestive of spring,… [implying] vigor and youth.”3 The second part introduces to the scene fallen leaves, whose honi refers to winter.4
Secondly, technically speaking, Buson employs the puzzle-solving technique to hold the reader in suspense in the first part of the poem (a supposedly youthful and energetic frog is getting old), and he solves the puzzle in the second part through shifting the scene to a winter setting where the seemingly disparate elements of the poem suddenly make sense: the frog is approaching old age, hibernating under fallen leaves that cover the ice in an old pond.5
Thirdly, according to the headnote that mentions “one of our ancestor’s verse,” Buson makes a honkadori to Basho’s most memorable hokku.
Furu ike ya the old pond
kawazu tobikomu a frog jumps in
mizu no oto the sound of water6
By using Basho’s old poem as a raw material and the device of alluding, Buson re-shapes the old poem and makes the intention and technique of re-shaping itself the object of appreciation.7 In doing so, Buson creates a startling twist on the accepted meaning of the old poem, which is the skillfully Basho-esque use of “haikai imagination” described in Haruo Shirane’s Traces of Dreams.8 Connotatively speaking, Buson laments that Basho’s frog, which is suggestive of spring, has no strength to jump into the old pond, and just grows old, buried by the fallen leaves that are associated with winter.9
Finally, read with the knowledge that Buson’s hokku is a parody of Basho’s, it is reasonable to read Buson’s poem as commentary on the pitiful situations of the haikai genre of his day: “That is, a statement of frustration and dissatisfaction with the popular neglect of Basho’s teachings. In other words, a once energetic and youthful animal -- Basho’s poetic legacy -- is now dormant and aging in the frozen barrenness of the contemporary haikai community.”10
Due to the scope and main focus of this chapter and for readers who are interested in the East Asian poetic traditions, I will discuss the root causes of this “frozen barrenness of the contemporary haikai community” and the Chinese influences, especially the ideal of the bunjin (Chinese: wenren, which means scholar-amateur), on Buson, the leading figure in the Basho Revival moment.11
Although literary historians have often talked about three successive major schools of haikai -- the Teimon, Danrin, and Shomon (the Basho school) – in the later half of the seventeenth century and “have identified the Genroku period (1688-1704) with the ‘Basho style’.”12 However, recent studies have showed that even at the summit of his career, Basho was just one of several prominent haikai masters, and was far from having the largest number of followers or having formed the most influential school.13 After his death in 1694, his disciples had varied views on writing haikai, emphasizing different aspects of the “Basho style,” and eventually formed their own followings. Within years, Basho’s school faded quickly, and his disciples and their followers used his name and legacy to form individual factions, fighting fiercely with each other to expand their local base of poetic influence.
Over years of grouping and regrouping among Basho’s disciples and their followers, there were two major factions: the rural Shomon, which was divided into two sub-factions, the Mino and Ise factions, and the urban Shomon. The division was related to the different periods of the Basho style during which he made stylistic changes exemplified in various anthologies published by his supporters.14
Rural Shomon poets looked to the style that Basho experimented in the last years of his life, the karumi (lightness) style. This style “emphasized simplicity and ordinary language and situations,”15 and the verse anthology, Charcoal Sack, was considered by the followers as the “epitome of good haikai.”16 Urban Shomon poets closely followed the style of Basho’s developed in the Tenna period (1681-84), the kanshibuncho or Chinese style. “[It] was a literary, elevated style that drew on kanshi (poetry in Chinese) for its model,”17 and the verse anthology, Empty Chestnuts, was regarded as the “‘quintessential expression of Basho’s kanshibuncho period.”18
During the first four decades of the eighteenth century, most of Basho’s first generation disciples passed away. The internal fighting became worse, and haikai lost the elegance and beauty that Basho had imparted to the form. “The ‘grandchildren disciples’ of Basho either reverted to the superficial humor of the Teitoku and Danrin schools, or else wrote verses of such utter simplicity and insignificance that they hardly merit the name of poetry.”19
Even worse was the rise and great influence of a highly commercialized form of haikai -- tentori (point-scoring) haikai. During Buson’s day, there was a group of professional verse-markers (tenja) who mainly relied on their literary talents to make a living. Through the aid of a go-between, the verse-marker set the verse, the haikai practitioners responded to it with their verses, and then the verse-marker graded them with points (ten). The verse-marker and the go-between were paid for their service, and the practitioners got their points and competed with each other to see who earned the most points. This type of haikai has helped popularize the genre and also been highly successful in the early eighteenth century.20
However, there were a lot of downsides to this popular trend. The verse-markers were mainly driven by commercial rather than educational goals: the more thepractitioners, the greater their income. As for the practitioners who indulged themselves in this type of haikai, “it no longer was necessary to display depth of feeling or even a knowledge of tradition provided one was clever enough to twist the seventeen syllables into an amusing comment.”21 One of the poetic characteristics the haikai masters had advocated was to create a haikai twist, and its creation was dependent on the poet’s “skillful balancing of the conventional meaning, i.e., the honi, of a topic with whatever new and startling insight [he/she was] able to add to it, typically creating a clash between the worlds of ga [the elegant and refined] and zoku [the mundane or commonplace].”22 The tentori practitioners were less versed in waka and renga, learned little from their commercially-minded verse-markers, and thus lessconcerned themselves with the craft of haiaki than with writing some seemingly dazzling poems to score high points and to impress their fellow practitioners. When writing haikai, they favored the zoku over the ga to score points, failing to create a haikai twist on the honi of a topic.23
The most obvious and harmful result of this trend was that haikai became a commodity. The verse-markers didn’t help cultivate literary taste and knowledge of haikai, but rather they focused on producing points for the haikai practitioners who showed little interest in the craft of haiku, only in accumulating the points needed to impress each other. This pitiful situation did not improve until a group of Edo poets published the anthology, Ink of Five Colors, in 1731, emphasizing the skillful use of literary devices, such as word plays and similes.24 This publication stimulated some aspiring poets to advocate the “Back to Basho” movement that openly expressed its opposition to the prevailing tentori haikai. It took almost a decade to let the haikai revival proper begin. In 1743, the fiftieth anniversary of Basho’s death, a memorial anthology was published by his followers, firmly indicating their intention of spreading his poetic ideals. Furthermore, some dedicated poets followed Basho’s journey to the north of Japan, building memorial sites along the way.25
The central figure in the Basho Revival movement was Yosa Buson (1716-83), who is often regarded as the second greatest of the haikai poets.26 Historically and culturally speaking, Buson was born into an era in which there was a surge of interest in Chinese culture, especially Chinese poetry and painting.27 The Tokugawa governments had established Chinese learning as the foundation of their educational policies.28 During his formative years when staying in Edo, he received a good and solid education in Confucian studies, poetry, painting, calligraphy, and music. Among Buson’s outstanding teachers, Hayano Hajin (1677?-1742) and Hattori Nankaku (1683-1759) were the most influential in shaping his view of poetry and his relationships to Chinese classics.29
Haijin was a haikai master with whom Buson lived for years. He studied his craft with Enomoto Kikaku (1661-1707) and Hattori Ransetsu (1654-1707), both of whom were urban Shomon poets, but he rejected his teachers’ “lively, witty style of hakai that appealed to Edo townmen.”30 He devoted himself to promotingBasho’s rural style. Buson “adopted an outlook between those two extremes.”31 Nankaku was a student of one of the most important Confucian scholars, Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728), who emphasized an unmediated understanding of Chinese classics, and whose thoughts had highly influenced the leading painters of nanga (also known as bunjinga, which literally means literati painting). Nanga was a school of Japanese painting modeled on the Chinese Southern school of painting, to which Buson belonged. Nankaku specialized in Chinese classics, and one of his greatest achievements was the Toshisen, a Japanese edition of one the most influential Chinese verse anthologies, Tang Selected Poems. The Toshisen had long served as one of the foundational texts for the bunjin movement.32
As John Rosenfield emphasizes in Mynah Birds and Flying Rocks, “Bason’s cultural make-up was essentially bi-national, the Chinese and native Japanese elements woven together in a seamless fabric.”33 The Shomon haikai helped Buson establish his primary identity as a Japanese poet; his another artistic interest, nanga, and his perception of being an artist were highly influenced by the Chinese ideal of the wenren (Japanese: bunjin).
The Japanese term "bunjin" has a centuries-old history beginning in the Heian period (794-1185) known for its poetry and highly influenced by Chinese Tang culture. Its original meaning was “a literate person serving in a civil capacity” as opposed to bujin, who is in military service).”34 It was not until the eighteenth century that, some scholars stress, “saw the emergence of a more specific bunjin phenomenon,…presented as follows: discontent among the educated and a concurrent upswing in the study of Chinese philosophy, literature and art, stimulated some intellectuals to take the image of the Chinese [scholar-amateur] (the wenren)…as their model.”35
The concept of “wenren” is highly related to that of “renwen” (wenren written inversely in Chinese). It can be found in the Yi Jing, also known as the Book of Changes,which is one of the oldest of Chinese classics.36 Renwen can roughly be translated as meaning the "arts of humanity," one component of the three-fold Chinese universe: heaven, earth, and humanity. It "embodies all that is of the highest value to the society, and interacts with the other two: the spiritual and philosophical (tianwen) and the environmental and ecological (diwen).37 A person cultivated in renwen was originally called wenren. However, the meaning of wenren has changed over time. In its most idealized form, wenren referred to “scholar-officials who – either through misfortune or because of some political conviction – withdrew from circles of power, and spent their time writing poetry, practicing calligraphy and painting, and enjoying the company of like-minded friends. Wenren did not sell their work, but used it as a means of contemplation and self-cultivation.”38 Generally speaking, these wenren saw themselves embody a finely cultivated artistic sensibility, dedicating to “the amateur ideal” and thus denouncing the commercialization of art. John Rosenfield once summarized the ethos of this learned gentry as follows:
“Scholar-Amateurs… practiced calligraphy, poetry, and painting with more or less equal facility; they played musical instruments, collected antiques, carved seals, and engaged in literary scholarship. No matter how adept they might become in these avocations, they refused to think themselves as professionals. ‘if you fall into the demon world of the professional painter, ‘wrote the [Chinese] theorist Dong Qichang (1555-1636), ‘there is no medicine that can save you.’ In their concerns for self-expression they refused to work for unsympathetic patrons or for the marketplace.”39
For example, in 1751 the Kyoto poet Mootsu published an excellent verse anthology that he hoped would revive interest in the haikai of the past masters, especially that of Basho, and he invited Buson to write a preface.40 At age thirty-five, Buson was a struggling painter with a good reputation in Edo who had a sharp eye for the socio-poetic development of the haikai, strongly criticizing the mainstream tentori haikai in the preface:
“Nowadays those who are prominent in haikai have different approaches to the various styles, castigating this one and scorning that one, and they thrust out their elbows and puff out their cheeks, proclaiming themselves haikai masters They will flatter the rich, and cause the small-minded [i.e., tentori poets] to run wild, and compile anthologies that list numerous unpolished verses. Those who really know haikai frown and throw them away.”41
Buson’s discontent with a highly commercialized form of haikai was an “inextricable part of the image of the [bunjin]” of his day.42 In fact, historically and educationally speaking, point scoring was not in itself an evil tool, but rather an educational means widely used by the masters of waka and renga for centuries.43 Buson also used it to inspire his disciples to achieve the highest possible standard of haikai: “mediocre verses received no points, but better verses merited scores of seven, ten, twenty, and twenty-five points depending on their quality… and [he] used special seals to mark the verses that used phrases that made allusions to famous Basho’s hokku.”44 For example, the verses that made skillful allusions to Basho’s frog hokku merited twenty points.45 It was the cheapening effects of popularizing and commercializing haikai that made Buson hostile towards tentori practitioners. The only thing on the minds of those practitioners was to write seemingly more dazzling, zoku-favored poem in order to score more points. But, for Buson and his fellow Basho Revival poets who embraced the bunjin ideal, “how to balance zoku and ga in haikai was a perennial question.”46
As Cheryl Crowley emphasizes in her well-researched book, Haikai Poet Yosa Buson and the Basho Revival, ideologically speaking, there were “two points of intersection between the bunjin ideal and the Basho Revival.”47 The first point was that reading and writing poetry was not only a joyful pleasure, but also the “cultivation of the spirit.”48 The second was the genuine, deep-rooted contempt for any form of commercialized art.49 Furthermore, in order to assert their options of choosing patrons, many scholar-amateurs “declined to work even for the imperial count when they believed it to be corrupt and debased in taste.”50
In Buson’s day, a lot of serious-minded haikai poets were closely associated with the sinophile intellectuals that helped give rise to the idealization of bunjin, particularly those poets who wrote kanshi.51 Among his fellow poets and friends, Miyake Shozan (1718-1081) and Kuroyanagi Shoha (1727-71) exerted great influences on him in broadening and deepening his knowledge of Chinese literature.52 Shozan was known for publishing kanshi anthologies, and one of his most important works was his 1763 Haikai Selected Old Verses, an influential Basho Revival collection of verses that was modeled on one of the most greatest Chinese verse anthologies, Tang Selected Poems.53 Buson’s frequent use of imagery alluding to Chinese literature was in part due to Shozan’s influence.54
Shoha studied Chinese classics first in the school founded by Ito Jinsai (1627-1705), a fundamental parts of whose teachings was to “organize and recapture the classics of the past,”55 and later he studied with Nankaku, with whom Buson also studied. Shoha wrote a lot of kanshi in his early life, and came to learn haikai later with Buson. Of his students, Shoha was among “those with the strongest ties to the literate, sinophilic culture that engendered the ideal of the bunjin.”56 His conversations with Buson on haiku later became the key component of the preface Buson wrote for the Shundei Verse Anthology, and this preface was one of the most influential texts for the Basho Revival, revealing that Buson’s view of the poetics of haikai was shaped by Chinese influences.57 (Due to its significance onhow to write good haiku, I quote the following lengthy passages from Crowley’s translation):
“I went to visit Shundei-sha Shôha at his second house in the west of Kyoto. Shôha asked me a question about haikai. I answered, "Haikai is that which has as its ideal the use of zokugo (ordinary language), yet transcends zoku (the mundane). To transcend zoku yet make use of zoku, the principle of rizoku, is most difficult. It is the thing that So-and-So Zen master spoke of: 'Listen to the sound of the Single Hand,' in other words haikai Zen, the principle of rizoku (transcending the mundane)." Through this, Shôha understood immediately.
He then continued his questions. "Although the essence of your teaching must be profound, is there not some method of thought that I could put into use, by which one might seek this by oneself? Indeed, is there not some shortcut, by which one might, without making a distinction between Other and Self, identify with nature and transcend zoku?" I answered, "Yes, the study of Chinese poetry. You have been studying Chinese poetry for years. Do not seek for another way." Doubtful, Shôha made so bold as to ask, "But Chinese poetry and haikai are different in tenor. Setting aside haikai, and studying Chinese poetry instead, is that not more like a detour?"
I answered, "Painters have the theory of 'Avoiding zoku:' 'To avoid the zoku in painting, there is no other way but to read many texts, that is to say, both books and scrolls, which causes the qi to rise, as commercialism and vulgarity cause qi to fall. The student should be careful about this.' To avoid zoku in painting as well, they caused their students to put down the brush and read books. Less possible still is it to differentiate Chinese poetry and haikai." With that, Shôha understood.”58
In the passages above, Buson clearly tells Shoha that
1) the key point of writing good haiku is to make good use of the ordinary language and yet transcend the mundane world, and that
2) the direct route to achieve this goal is to study Chinese poetry.
Buson’s theory of “avoiding zoku” basically paraphrases the one that is articulated in Mustard and Garden Manual of Painting compiled by Chinese artist Wang Gai (1645-1707), a book with which many renowned Chinese painters began their drawing lessons, and which was particularly influential among Japanese nanga artists.59 As Cheryl Crowley stresses, “despite the fact haikai was a native Japanese poetic genre, it was closely linked with the world of sinophile intellectuals that flourished in [the eighteenth century], and the Basho Revival owned much to the ideas and notions that circulated within it.”60 We can see this clearly in the poetic career of Buson, the central figure in the Basho Revival movement who is often regarded as the second greatest of the haikai poets.
Notes:
1 Honkadori is not simply an allusion to a literary work and it may also function as quoting, which means lines are copied word for word. “[It] is true that within the Japanese cultural tradition there is a well-developed custom of quoting and borrowing… In fact, more than just a custom is involved here: various ways of quoting were themselves regarded as artistic techniques and were admired and appreciated in the same way as original works of art. It is natural to suppose that an 'art of quoting' could be appreciated by connoisseurs who share common knowledge with the artists, since quoting is quoting something that is known by those who quote and those who listen, view or read.” For further information, see Akiko Tsukamoto, "Modes of Quoting: Parody and Honkadori," Simply Haiku, Vol. 2, No. 4 (July/August, 2004), http://www.simplyhaiku.com/SHv2n4/features/Akiko_Tsukamoto.html
2 Cheryl A. Crowley, Haikai Poet Yosa Buson and the Basho Revival, Boston: Brill, c2007, p. 55.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., p. 56.
7 See Tsukamoto.
8 Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998, pp. 2-10.
9 Ibid., p. 34.
10 See Crowley, pp. 57-8.
11 The Basho Revival moment began in 1743, the fiftieth anniversary of Basho’s death: a memorial anthology was published by his followers. It “came to the fore in the 1760s and climaxed during 1770s – 1780s… [and was] led first by Taigi (1709 – 71) and then by Buson (1716 – 83).” For further information, see Shirane, pp. 33-7.
12 See Shirane, p. 30.
13 Ibid.
14 See Crowley, p. 27.
15 Ibid., p. 23.
16 Ibid., p. 28.
17 Ibid., p. 23.
18 Ibid.
19 Donald Keene, World within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600-1867, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976, p. 337.
20 Cheryl Crowley, “Depopularizing the Popular: Tentori Haikai and the Bashô Revival,” JapanStudies Review, Vol., 9, 2005, p. 5. In this well thought-out essay, Crowley “[discusses] the characteristics of haikai that made it a part of popular culture…then [examines] the circumstances of the historical development of haikai that led to the rise of tentori (point-scoring) haikai, and …[shows] how the Revival poets' efforts to counteract what they saw as the cheapening effect of popularization as a defense not only for the dignity of haikai, but of their own as well.” It was reprinted in the Spring 2006 issue of Simply Haiku, and can be accessed at http://www.simplyhaiku.com/SHv4n1/reprints/Crowley.html
21 see Keene, pp. 337-8.
22 See Crowley, p. 54.
23 See Crowley, “Depopularizing the Popular,” p. 5.
24 See Keene, p. 341.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 See Crowley, “Depopularizing the Popular,” p. 8.
28 John M. Rosenfield, Mynah Birds and Flying Rocks: Word and Image in the Art of Yosa Buson, University of Kansas, Seattle, Washington, 2003, p. 8. For further information on the historical and educational contexts, see Marleen Kassel’s Tokugawa Confucian Education: The Kangien Academy of Hirose Tansō (1782-1856), a book that “presents the world of Hirose Tanso, a late Tokugawa period (1603-1868) educator whose goal was to train men of talent in practical learning for the benefit of the country.”
29 Ibid., p. 4.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., p. 1.
34Anna Beeren, Friends, Acquaintances, Pupils and Patrons : Japanese Intellectual Life in the Late Eighteenth Century: A Prosopographical Approach, Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2006, p. 23.
35 Ibid., pp. 24-5.
36 Kwok Siu Tong and Chan Sin-wai (ed.), Culture and Humanity in the New Millennium: The Future of Human Values, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2002, p. 18.
37 Ibid.
38 Crowley, pp. 14-5.
39 See Rosenfield, pp. 8-9.
40 See Crowley, “Depopularizing the Popular,” p. 4.
41 Ibid.
42 See Beeren, p. 25.
43 See Crowley, “Depopularizing the Popular,” p. 5.
44 See Crowley, p. 97.
45 Ibid.
46 See Crowley, “Depopularizing the Popular,” p. 5.
47 See Crowley, p.17.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 See Rosenfield, p. 9.
51 Ibid., p. 9.
52 Cheryl Crowley, “Kanagaki no shi: Yosa Buson's Haishi,” presented at Asia Reconstructed: Proceedings of the 16th Biennial Conference of the ASAA, University of Wollongong, Australia, 2006, p. 4, http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/ASAA/biennial-conference/2006/Crowley-Cheryl-ASAA2006.pdf
53 See Crowley, pp. 16-7.
54 Ibid., p. 74.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid., p. 48.
57 Ibid., pp. 47-8.
58 See Crowley, “Kanagaki no shi: Yosa Buson's Haishi,” p. 5. The complete translation of this preface can be found in Rosenfield, pp. 66-7.
59 See Crowley, p. 49.
60 Ibid., p. 47.
(Published in Haijinx, Vol. IV No. 1, March 2011)
Chen-ou Liu lives in Canada in 2002. His poetry has been published worldwide. He's the recipient of 11 awards.