I am writing this to both readers of English speakers and Japanese people for introducing Issa's haiku. (Of course Japanese people know Issa's name and a few haiku of him, but most people don't care so much about him today. On the other hand I guess some English speakers know Issa's haiku but Basho is probably known better and respected or valued more than Issa.)
The reason why I would like to introduce Issa's haiku is that I found a very nice translation into English by Nanao Sakaki. He is a Japanese poet, and also a good translator of poetry both from English into Japanese and from Japanese into English. I think English readers will enjoy Issa's haiku in a lively English by Nanao's translation. And I also think Japanese readers who are not familiar with haiku or an old Japanese language(any haiku is written in a kind of old Japanese or idiomatic expression of haiku) will more understand Issa's haiku to read it in both languages.
The Japanese children usually meet or learn Issa's haiku in school earlier than Basho. In Issa's haiku there are many small birds like a sparrow and insects like a mosquito or a flea, and his haiku describes a small world between tiny creatures and Issa with a sense of humor. So it is familiar with children, even though they don't know it is a haiku.
INCH by INCH includes 45 haiku and an interview with Nanao Sakaki titled "Cup of Tea, Plate of Fish." 45 haiku looks to be selected carefully or intentionally by the translator's taste. (he read 500 in 20,000 Issa's haiku.)
First lightning bug this year
Why do you turn away?
It's me, Issa!
Hatsubotaru Naze Hikikaesu Oredazoyo
In this book all haiku are described in three ways, Japanese(kanji and kana), English and Romanji(japanese pronunciation). Romanji is used a printing type but other two are written in Nanao's handwriting, which I enjoyed them very much. It makes me happy to read them in his handwritings since we can feel the translator's interpretation in them, not only in his English translation.
Singing high ---
A cricket on a log
floating down the river
Nakinagara Mushinonagaruru Ukigikana
If you read this haiku only in Japanese you may feel something like Japanese <wabi & sabi> mind in it. (It is difficult to explain <wabi &sabi> in English but I would say that it is like a love for fragile things or ephemeral lives, or feelings of missing something gone from you or this world.) But when I read it in English I had another impression, a pleasant feeling; I imagined the cricket is enjoying river-rafting and singing high happily. Which do you agree with?
I think that both are possible. And the translator, Nanao may like the latter one. It seems to me that both of them(Issa and Nanao) are a kind of person, an optimist. Nanao is telling his thought in the interview part like this:
Nanao: Sometimes I feel Basho has no reality, Issa more reality.
Nanao: I feel Basho is more revolutionary personality. He was born upper class samurai, very good education, maybe too good of education. If he had no education, maybe he could have been much greater poet.
Q: How did Issa, compared with a more modern poet like Santoka, open up a democratic road?
Nanao: I'm not interested in Santoka.
Q: Why?
Nanao: Sentimental, just sentimental, just himself, no society, no universe. He has no compassion for other animals, other beings. ---See?......Just sentimental. But we need a sentimental poet too. (laughs) We need many poets! All kinds of poets!
In the interview Nanao's thought is expressed very well and it is very interesting. It is a unique viewpoint to Japanese haiku, or any haiku.
Sometimes a good translation work is created at the time when a translator has encountered an author who has a similar sense to the translator. The author's mind or thought may go into the translator's inside and they are mixed together in the translator's mind or brain. At the time something happens, a bright translation appears.
A firefly
creeping up my sleeve
OK, I'm a blade of grass
Wagasodeo Kusatoomouka Hau Hotaru
From mossy stones
clear water --- ha!
Come on pigeons, sparrows!
Kokeshimizu Saa Hatomokoyo Suzumekoyo
The translator, Nanao is 81 years old with a long white beard and a beautiful long hair tying it with a red string, and wears cool sneakers on his feet, and he still flits from city to city in the world, and doesn't have his home(fixed dwelling place) anywhere. When I met him in May this year at his reading event I could listen to his voice reading his poetry and singing a Ainu song and an American Indian song. It seems to me that all his works, his own poems, the translation of Issa's haiku, singing aboriginal songs, etc., have no borders on them or they get over the borders each other; he is doing his work very freely, in a way of borderless.
This book is a good introduction of Issa's work. And it is also one creative work of Nanao Sakaki. I've never read such a unique translation before. I heartily recommend it to both readers who already read Issa's haiku and never read it. I really respect Nanao's translation and his way of thinking.
Q: Did Issa's background being a farmer's son affect his poetry?
Nanao: A little bit, but not everything. We think we are the slave of experience, but not so, we are more free! Yeah, we can be more separated from our own experience. Most people think experience, experience, but it's not true! We can jump over experience!
How great and true! I agree with him wholly, absolutely.
I will finish with this review by one more Issa's haiku and Nanao's dialogue in the interview.
Q: What's important about Issa's poems for us today? Do the poems have a special appeal?
Nanao: OK, OK, probably in this time we need mostly a kind of happy, lucky feeling. We're completely losing this, everybody's so serious-faced, tight-faced, we really need humor, laughing, smiling, joking, such a feeling. That is something Issa had.
No talent
No blame either
Now I'm in winter retreat
Nounashiwa Tsumimomatanashi Fuyugomori
Text by Kazue Daikoku(17th June)
The interview took place in the middle Rio Grande watershed, Corrales, New Mexico in 1999. The questions were done by John Brandi(cover drawing) and Jeff Bryan(book design) in English and so were Nanao's answers.
* You can see this book and some pages of it by images including Nanao's handwritings of Issa's haiku on
amazon.com. Seach the book for "Inch by Inch, Nanao sakaki".
* My first experience of enjoying haiku was to read "tenement landscapes" written by Paul Mena in English. I had never read any haiku book by Japanese haiku poets and I am not familiar with it. English language haiku taught me great pleasure of haiku.
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