Season 1: Winter
Hello there! I hope you’ve come here because you were curious about some winter-themed haikus.
I’d recommend glancing at the introduction post for haiku terms & my motivation for this project, but essentially, I wanted to practice my Japanese and Chinese. And, I have a lovely book of Kobayashi Issa poems broken up into 5 sections, themed around the four seasons & the New Year’s, reflecting how traditional haikus have a kigo 季語, or seasonal word. I note this in each translation explanation; another term that might come up is kireji 切れ字, or cutting word (used to convey finality or emphasis & bring the haiku back to its beginning, or create two contrasting images, depending on its location).
So, here is a small collection of 6 haikus, translated during small pockets of time I found after long days of work, at likely 12 am or later. It was quite fun and peaceful, learning about cute birds like nightjars (#3, probably my favorite haiku so far), speculating about humanity and snow (#2), going on an Internet spiral about a specific type of mochi (#5), and more. All the poems are listed below; if you’d like to read about my translation notes, feel free to click on “about” for each one.
I hope these haikus bring you a bit of joy in these wintry times. Happy Holidays!
WINTER
[ all winter poems ]
木枯らしや
蒟蒻桶の
星月夜
oh wintry wind,
in the konjac basin
glistens a starry night
初雪や
それは世にある
人の事
first snowfalls:
those are matters
of mortal beings
玉霰
夜鷹は月に
帰るめり
in pearls of hail
perhaps a nightjar
returns to the moon
猫の子の
くるくる舞や
散る木の葉
oh, how the kitty
whirls ‘n twirls, in dance
amongst the drifting leaves
時雨るるや
迎えに出たる
俺の猫
a timely winter drizzle —
the kitty emerges from its refuge
to greet me
年の内に
春は来にけり
猫の恋
before the year’s end,
a kitty’s springtime love
has already arrived
[ windy, starry sky: poem #1 ]
The first Kobayashi poem I chose, in the winter section, goes like this. Surprisingly, it is not about a cat.
Japanese:
木枯らしや kogarashi ya
蒟蒻桶の konnyaku oke no
星月夜 hoshi dzuki yo
kogarashi (winter wind) ya (kireji, cutting word for emphasis)
konnyaku (konjac) oke (pail) no (possessive particle)
hoshi dzuki yo (starry night)
Seasonal word: 木枯らし (kogarashi; see #1)
Chinese translation:
枯木风啊 kūmù fēng a
蒟蒻桶里 jǔruò tǒng lǐ
映着星月夜 yìngzhe xīngyuèyè
Kūmù (tree-withering) fēng (wind) a (particle for emphasis/wonder)
Jǔruò (konjac) tǒng (pail) lǐ (inside)
yìngzhe (reflects) xīngyuèyè (starry night)
I had thought translating one sentence would not take that long, but the brevity actually rendered it rather difficult. (Also, haiku translations often don’t follow the 5-7-5 pattern in favor of conveying the image with good diction! So I won’t be following it either.)
Before the “final” version, a condensed list of my thought processes on...
1. vocabulary
木枯らし (kogarashi) (alternatively, 凩) refers to the mid-autumn, early-winter winds of Japan that mark the beginning of winter (it has a more formal definition with a 8 m/sec wind-speed or more). Literally, it means tree (木) - wilting (枯) winds. The trade-off is between literal meaning (forest-withering wind) versus brevity/actual meaning (wintry wind), and I chose the latter, though I love the former as well.
Next up is 蒟蒻 (konnyaku), or konjac: a starchy plant in East/Southeast Asian cuisines, used to make shirataki noodles. I prefer konjac to its strange alternate names: devil’s tongue, elephant yam, and snake palm, among others.
And finally, 桶 (おけ), which directly means bucket/pail. Konjac bucket and konjac pail just sounds really weird — so basin it is.
2. the kireji
At the end of the first line is the particle/cutting word “ya,” an emphasis of sorts. I considered “Wintry wind!”, “wintry wind —” and other variations, but landed on the final one for a softer effect. Oh, and I briefly pluralized wind before going back to “wind” — since I imagine kogarashi to have a personality of its own.
3. an extra word?
Most literally, the last two lines mean “the starry night of the konjac basin” — referring to the reflection of the sky in the basin, but leaving the exact interpretation up to the reader (only a connecting “no” that indicates belonging / relationship). I considered: Glimmer? Shimmer? Shine? Just leaving it as “of” doesn’t sound that great either. The Chinese translation uses 映, or reflect, but “the basin reflects a starry night” sounded a bit clinical. So, I decided on a word that alludes to the shine of the stars, as well as the ~aquatic nature~ of the water-filled basin.
And so, I leave you with a chilly but luminous moment:
oh wintry wind,
in the konjac basin
glistens a starry night.
[ first snowfalls: poem #2 ]
I chose the next Kobayashi Issa poem after glancing at the Chinese translation first, and wondering — why do humans care about first snowfalls?
Japanese:
初雪や hatsu yuki ya
それは世にある sore wa yo ni aru
人の事 hito no koto
hatsu yuki (first snow) ya (kireji)
sore wa (that is) yo ni aru (existing/living on earth; older ver)
hito (people) no koto (’s thing/matter/business)
Seasonal word (kigo): 初雪 (hatsu yuki), the first snowfall of the winter
Chinese translation:
初雪啊 chūxuě a
那是身在俗世的人 nà shì shēn zài súshì de rén
关心的事 guānxīn de shì
chūxuě (first snow) a (particle)
nà shì (that is) shēn zài súshì (born in earthly/ordinary world) de rén (people)
guānxīn de shì (cared-about topic/issue/concern)
1. mortality
I had to mull over multiple interpretations of the haiku before deciding on diction. Why are first snowfalls “living people’s business”? Here, the connecting Japanese no between people and thing/business, is ambiguous in the meaning of their relation.
The Chinese translation leans towards, “people are caring of/concerned about first snowfalls,” which is valid: Do we care, because we seek meaning and ceremony in ordinary universe happenings? Is it because we measure the natural world by human-made joys and concerns, from perfect photoshoot scenes to snow-shoveling woes (not exactly applicable to Kobayashi’s life, but you get the point)?
However, I began to consider a more passive relationship we might have towards a first snowfall. We might not want it or other indications of time and mortality. Perhaps we don’t actively welcome or become perturbed by a first snowfall, but we simply exist alongside this marker of our fleeting human experience. So, I chose the word “matter” to hint at this obligatory quality, rather than a more active “concern” (and kinda fluffy “issue/thing” or too-formal “affair”). This speculation about mortality also led me to choose “mortal being” rather than “living being,” which might have been a more literal translation: to me, the first snowfall emphasizes the impermanence of people’s lives — as signs of temporary joy or sorrow, or just temporality itself.
2. sore
After referring to first snowfalls in the first line, the second line begins with sore, a pronoun meaning “that one.” In Japanese, are also means “that one,” but sore refers to something closer (physically or metaphorically) to those they are speaking to, and are is far from both speaker and listener. If the snowfalls belong to the listener, does that mean the speaker isn’t a mortal being? Maybe that’s why the illustration implies the cat is having these thoughts about humankind. Thus, I chose “those” to indicate that speaker-listener distance, rather than a more passive they.
3. plurality/definitiveness
Ah yes, since Japanese doesn’t have explicit plurals, I had a fun time choosing what I liked! Options included:
A first snowfall / that is a matter…
A first snowfall / that is the matter…
Such first snowfalls / those are the matters…
Such first snowfalls / those are the matter...
And so on and so forth. I decided that extra a’s and the’s hindered the poem meaning, so indefinite plurals it will be!
4. word order
Both Japanese and Chinese tend to have adjective phrases before the nouns they clarify, whereas English often has the opposite. For instance, the Japanese haiku literally contains [are living][people] [‘s][matters] to mean the matters of living people. For a better flow, my English translation flips the second and third line.
5. the kireji :D
The ya kireji (cutting word) helps juxtapose two elements in a haiku, and I chose a colon, rather than a dash, exclamation, comma or emphatic word, to preserve the full sentence at the end without weird grammar, as well as the gentleness of this pregnant contemplation.
I hope you hold onto your own first snowfalls :)
first snowfalls:
those are matters
of mortal beings
[ pearls & nightjars: poem #3 ]
Japanese:
玉霰 tama arare
夜鷹は月に yotaka wa tsuki ni
帰るめり kaeru meri
tama arare (graupel, small hail)
yotaka wa (the nightjar) tsuki ni (to the moon)
kaeru (returns) meri (speculative, perhaps)
Seasonal word: 霰 (arare; see #1)
Chinese translation:
雪雹落 xuě báo luò
夜鹰大概 yè yīng dàgài
会月亮去了 huì yuèliàng qùle
xuě báo (hail) luò (falls)
yè yīng (nighthawk) dàgài (probably)
huì (returns) yuèliàng qùle (to the moon)
Maybe I should just become a birdwatcher in my next life. I always loved birds (had a weird spiritual encounter with a goldfinch once), and was excited to look into the grey nightjar: 夜鷹, usually written as ヨタカ, yotaka!
Nightjars are small-medium-sized, nocturnal or crepuscular (twilight) birds, and the grey nightjar is particular to East Asia and the only nightjar species in Japan (Kyoto/Nara direction). I was feeling pretty neutral towards them until I encountered this compilation of amusing photos. All of the nightjars look slightly miffed as they perch on their branches, and it’s like they’re wearing fancy, feathered coats that are slightly too big for them and their smol legs. They’re supposedly “cryptic,” and their “song is a long series of hollow ‘byuck’ notes, like the firing of a cartoon laser gun.” That link has many audio recordings — and maybe it’s quarantine getting to me, but I thought they were so amusing.
(Fun fact: yotaka is also slang for nighttime soba vendors and streetwalkers!)
1. graupel?
tama arare is the “poetic name” (美称, bishou) for arare, which means graupel. And I had no idea what graupel is, but it’s kind of like hail but in very small spheres/pieces. I definitely wasn’t going to use graupel, so I took inspiration from tama (bead, gem, ball, orb etc.) and went with pearls of hail. I like imagining little pearls twinkling in the sky and tumbling down snowy slopes (Another fun fact: tama arare also refers to small rice cracker pieces).
2. verbin’
In the Japanese, it literally just states tama arare, but the Chinese translation says the hail falls (luò). I wasn’t a fan of the word “fall,” and strongly considered cascade ( in hail cascades). Upon further reflection, I thought simple was best — “cascade” implies a downpour, and I didn’t want to prescribe the intensity or motion. I think leaving it up to the reader is nice, like in the original: providing a snapshot instead of a timeframe. I could have kept both pearl and cascade, but then it got wordy: As pearls of hail cascade?
3. kireji: meri
I had never seen meri as a kireji (cutting word) before! After some online sleuthing, I found out that it is a speculative particle in classical Japanese, and even more sleuthing told me that the degree of uncertainty is more than it is for the more commonly used rashi/rashii. Hence, the “perhaps”! It’s not at the end of the haiku like in the Japanese, since the grammar would sound strange.
4. return
kaeru (帰る) means to “return,” but so does modoru (戻る). As described here and here, kaeru conveys a return to some home or place of belonging (ex: hometown), whereas modoru implies a returning towards some place or state that is less permanent (ex: returned to work to get my phone). But after trying to work in, “return home on the moon” “return to its home on the moon,” I decided not to keep home. I think (or at least, I hope) it is implied that a little nightjar returns to the moon because that is its home.
5. a nightjar...
The “a” (instead of “the”) makes it seem more melancholy. And “cryptic.” I imagine a snowy, indigo night in December. Maybe a little nightjar was caught up with pecking around for some leaves, or just caught up in its own thoughts, nestled in the crook of a tree. But during the depths or the waning of a hailstorm, perhaps it decides the night out has been a bit too chilly and lonesome. So, it takes to the lemon-lit moon cushioned atop the bluish treescapes, with a warm sigh of relief, as little pearls of hail dot its wings and trace away its flightpath home.
in pearls of hail
perhaps a nightjar
returns to the moon
Song recommendation: 麻雀 (Sparrow) by 李荣浩 (Ronghao Li).
[ kitties ‘n leaves: poem #4 ]
Wow, the first cat-themed haiku I chose to translate out of this cat-themed book! This one was the simplest to understand, though not the easiest to translate.
Japanese:
猫の子の neko no ko no
くるくる舞や kuru-kuru mai ya
散る木の葉 chiru konoha
neko (cat) no (belonging particle) ko (child) no
kuru-kuru (whirling/spinning) mai (dance) ya (kireji)
chiru (to fall/scatter for leaves/blossoms etc), konoha (lit. leaves of trees)
Seasonal word: 木の葉 (konoha), fallen leaves
Chinese translation:
小猫咪 Xiǎo māomī
跟着转转舞啊 gēnzhe zhuǎn zhuǎn wǔ a
飘落的树叶 piāoluò de shùyè
Xiǎo (little) māomī (kitty)
gēnzhe (goes/follows) zhuǎn zhuǎn (spinning) wǔ (dance) a (particle)
piāoluò (drift/fall slowly) de (particle) shùyè (tree leaves）
1. onomatopoeia time!
The first order of business was to translate kuru-kuru, one of many Japanese onomatopoeia phrases that convey actions, sounds, or emotions! In this case, it means spinning/whirling. Linguistics time: this is a concept known as reduplication: when part/all of a word is duplicated to indicate some kind of meaning (often intensity, plurality, etc.). Chinese has reduplication too ( zhuǎn zhuǎn), but English does not formally have reduplication built into its grammar… so,I thought using rhyming words whirl and twirl would capture a similar effect :)
2. what are the leaves doing?
I tussled between fluttering (maybe moving, but seem stationary?), scattering (seems rather sparse), and landed on drifting. The Chinese translation piāoluò conveys a more tender floating sensation. But hey, drifting pretty close! I also decided to put the modifier before leaves (aka, drifting leaves and not as the leaves drift or the leaves that drift) since it mirrors the original phrase structure, and also emphasizes the image of the leaves rather than their movement.
3. word placement
I was having trouble slotting in the word “dance” at first:
oh, how the kitty / whirls ‘n twirls in dance, / among...
oh, how the kitty / dances in whirls ‘n twirls, / among….
I wanted a pause/comma on the second line to mirror the ya cutting word, but it just sounded ungrammatical to have a comma right before a prepositional phrase! Moreover, the first phrase (oh, how.. → twirls/dance) would then dominate the poem with its wordiness… So, I landed on a caesura, a fancy poetry term for having a pause during a line of verse, and it offsets dance into the latter clause while keeping it on the second line. This maintained a natural balance between the phrases, as well as the original arrangement of meanings on the lines.
4. ssss...
A little tidbit on why I chose “amongst” instead of “among” (and like how it fits with the other words): fricative consonants are those that involve a continuous stream of air with friction (ex: you can say ssss but can’t really prolong p). So, I liked the extra s to go with the s sound in dance and the f fricative in drifting! It gives the words a whispery lull that fits the mood of the rather serene poem, as a small kitty meows and leaps about in gentle whirls of crisp, after-autumn leaves.
oh, how the kitty
whirls ‘n twirls, in dance
amongst the drifting leaves
[ rainy mochi, poem #5 ]
Japanese:
時雨るるや shigururu ya
迎えに出たる mukae ni detaru
俺の猫 io no neko
shiguru (autumn/winter rain, verb) ru (emphasis) ya (kireji)
mukae (greeting/welcome) ni (to) de+taru (go out + literary to be, emphasis)
io (hermitage/hut) no (belonging) neko (cat)
Seasonal word: 時雨 (shigure), autumn/early winter rain
Chinese translation:
冬雨啊 dōng yǔ a
草庵的猫 cǎo'ān de māo
出来迎接我 chūlái yíngjiē wǒ
Dōng (winter) yǔ (rain) a (particle)
cǎo'ān (grass hut) de (particle, belonging) māo (cat)
Chūlái (come out) yíngjiē (welcome, greet) wǒ (me)
Haven’t translated a haiku in a week or two, but let’s jump in — to another poem with a cat :3 As always, I’ll include some key highlights for some ~suspense~ before the final haiku reveal, but I’ll be going into a long digression about… mochi (it’ll make sense later). Cool, let’s go!
1. a winter rain
In hindsight, I never completely explained a key feature to traditional haiku: kigo 季語, or a seasonal phrase! You can find more about it here. Haiku originally were opening stanzas to long-form, collaborative renga poems, and would always include a kigo to establish the season/tone of the poem. There are established lists of kigo divided into the four seasons + the New Year (actual dictionary here!). So that’s why my book is in 5 sections… but more contemporary haikus definitely are flexible with this rule. Anyway, I mention this because shigure (noun form of the verb in the haiku, shiguru 時雨る）is a kigo referring to a light late-autumn/ early-winter rain. Most literally, the two characters mean timely + rain, so I took some ~creative liberty~ and kept the timely descriptor because I thought it fit the tone of the poem.
2. uhh… ru-ru?
I was trying to figure out why there was a repeated ru in the poem, and thanks to this website, I found out that it’s basically an instance of repetition as a rhetorical device , or 反復法 (はんぷくほう）, kind of like how anaphora is a more specific type of repetition. Used for emphasis/rhythm!
3. welcome! (or not).. to who?
Mukae could be interpreted as meet, greet, welcome, etc., but the original haiku doesn’t specify an object that the cat encounters ,whereas in languages like Chinese / English, an object is more necessary. Ah yes, one of the lovely ambiguities of Japanese! The Chinese translation makes it so that the cat encounters “me,” and I think that makes sense for the reader to be in that perspective. Although, I think second-person you might be fun as well. I also decided on greet instead of welcome to allow for more interpretability — welcome implies that a weary traveler finding repose in the little cat’s home, whereas greet could be that, but also simply a cat saying hello as a traveler continues on their journey :)
4. hermit?
Io, or “hermitage,” was my biggest point of consternation for this poem. According to Google, it literally means “dwelling of a hermit, especially when small and remote,” and the Chinese translation adds a modifier so it’s closer to meaning a “small thatched hut.” But honestly, I don’t think many English-speakers have a clear image of what a hermitage is, and hut just sounds weird? (My conception of hermitage is the second definition by Google: a huge art museum complex in St. Petersburg that I visited a few years ago). I tossed around sanctuary, retreat, asylum (seemed too formal) before landing on refuge, since the scene is a cat and human wanderer, both seeking shelter, reprieve and perhaps some warm company — in the midst of a chilly rain, wrapping up a weary year.
a timely winter drizzle —
the kitty emerges from its refuge
to greet me
[ an addendum about mochi and shigure ]
Okay, I promise this is related to the poem. On the Japanese Wikipedia page for shigure (winter rain), a related section about wagashi, or Japanese sweets, caught my eye — because my Fall 2019 final project in Japanese class was about wagashi!
Apparently, 竹利商店 (Takeri Shouten) is a confectionery in Osaka founded at the end of the Edo period (~1800s), whose specialty is called shigure mochi （時雨餅）！It is a steamed sweet, made from bean paste (red or white bean, though there seems to be a matcha flavor now too), glutinous rice, and sugar. The 200+ year-old store had been associated with Kishiwada Castle, which was ruled by the Okabe clan until the Meiji Restoration. And the name of the sweet was given by Okabe Nagachika, the 9th feudal lord of the clan who said that the mochi wasn’t sticky but “spilled like autumn rain (shigure)!”
After reading this person’s blog post about trying shigure mochi and the related murasame mochi (村雨, literally “village rain”), I realized there was a lot more nuance in wagashi that I originally had thought. Anyway, I enjoyed this rabbit-hole digression, as well as the light-hearted quip concluding his post — about how thankfully, the mochi’s shelf-life is longer than a usual period of village rain.
A postscript: this Dec. 2020 New York Times article about the persistence of venerated Japanese businesses across centuries of peace and turmoil (including COVID-19).
[ kitty love: poem #6 ]
Japanese:
年の内に toshi no uchi ni
春は来にけり haru wa ki ni keri
猫の恋 neko no koi
toshi (year) no (possessive particle) uchi (within) ni (time particle)
haru (spring) wa (subject particle) ki ni keri (past perfect classical particle, poetic emph)
neko (cat) no (possessive) koi (romantic love)
Seasonal word: 年の内, toshi no uchi (see #1)
Chinese translation:
猫之恋 māo zhī liàn
年没过 nián méi guò
就立春了 jiù lìchūn le
Māo (cat) zhī (possessive) liàn (romantic love)
Nián (year) méi (negative, ~hasn’t) guò (pass)
Jiù (simply/just/then) lìchūn (beginning of spring) le (past tense)
Perhaps I’m getting better at this — because the first version I thought of is what I think fits best, for this simple and lovely little poem! My considerations are below. This time, more of them are actually about the Chinese translation!
1. kigo: 年の内
It essentially means year-end but has less urgency than other phrases (lit. “within the year”).
2. kireji: keri!
This was my first time with this particular kireji! And based on this, this and this, it is a classical Japanese suffix that signals a past occurrence, but with a poetic & emotional emphasis that can’t exactly be translated. I didn’t want to add a superficial “ah” or “oh,” so perhaps an oral rendition could help provide that emphasis. I also learned that it follows verbs that are in continuative form (連用形、or renyoukei - basically stem form)!
3. a random word
Confession: even with my limited years in Chinese school, I never knew exactly what 之 (zhī) was — it seemed to be a functional word that cropped up randomly but was never crucial to understanding a phrase. So we’re finally getting around to it! According to this source, zhi can be thought of as possessive 的 de and Japanese possessive / genitive の no. It appears in classical Chinese more frequently, as well as pre-set phrases & idioms, and is more used when the following phrase is one character. And in addition to acting as a particle, it also works as a pronoun too.
4. what is 立春?
The Chinese translation has this phrase that wasn’t used in the original haiku: and it refers to the beginning of the lunisolar calendar, marking the beginning of spring (Apparently, this is slightly different from Lunar New Year). Lì Chūn is now celebrated as Farmer’s Day in China (with spring pancakes, more so in northern China), and as part of the Spring Festival (haru matsuri 春祭り) in Japan (with mamemaki, a fun bean-throwing tradition).
Now, here we are. This haiku was particularly cute: even though the year hasn’t ended just yet, a blooming love, akin to the warmth and hope of a new spring, has already begun.
Happy Holidays :)
before the year’s end,
a kitty’s springtime love
has already arrived