Tanka to Haiku

TANKA to

HAIKU Jason Blasso

TANKA to

HAIKU by Jason Blasso

C H A RY B D I S P R E S S new york

Published by Charybdis Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 15 14 13 12

4321

First Printing

Tanka to Haiku is set in Helvetica, Rockwell and Whitman, designed by Ken Lew. Book designed by Jason Blasso Text and Poetry by Jason Blasso www.charybdispress.com

TANKA to

HAIKU

W

hen my mother’s elderly firstcousin passed away a few years ago, we had to go through all of her belongings. To add to the labor, we also had to go through her brother’s stuff who had died eight years before. They had lived together for over seventy years.

Neither had married and both remained childless. After the brother’s passing, she continued to mourn him and never parted with any of his effects.

Amongst all the items we sorted through, we found a set of three cards printed in Japan of a geisha traveling. I liked the cards as it had a “woodblock print” feel and the obi of the kimono was printed on different paper and glued onto the card. Each scene seemed to beg for a haiku, perhaps due to the Pegasus stamp on the back. I penned one for each and thought about typing them into the card using an old typewriter. I never got around to it, but, every now and again, I would return to them.

Recently, when I picked up the cards again, there seemed to be something missing. Clearly, it was the same woman on the cover of each card journeying somewhere. But was it from the city to the country or the country to the city? I was uncertain.

Then, I thought of Lady Murasaki, the author of the novel, The Tale of Genji, and thought that perhaps the woman we were following was her. But a little research revealed that this couldn’t be the case. It would need to be someone more modern and not attached to the Imperial Court.

Perhaps it was Asano Akiko, the famed Japanese feminist and poet. Akiko wrote in tanka and though she was a trailblazer for the form and highly admired, the cards seemed to suggest someone else.

Then I landed on Takajo Mitsuhashi, a more modern poet who stopped writing in traditional tanka (5-7-5-7-7) and started writing in haiku (5-7-5).

At the time that Mitsuhashi made her transition, the haiku form was solely for men while tanka remained the only form available for women. So, when Mitsuhashi and three other peers, known as the “Four T’s”, started writing in haiku this was a subtle rebellion.

It may seem to the casual observer that removing the 14 syllable lower phrase of the tanka’s 31 syllables to focus only on the 17 syllables of the haiku would be a minor coup, but it was a necessary step in poetic liberation for women of the time, even though they continued to remain outside of the accepted circles of this male dominated poetic form.

With this in mind, I changed the three haiku, altering them to fit the new subject matter. It now became a three step journey that ends with Mitsuhashi standing before Shinshoji Temple, a famous site a short journey from Tokyo in Narita where she’s from and where a statue stands today in her honor.

I am, of course, no master of these terse forms and ask for the reader’s indulgence here. The purpose of this is to capture the initial impulse I had upon seeing the cards and to educate myself on the women poets who breathed life into what was previously forbidden.

Further, it seems that Mitsuhashi may have been something of a religious ascetic. Doubtless to say, she was probably more demure than the geisha depicted here. Unfortunately, the available information on Takajo Mitsuhashi and her peers is almost negligible in English. Any lapses in accuracy will be corrected as new information come to light.

If anyone has information regarding these cards and their origins or the female poets, please contact me. Lastly, anyone interested in translating Asano Akiko and Takajo Mitsuhashi and the other three T’s into English will find a publisher here.

TANKA to

HAIKU

Lady Takajo Must abandon old Tokyo For a diff’rent path: Instead of writing tanka She must start writing haiku.

En route, she pauses To watch a procession pass.

Then, continues on.

The red maple leaves Her standing proudly before Shinshoji Temple.