Talk:Kigo

Early questions re translation

Even for something so short, I have pretty of questions and disagreements about this stub, so I will probably be doing some editing of the page in the near future. My problems with the page include:

1) Senryu did NOT derive from seasonless (muki) or miscellaneous (zō) haiku. The very short answer is that haiku and senryu both derive from haikai-no-renga, not senryu from haiku.

2) A collection of kigo (season words) is a kiyose. A collection of kigo along with commentary on the kigo and example haiku is a saijiki.

3) Kigo translates as "season word", but it can be either a word (e.g. 'snowmelt' is a Spring kigo), or a phrase (e.g. 'cranberry raking' is an Autumn kigo).

4) In my opinion, "a proper haiku must use a kigo" is not a neutral POV (my problem is the "must"). I will concede that it is the majority opinion in Japan and maybe even among English-language haiku poets. I'd probably rephrase that as either "a traditional Japanese haiku should include a kigo" or "a classic Japanese haiku should include a kigo". Although English haiku are more likely to use seasonless topics (e.g. pigeon) or even be kigo-less, even modern japanese haiku can be use seasonless topics or be kigo-less (see Makoto Ueda's Modern Japanese Haiku: An Anthology, University of Toronto Press, ISBN 0-8020-2147-6 hardback ISBN 0-8020-6245-8 paperback) and especially many of the free-verse haiku of Taneda Santōka. Refering to the work of Japanese scholars, William Higgonson in his The Haiku Seasons ( Kodansha International © 1996 ISBN 4-7700-1629-8) said that Shiki wrote a few hundred haiku that are classified as zō (miscellaneous), and even Bashō wrote around ten as zō.

5) The link to a missing Wikipedia "List of kigo" webpage should probably be removed because I will be adding links to a number of good lists of kigo that already exist on the internet. There should, however, be a small list of example kigo included with this article.

gK 13:35, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC) revised 11:10, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

First of all, I translated this article from Japanese Wikipedia and its shortcomings is, not entirely my fault.

1)This is from Japanese Wikipedia and I do believe senryu is preceded by haiku. Haiku was originally from the Hokku of Renga and both had a kigo. Senryu, however was used a bit later by when a man named Karai Senryu from whom the word senryu was taken became famous for releasing a poem collection in 1811. Before that, it was called Kyoku, lit. crazy verse and the first use of the word kyoku is in 1349 as the word for a poem written without a rule.

2)This is a straight translation and I can neither confirm nor deny it.

3)I believe you are referring to Momijigari lit. red leaves gathering, and it happens to be a single word in Japanese language, so the problem is a translational one. However, I do believe 'a phrase or a word' is more reasonable as it does not alienate both examples.

4)The difference between a haiku and a senryu is the inclusion of a kigo and a senryu started by not including a kigo in the first place. It is true that the word haiku is used as a collective term for a poem with 5-7-5, but the original definition of haiku is that it has a kigo and those without kigo are a varient of this rule. It's like this.

• Haiku
  • Zou, Muki Haiku (see also Senryu)

Their is also a difference between a English haiku and a Japanese haiku. Even without a kigo, haiku are distinct from senryu in a sense that its topics are often seasonal and does not overlap with senryu's topics which tend to be about social issues. However, most English haiku merely burrowed the format but did not follow haiku's rule of a use of a kigo. The definition of haiku is simply different. Free verse haiku were born after rules of haiku solidified and using an exception to define the rule is not a wise thing to do.

5)Again, this is a straight translation and I intended to do a research on my own and left it as a blank link. The Japanese wiki article does have a list, but it is quite limited and I did not think that it merited a translation.Revth 13:21, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Responses

Revth: I appreciate your efforts in translating the Japanese article. It gives me a good start to work with.

From the resources that I have, both haiku and senryu came from haikai no renga, or the more humerous, playful version of renga. The precedents for haiku are the hokku or opening verse of the renga, and the precendents for the senryu were the often more human interior verses of the renga. What became senryu actually started during Basho's lifetime as a parlor game involving maekutsuke or capping verses. It wasn't until the 1800's when this game became more popular and Karai Senryu was the most popular editor/selector (marker or tenja) of the winning verses, that they were called senryu.

I don't have kyoku in any of my references, but there I do have 'kyōka', which were the humerous counterpart to waka, and have been around since the time of the Manyoshu. 'Hyakushu Kyōka' (Comic Verses on a Hundred Kinds of Liquor) was complied in the fourteenth century.

There have been haiku with seasonless topic words since Basho (although very, very few), and kigo can easily be found in senryu (Ueda's Light 'Verse From the Floating World' has an entire chapter of seasonal senryu). What used to be a more reliable marker is that haiku were composed almost exclusively by aristocrats and monks, and senryu were composed by tradesmen and merchants. The best divider today between the two is probably overall tone and subject matter. If it humorous or mostly about humans and especially human nature, it is probably a senryu. If it is mostly about the seasons or has a subdued tone, then it is probably a haiku.

Just being about humans or social issues doesn't preclude a poem from being haiku. I have been told that roughly 40% of the topics in one of the major Japanese saijiki involved humans, including all of the different holidays, like the Bon Festival, to topics like sun-bathing, New Year's resolutions, mushroom gathering, beach-coming, etc. gK 15:21, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

To Do List Answers

1. . A saijiki is a reference book. Some of them are small enough that you could take them with you on a ginko (haiku walk). Others are the size of a large dictionary.
2. .For examples, the comments under "Common kigo" are sort of an abbreviated version of what might be found in a saijiki, with the only thing missing being the example haiku.
3. .Images of particular haiku poets, such Matsuo Basho would be appropriate for their own articles, but irrelavant for the Kigo article. It would be nice to find a picture of full tree in bloom, like the "D.C. Tidal Basin showing cherry trees in flower" photo in the Cherry article (which desperately needs to have the photo spacing fixed so that it doesn't have overlapping photos when looked at at 800x600 screen resolution). A nice photo of Autumn leaves might be a welcome addition, as well as a photo of the full moon. I'm not sure about the Nashi Pear photo with the bite out of one of them.

Thanks:

1. Saijiki section covers all this. I removed from todo list.
2. Some example haiku or renga is what I had in mind.
3. Yoy're right about the poet images. I have replaced the Nashi photo, which I have replaced with the cicada. Would it be ok to use the D.C. tidal basin cherry tree and just change the caption? Filiocht 12:03, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

Nashi Pear -> Fruit Edit

Filiocht: The Japanese have a number of defaults, such as Blossoms=Cherry Blossoms, and Moon=Autumn Moon. "Fruit" however, does not have a default, but has to be specified as to the type of fruit, which could be a summer fruit (such as cherries, raspberries, watermelon, etc.) or it could be an autumn fruit like the nashi pear or the other fruits that I mentioned after the nashi pear. Basically what I'm saying is that your fruit edit doesn't work under the category of "Common kigo" because "fruit" by itself can't be a kigo.

Examples

The one thing that I think the Kigo article is currently missing are a short "Kigo and haiku" and short "Kigo and renga" section. The haiku section could mention the famous "frog" haiku of Matsuo Basho which is already translated in the haiku article, and point out that frogs are a spring kigo. A whole renga, even a short 36 stanza kasen renga would be way too long for the kigo article or even the renga article, but maybe a single stanza would be appropriate in the renga section. 12:19, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)