In In’ei raisan, In Praise of Shadows, the novelist Tanizaki Jun’ichirō writes that he likes, above all, the weight of the soup felt in the palm when he holds a bowl of clear soup, and its lukewarm warmth. He also describes listening to a faint hum from the bowl, like the sound of a distant insect.
literature
Learn the Pine from the Pine
Matsu no koto wa matsu ni narae, take no koto wa take ni narae. “Learn about the pine from the pine, and about the bamboo from the bamboo.” The words come from the haiku poet Matsuo Bashō. His disciple Hattori Dohō recorded them in Sanzōshi (Three Booklets).
Dohō explains what the master meant: shii o hanare yo, leave personal intent behind.
Sketching from Life
The haiku poet Masaoka Shiki called on poets to practice shasei, sketching from life. The magazine Waraku writes that his idea of shasei had direct or indirect links to Western-style painters, among them Nakamura Fusetsu, Shimomura Izan and Asai Chū.
In 1894, Shiki asked Shimomura to draw the illustrations for the haiku column of the newspaper Shō-Nippon. Shimomura declined, and the work went to Nakamura.
Opening, Development, Turn, Conclusion
Kishōtenketsu (起承転結) is a way of building a Chinese poem. The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten explains it with the four-line zekku . The first line is ki , the opening, the second shō , the development, the third ten , the turn, and the fourth ketsu , the conclusion. According to the encyclopedia Nihon Daihyakka Zensho, the structure matured in China around the eighth century.
It appears in Japanese school lessons. A 2021 lesson of the Sapporo board of education for second-year junior high school students explains it this way. The first line begins the poem, the second takes it up and develops it, the third changes the scene, and the fourth brings the whole to a close.
No Longer Human
Dazai Osamu’s novel Ningen shikkaku (No Longer Human) was published in 1948. Its first notebook opens with the narrator saying that he has lived a life full of haji, shame.
Kokoro
Natsume Sōseki’s novel Kokoro ran in the Asahi Shimbun from April 20 to August 11, 1914. Its three parts are “Sensei and I,” “My Parents and I” and “Sensei and His Testament.” A young man meets an older man whom he calls sensei. In the last part, sensei leaves him a letter, a testament, that tells the story of his life.
A bookstore column calls it the work used most often in junior and senior high school Japanese textbooks.
Neither Praised Nor a Burden
Miyazawa Kenji’s poem Ame ni mo makezu (Unbeaten by Rain) ends with a wish. It describes a person whom everyone calls a dekunobō, a blockhead, who is neither praised nor treated as a burden. The poem’s last words say that such a person is what the poet wants to become.
The Five-Storied Pagoda
In Kōda Rohan’s novel Gojū no tō (The Five-Storied Pagoda), published in 1892, the carpenter Jūbei is skilled but clumsy. He is known as Nossori, the sluggish one. He takes the commission for a temple’s pagoda from a senior master carpenter and builds it himself.
When a great storm strikes Edo, the pagoda stands without moving at all.
Season Words
A saijiki is a book that sorts the kigo, the season words of haiku, by season, with explanations and example poems. A haiku guide in the magazine Gendai Business says that each season word carries its own subtle feeling. Emotion, it advises, should not be put into words directly. It should be expressed through the season word.
The Gathering of the Gods
In the Kojiki, Japan’s oldest chronicle, the sun goddess Amaterasu hides in the Rock Cave of Heaven. Yaoyorozu no kami, Ame no Yasu no kawara ni kamutsudoi tsudoite. The eight million gods gather in assembly in the dry bed of the river Yasu in heaven.
There they ask Omoikane, the god of wisdom, to think out a plan.