Kobayashi Issa
Encyclopedia
, was a Japanese
Japanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...

 poet and lay Buddhist priest of the Jōdo Shinshū
Jodo Shinshu
, also known as Shin Buddhism, is a school of Pure Land Buddhism. It was founded by the former Tendai Japanese monk Shinran. Today, Shin Buddhism is considered the most widely practiced branch of Buddhism in Japan.-Shinran :...

 sect known for his haiku
Haiku
' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...

 poems and journals. He is better known as simply , a pen name meaning Cup-of-tea (lit. "one [cup of] tea"). He is regarded as one of the four haiku masters in Japan, along with Bashō
Matsuo Basho
, born , then , was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as a master of brief and clear haiku...

, Buson
Yosa Buson
was a Japanese poet and painter from the Edo period. Along with Matsuo Bashō and Kobayashi Issa, Buson is considered among the greatest poets of the Edo Period. Buson was born in the village of Kema in Settsu Province...

 and Shiki
Masaoka Shiki
, pen-name of Masaoka Noboru , was a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku poetry...

 - 'the Great Four, Basho, Buson, Issa, Shiki'.

Reflecting the popularity and interest in Issa as man and poet, Japanese books on Issa outnumber those on Buson, and almost equal in number those on Bashō.

Life

Issa was born and registered as Kobayashi Nobuyuki (小林 信之), with a childhood name of Kobayashi Yatarō (小林 弥太郎), the first son of a farmer family of Kashiwabara, now part of Shinano-machi
Shinano, Nagano
is a town located in Kamiminochi District, Nagano, Japan.As of 2005, the town has an estimated population of 9,851 and a density of 65.99 persons per km². The total area is 149.27 km²....

, Shinano Province
Shinano Province
or is an old province of Japan that is now present day Nagano Prefecture.Shinano bordered on Echigo, Etchū, Hida, Kai, Kōzuke, Mikawa, Mino, Musashi, Suruga, and Tōtōmi Provinces...

 (present-day Nagano Prefecture
Nagano Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of the island of Honshū. The capital is the city of Nagano.- History :Nagano was formerly known as the province of Shinano...

). Issa endured the loss of his mother, who died when he was three. Her passing was the first of numerous difficulties young Issa suffered. He was cared for by his grandmother, who doted on him, but his life changed again when his father remarried five years later. Issa's half-brother was born two years later, and when his grandmother died when he was 14, Issa felt estranged in his own house, a lonely, moody child who preferred to wander the fields. His attitude did not please his stepmother, who, according to Lewis Mackenzie, was a "tough-fibred 'managing' woman of hard-working peasant stock." He was sent to Edo
Edo
, also romanized as Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868...

 (present-day Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

) to eke out a living by his father one year later. Nothing of the next ten years of his life is known for certain. His name was associated with Kobayashi Chikua (小林 竹阿) of the Nirokuan (二六庵) haiku school, but their relationship is not clear. During the following years, he wandered through Japan and fought over his inheritance with his stepmother (his father died in 1801). After years of legal wrangles, Issa managed to secure rights to half of the property his father left. He returned to his native village at the age of 49 and soon took a wife, Kiku. After a brief period of bliss, tragedy returned. The couple's first-born child died shortly after his birth. A daughter died less than two-and-a-half years later, inspiring Issa to write this haiku (translated by Lewis Mackenzie):
露の世は露の世ながらさりながら

Tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sari nagara

The world of dew --
A world of dew it is indeed,
And yet, and yet . . .


A third child died in 1820 and then Kiku fell ill and died in 1823. '"Ikinokori ikinokoritaru samusa kana Outliving them,/Outliving them all,-/Ah, the cold!" This was written when Issa's wife died, he being 61'.

Issa married twice more late in his life, and through it all he produced a huge body of work.
As a big fire swept the post station
Shukuba
were post stations during the Edo period in Japan, generally located on one of the Edo Five Routes or one of its sub-routes. They were also called shukueki . These post stations were places where travelers could rest on their journey around the nation...

 of Kashiwabara on July 24, 1827, according to the Western Calendar, Issa lost his house and had to live in his storehouse, which is still kept in the town. '"The fleas have fled from the burning house, and have taken refuge with me here", says Issa. Of this same fire, he wrote also: Hotarabu mo amaseba iya haya kore wa haya If you leave so much/As a firefly's glimmer, -/Good Lord! Good Heavens!'.

He died on November 19, 1827, in his native village. According to the old Japanese calendar, he died on the 19th day of Eleventh Month, Tenth Year of the Bunsei
Bunsei
was a after Bunka and before Tenpō. This period spanned the years from April 1818 through December 1830. The reigning emperor was .-Change of era:...

 era. Since the Tenth Year of Bunsei roughly corresponds with 1827, many sources list this as his year of death.

Writings and drawings

Issa wrote over 20,000 haiku, which have won him readers up to the present day. Though his works were popular, he suffered great monetary instability. Despite a multitude of personal trials, his poetry reflects a childlike simplicity, making liberal use of local dialects and conversational phrases, and 'including many verses on plants and the lower creatures. Issa wrote 54 haiku on the snail, 15 on the toad, nearly 200 on frogs, about 230 on the firefly, more than 150 on the mosquito, 90 on flies, over 100 on fleas and nearly 90 on the cicada, making a total of about one thousand verses on such creatures'. By contrast, Bashō's verses are comparatively few in number, about two thousand in all).

Issa, 'with his intense personality and vital language [and] shockingly impassioned verse...is usually considered a most conspicuous heretic to the orthodox Basho tradition'. Nevertheless, 'in that poetry and life were one in him...[&] poetry was a diary of his heart', it is at least arguable that 'Issa could more truly be said to be Basho's heir than most of the haikai poets of the nineteenth century'.

Issa's works also include haibun
Haibun
Haibun is a literary composition that combines prose and haiku. The range of haibun is broad and includes, but is not limited to, the following forms of prose: autobiography, biography, diary, essay, history, prose poem, short story and travel literature....

 (passages of prose with integrated haiku) such as Oraga Haru (おらが春 "My Spring") and Shichiban Nikki (七番日記 "Number Seven Journal"), and he collaborated on more than 250 renku (collaborative linked verse).

Issa was also known for his drawings, generally accompanying haiku: 'the Buddhism of the haiku contrasts with the Zen of the sketch'. His approach has been described as 'similar to that of Sengai
Sengai
was a Japanese monk of the Rinzai school . He was known for his controversial teachings and writings, as well as for his lighthearted sumi-e paintings...

....Issa's sketches are valued for the extremity of their abbreviation, in keeping with the idea of haiku as a simplification of certain types of experience'

One of Issa's haiku, as translated by R.H. Blyth
Reginald Horace Blyth
Reginald Horace Blyth was an English author and devotee of Japanese culture.-Early life:Blyth was born in Essex, England, the son of a railway clerk...

, appears in J. D. Salinger
J. D. Salinger
Jerome David Salinger was an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. His last original published work was in 1965; he gave his last interview in 1980....

's 1961 novel, Franny and Zooey
Franny and Zooey
Franny and Zooey is a book by American author J.D. Salinger which comprises his short story, "Franny", and novella, Zooey. The two works were published together as a book in 1961; the two stories originally appeared in The New Yorker in 1955 and 1957, respectively...

:
O snail
Climb Mount Fuji,
But slowly, slowly!


Another, translated by D.T. Suzuki, was written during a period of Issa's life when he was penniless and deep in debt. It reads:
Trusting the Buddha (Amida
Amida
Amida can mean:* Amitabha, an important Buddha in East Asian Buddhism* Amida , a beetle genus* Amida Buddha* Amidah, the central prayer of the Jewish services* Amidakuji, a way of drawing lots* Amitabh Bachchan, an actor...

), good and bad,
I bid farewell
To the departing year.


Another, translated by Peter Beilenson with Harry Behn
Harry Behn
Harry Behn, also known as Giles Behn, was an American screenwriter and children's author.-Early life:Harry Behn was born in 1898 in McCabe, Arizona, which is now a ghost town, in Yavapai County in what was then the Arizona Territory. He was the son of Henry K...

, reads:
Everything I touch
with tenderness, alas,
pricks like a bramble.

Criticism

David Lanoue maintained in 2005 that 'our image of Issa is a consciously designed literary construct...earthy, compassionate, child-and-animal loving, unconcerned about appearances or public rituals or wordly power'. While not necessarily misleading, 'his carefully crafted self-portraits...transcend autobiography'.

It has been suggested that 'Issa is often very much like Thoreau'.

Further reading

(A biography and selection of translated haiku; TOC is on p. 111.) (An essay about the haiku persona of Issa, by the translator of the Issa Archive.) (A discussion of Issa's approach to haikai no renga including a translation of a hankasen by Issa and Kawahara Ippyō)

External links

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