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Taneda Santoka
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was the pen-name of a Japanese author and haiku poet. He is known for his free verse haiku.
oka was born in a village on the southwestern tip of Honshu, Japan’s main island, to a wealthy land-owning family. At the age of ten his mother committed suicide by throwing herself into the family well. Though the exact reason for her action is unknown, according to Santoka’s diaries his mother had finally reached the point where she could no longer live with her husband’s philandering.
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Encyclopedia
was the pen-name of a Japanese author and haiku poet. He is known for his free verse haiku.
Life
Santoka was born in a village on the southwestern tip of Honshu, Japan’s main island, to a wealthy land-owning family. At the age of ten his mother committed suicide by throwing herself into the family well. Though the exact reason for her action is unknown, according to Santoka’s diaries his mother had finally reached the point where she could no longer live with her husband’s philandering. Following the incident, Santoka was raised by his grandmother.
In 1902, he entered Waseda University in Tokyo as a student of literature. While there, he began drinking heavily, and in 1904, at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, he dropped out of school. The documented reason was “nervous breakdown,” which some believe to be a euphemism for frequent and severe drunkenness. In addition, by that time his father Takejiro was in such dire financial straits that he could barely afford to pay his son’s tuition.
In 1906, despite Santoka's proclivity for drunkenness and his father's love of women and petty politics, Taneda father and son sold off family land in order to open a sake brewery. In 1909 his father arranged for Santoka to marry SATO Sakino, a girl from a neighboring village. In his diaries, Santoka confesses that the sight of his mother’s corpse being raised from her watery grave had forever tarnished his relationship with women. Although their marriage was most likely lackluster, in 1910 Sakino gave birth to a son, Ken.
In 1911, he began publishing translations of Ivan Turgenev and Guy de Maupassant in the literary journal Seinen (Youth) under the pen name Santoka, meaning "Mountain-top Fire". That same year he joined his area’s local haiku group. At that time, his haiku mostly adhered to the traditional syllabic format, though some were hypersyllabic, for example:
- In a café we debate decadence a summer butterfly flits
- Kafe ni dekadan o ronzu natsu no cho toberi
In 1913, Santoka was accepted as a disciple by the leading haiku reformist Ogiwara Seisensui. Seisensui (1884-1976) could be regarded as the originator of the free-form haiku movement, though fellow writers Masaoka Shiki and Kawahigashi Hekigoto also deserve recognition. Writers following the early-twentieth century movement known as free-form or free-style haiku (shinkeiko) composed haiku lacking both the traditional 5-7-5 syllabic rule and the requisite seasonal word (kigo). Santoka began regularly contributing poetry to Seisensui’s haiku magazine Soun (Layered Clouds). By 1916 he became an editor. That same year, however, was marked by the bankruptcy of his father's sake brewery after two years of spoiled stock. The family lost all that remained of their once great fortune. Takejiro fled into hiding and Santoka moved his family to Kumamoto City on the southern island of Kyushu, where plans to open a second-hand bookstore soon materialized into the opening of a picture frame shop. Two years later, plagued by debt, Santoka’s younger brother Jiro committed suicide. Then Santoka’s grandmother died. In 1919, at the age of thirty-seven, Santoka left his family in order to find a job in Tokyo. In 1920, following her parents’ wishes, Santoka divorced his wife. His father died soon after.
Santoka proved no more reliable at working a steady job than he had at going to college, and though he did secure a permanent position as a librarian in 1920, by 1922 he was again unemployed due to another “nervous breakdown.” He stayed in Tokyo long enough to experience the Great Kanto Earthquake, after which he was apparently jailed as a suspect Communist. Soon after being released, he returned to Kumamoto City where he helped Sakino keep shop.
In 1924, an extremely drunk Santoka jumped in front of an oncoming train in what may have been a suicide attempt. The train managed to stop just inches from him, and he was brought by a newspaper reporter to the Soto Zen temple Hoon-ji, where the head priest Mochizuki Gian welcomed him to the Zen fraternity. The Zen life seemed to work for Santoka: by the next year at the age of forty-two he was ordained in the Soto sect.
In 1926, after a year spent as caretaker of Mitori Kannon-do temple in Kumamoto, Santoka set out on the first of many walking trips. He was away for three years. Part of this time was spent completing the eighty-eight temple pilgrimage circuit on Shikoku Island. He visited the gravesite of a deceased friend and follower of Seisensui, Ozaki Hosai (1885-1926).
In 1929 he returned briefly to Kumamoto to visit Sakino and publish some more haiku in Soun. He also began a publication of his own, Sambaku, named after his boardinghouse. Soon, however, he was back on the road.
During his trips, Santoka wore his priest’s robe and a large bamboo hat known as a kasa to keep off the sun. He had one bowl, which he used both for alms-getting and for eating. To survive, he went from house to house to beg. Begging (takahatsu) is an important part of practice for monks in Japan, but, considering that Santoka was not a member of a monastery while he journeyed, begging just for his own needs, he was often regarded with disdain and on a few occasions even questioned by the police. A day’s earnings would go toward a room at a guesthouse, food, and sake. It is clear from his diaries that he had very mixed feelings about his lifestyle:
March 28, 1933. Even if it means nothing to eat, I don’t want to do any more of that hateful begging! People who have never done any begging seem to have difficulty understanding how I feel about this.
November 26, 1934. Loving sake, savoring sake, enjoying sake is not so bad. But drowning in sake, rioting in sake—that won’t do! Running around drinking in this messy way—utterly stupid!
November 4, 1939. The rain began coming down in earnest and the wind was blowing hard… It blew my hat off, and my glasses went flying too—what a mess! But a grade-school student passing by retrieved them for me—many, many thanks! Rain kept getting worse, wind blowing stronger all the time—nothing to do but stop for the night at Okutomo—but none of the inns would have me. Let it be! is all I say and, looking like a drowned rat, I walk on, Finally can't go on any longer and take shelter in the lee of a roadside warehouse. I wring out my clothes, each lunch, stay there for two hours. Deluge!—no other word for it—violent wind lashing it around, sheets of rain streaming sideways like a loose blind. I felt as though I had been bashed flat by heaven—a rather splendid feeling in fact. With evening I was able to make it as far as Shishikui, but again nobody would take me in. Finally I got to Kannoura, where I found an inn that would give me lodging, much to my relief.
In 1932, Santoka settled down for a time at a cottage in Yamaguchi prefecture. He named it “Gochuan” after a verse in the Lotus Sutra. While there, he published his first book of poems Hachi no ko (“Rice Bowl Child”). He lived on the contributions of friends and admirers, whatever he could grow in his garden, and money sent from his son Ken. In 1934 he set off again on a walking trip, but soon grew seriously ill and had to return home. He attempted suicide but lived. In 1936, he again began to walk, intent on following the trail of the famous haiku poet Basho (1644–1694) as described in Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Interior). He returned to Gochuan after eight months.
In 1938, Gochuan became unfit for habitation, and after another walking trip, Santoka settled down at a small temple near Matsuyama City. On October 10, 1940 Santoka died in his sleep. He had published seven collections of poems and numerous editions of Sambaku. He was fifty-seven.
Poetry
As an exponent of free style haiku, Santoka is often ranked alongside Ozaki Hosai, a fellow student of Seisensui. They both suffered from the ill effects of their drinking habits and were similar in their reliance on Seisensui and other patrons of the arts for aid and support. The literary tone of their poems, however, differs.
Haiku excerpts from Hiroaki Sato’s translation of Santoka’s Grass and Tree Cairn:
- I go in I go in still blue mountains
- Wakeitte mo wakeitte mo aoi yama
- Fluttering drunk leaves scatter
- Horohoro yote ki no ha chiru
Haiku excerpts from Burton Watson’s translation For All My Walking:
- there
- where the fire was
- something blooming
- yake-ato nani yara saite iru
- feel of the needle
- when at last
- you get the thread through it
- yatto ito ga totta hari no kanshoku
Resources
- Taneda Santoka, For All My Walking, translated by Burton Watson, Columbia University Press, © 2003 ISBN 0-231-12516-X cloth ISBN 0-231-12517-8 pbk [102 pp. 245 haiku plus diary entries]
- Taneda Santoka, Santoka: Grass and Tree Cairn, translated by Hiroaki Sato, Red Moon Press © 2002 ISBN 1-893959-28-7
- John Stevens, Mountain Tasting: Zen Haiku by Santoka Taneda, Weatherhill © 1980 ISBN 0-8348-0151-5 [130pp. 372 haiku] emphasizes the Zen aspect of Santoka's life.
- Scott Watson, "The Santoka: versions by Scott Watson", Bookgirl Press; 2005 ISBN 4-915948-41-2 C0098. 41pp. over 100 haiku and two essays that emphasize the poet as an individual and the individual as a poet.
External links
a selection of Zen Haikai by Santoka Taneda, translated by Okami
translated by Hisashi Miura and James Green
e-texts of Santoka's works at Aozora bunko
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