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Topics - William Seltzer

#1
1. Did Basho or Buson write?

tsunagiuma/ yuki issou no/ abumi kana

a tethered horse
snow
in both stirrups

The Terebess Asia Online (TAO) online collection "Haiku of Yosa Buson Organized by Rōmaji, in alphabetical order; translated into English, French, Spanish," available on line at http://terebess.hu/english/haiku/buson.doc attributes this haiku to Buson, citing William R. Nelson & Takafumi Saito, 1020 Haiku in Translation: The Heart of Basho, Buson and Issa, 2006 and Yuki Sawa & Edith Marcombe Shiffert  Haiku Master Buson, 2007.

On the other hand, this haiku is included in the on-line collection, " A Selection of Matsuo Basho's Haiku," available at http://thegreenleaf.co.uk/hp/basho/00bashohaiku.htm although this site only provides an English translation and no romaji or kanji, or information about the translator.

I assume the correct answer to my question is Buson, since the other sources I could find attributing this haiku to Basho appeared to be derivative of the UK Greenleaf website.  Moreover, neither Reichhold (Reichhold, Jane.  Basho: The Complete Haiku.  Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 2008) nor Ueda (Ueda, Makoto.  Basho and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary.  Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992) included the "stirrup" haiku among Basho's work.  But is my assumption correct?  Can someone more knowledgeable provide a more definitive answer?


2. Did Buson or Shiki write?

yuku ware ni/ todo maru nare ni/ aki futatsu
going I for/ staying you for/ autumns two

for I who go
for you who stay
two autumns

Henderson (1958, p. 111) includes this among Buson's work as does the online collection "Haiku of Yosa Buson Organized by Rōmaji, in alphabetical order; translated into English, French, Spanish," available on line from Terebess Asia Online (TAO) at http://terebess.hu/english/haiku/buson.doc, citing Henderson and French and Spanish translations.

On the other hand, the on-line Shiki collection, "Shiki Masaoka - Shiki Haiku Translation by Kim," (posted at http://www.cc.matsuyama-u.ac.jp/~shiki/kim/shikihaiku.html ) includes this "two autumns" haiku as an autumn haiku among Shiki's work. This website provides both a specific translator (Kim [Kimiyo Tanaka, see http://www.cc.matsuyama-u.ac.jp/~shiki/kim/introduction.html]) and in addition to the translation the text both in romaji and kanji (although the latter appears garbled on my machine).  This haiku is also included in Masaoka Shiki: Selected Poems, translated by Burton Watson, New York, Columbia University Press, 1997, p. 44 as haiku # 54.  Watson provides a specific date of composition (1895) and occasion for its writing (Shiki's departure from his friend and fellow writer Natsu Sōseki when Shiki left Matsuyama for Tokyo).

In the case of the authorship of the "two autumns" haiku, I am at a loss.  Both Buson and Shiki are each cited by authoritative scholars as the author. Did Shiki just quote Buson's haiku when he parted from Sōseki and some editor (perhaps going right back to Masaoka Chūsaburō) credit Shiki with a new haiku, or is there some subtle difference in the kanji between Buson's and Shiki's version of this haiku? 

In any event, could someone more knowledgeable about the original sources help resolve this apparent mystery?

Thank you to all responders.

Bill
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