Taneda Santoka

Comments (1)

1. peace for the heart daily life in the mountains
   — Taneda Santoka

   心しづかに山の起臥
   こころしづかにやまのおきふし (the more modern version inscribed on a stone monument to this poem at Shibushi, see below)
   kokoro shizuka ni yama no okifushi
   —Taneda Santōka (1882–1940)

   心 (こころ) kokoro: heart / mind / spirit
   しづかに (しずかに) shizuka ni: quietly / peacefully (adverbial form of shizuka = quiet/calm).
   山 (やま) yama: mountain(s)
   の no: possessive of, particle linking the mountains to what follows.
   起 (おき) oki: waking up, rising. From the verb okiru (to get up).
   臥 (ふし) fushi: lying down, resting. From the verb fusu (to lie down/sleep).

   Okifushi (起臥), a word that sounds wonderful in my English ears,
   conveys the minimum of human existence dawn to dusk. Daily life with no interference.
   Or:
   peace for the heart life in the mountains
   —tr. John Stevens

   Itinerant Buddhist poet Santōka first published this haiku in December 1930 in his personal travel diary and poetry collection, Gyōkotsuki: Ano Yama o Koete: “Diary of Begging Alms: Beyond That Mountain;” and subsequently in his first anthology, “Hachi no Ko: The Begging Bowl”, in 1932. By this time, Santōka had completely committed his life to jiyūritsu (free-verse haiku) under his mentor Ogiwara Seisensui of the “new trend” movement, submitting his poetry to the vanguard haiku journal Sōun (“Layered Clouds”). Evidently, while admiring what had gone before, Santōka like Shiki before him, and many after, chafed at what traditional haiku had become. He wrote in his journal on the eighth of December 1936: “Haiku that seem like haiku aren’t bad. But haiku that don’t seem like haiku – that’s what I want these days.”

   This verse was composed during one of Santōka’s pilgrimages while he was walking through Shibushi, a historic port town in the region of Kagoshima. Moved by the coastline and adjacent mountains, he composed a series of poems about the solitude of his life. Much of Santōka’s work had been tortured, lonely, or much affected by his struggles with alcoholism. He found peace in the mountains. This verse stood out to his contemporaries in that it captured a rare moment of inner calm. A stone inscribed with the poem (as こころしずかに山のおきふし) stands at the National Hostel carpark in Shibushi, looking out toward the mountains.

   It’s basically an aphoristic statement, reading less like a fleeting observation of nature and more like a deep Zen maxim, and a personal manifesto. Santōka simply bypasses conventions. It’s not 5-7-5. There’s no kireji or cutting-word. No kigo or season word either. Barely a concrete image (though we see generic ‘mountains’). He makes a direct equation, a statement, an assertion:

   Life in the mountains = Peace for the heart

   A truth born from personal experience, a mantra, asserted with the authority of a proverb.

   And some say (didactically) that haiku must not be didactic… This one made it all the way to a stone memorial in Japan.

Comments are closed.