Akutagawa & Autumn at Sankeien

Loose Leaves – Essays on Haiku

 

Akutagawa Ryūnosoke (1892-1927)

Last December, during a visit to Sankeien, near Yokohama, I came across a haiku written by a famous Japanese writer, Akutagawa Ryūnosoke (1892-1927). The haiku was about a visit he made to these lovely gardens in the autumn of 1915. Akutagawa included the poem in a letter he wrote to the son of the garden’s founder shortly after his visit:

 

ひとはかり浮く香煎（こうせん）や白湯（さゆ）の秋

ひとはかり | うくこうせんや | さゆのあき

Hito wa kari | uku kousen ya | sayu no aki

-        Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, 1915. 三溪園 (さんけいえん)

 

I found the haiku reproduced on an information board about the Hatsunejaya (初音茶屋), a small hexagonal wooden teahouse in Sankeien, where a black iron pot used to hang from the ceiling, heated by a fire. Here, Akutagawa notes in his letter, tea was served during his visit by a woman, as shown in the accompanying postcard:

 

Hatsunejaya (初音茶屋)

The information board provides a translation of his haiku in English:

 

A spoonful of tea / herbal tea and hot water / float through autumn air

 

However, this is an inelegant, and somewhat tautological, translation of what I think is a very deftly and densely-layered haiku. I asked my wife, who is Japanese, what she thought of this translation. She agreed, there’s a lot more going on in the original Japanese. But, how to capture all of the elements of Akutagawa’s haiku in English?

 

Hatsunejaya (初音茶屋) Information Panel

Modern English haiku, as it is represented in most of the leading contemporary English language haiku magazines and journals, tends to eschew the 5-7-5 syllable structure as “too wordy” and cumbersome when compared to Japanese haiku. But here, as I soon discovered, we have a haiku in Japanese which is so tightly and compactly layered it is supremely difficult to render it into English and do the original poem justice. Consequently, it posed a challenge to me which I simply could not let go. Over the course of the next week or so, I kept coming back to the haiku and tinkering with it – trying to see if I could come up with a better English version.

 

Yoshida Hiroshi - Sankeien (1935)

Checking the website of Sankeien, I found there the original poem was given again. When I clicked on the automatic translation function of my web browser my computer rendered the haiku into the following English version, which was a slight improvement on the one printed on the information board:

 

Autumn of floating incense and white-hot water

 

This prompted me to try using Google Translate, which perhaps fared slightly better still, giving me:

 

A delicate incense floats, and plain hot water — autumn

 

These two computer translations succeed in giving the haiku a more poetic tone, perhaps – but they are still too literal. In essence, neither of them is poetry. So clearly, we need to start afresh. And the best way to do this is to begin with a genuine literal translation:

 

one small-scoop/measure | floating kousen | hot (white) water of autumn

 

Two points to note here are as follows: 1. 香煎茶 kousencha is tea made from powdered green tea or roasted barley flour, with spices and herbs (such as kelp, red shiso, and dried plum), and 2. ひとすくい [一掬い] hitosukui is a small ornamental spoon​ (usually written using kana alone). These two elements each convey a wealth of input to the original haiku. One implies a small measure [a spoonful] of something [tea] which expands out into something far larger and more diffuse, hence the poem speaks of ‘floating’ – which is perhaps why the automatic translations appear to default to the term ‘incense’ even though the word incense is not actually used in the poem. My wife thought this aspect of the poem referred more to the very small grains of powdered tea which were ‘suspended’ in the ‘sayu’ or ‘white-hot’ water, perhaps suggesting both fresh, pure water and white steam at the same time. Consequently, reading this haiku in Japanese, we get a double suggestion of the fragrance of the tea as well as the visual of watching the tea slowly dissolving into both the hot water and the air, most likely in the form of the rising steam and smoke from the fire boiling the water in its iron pot. As such, the tea and the open-sided wooden teahouse become the essence of autumn itself as it is experienced by the senses of sight and smell. In this manner, the haiku makes us feel autumn.

 

But that makes for a lot of separate elements to cram into an English translation of this haiku! – Breaking the haiku down, we need to include the following: 1. The smallness of a measured spoonful; 2. The spiced tea powder (kousencha); 3. The expansive notion of floating or suspension; 4. The white-hotness of water; 5. The association of the water (and all these separate elements) with autumn (kigo). Given the quantity and complexity of these components, I found it very hard to distil everything down into a suitably brief and spare, free-form haiku. But, wanting to avoid excessive “wordiness”, I decided it was best to add the limitation of crafting the translation into a 5-7-5 structure. In doing so, I thought that this would give the poem some sort of order as well as limiting its length within the somewhat traditional confines of a 5-7-5 haiku. Within those confines, of course, as always with haiku there are further divisions which need to be employed for greater expressive effect, such as splitting the haiku either into units of two (using a kiregi), or three (the standard three lines of 5-7-5), or, ideally a combination of both. Working five elements into such expressive divisions is the real challenge in translating this particular haiku. In the end, I went through more than 33 iterations before I settled on a version which I thought worked reasonably well. This took me from my first spare and impressionistic (free-form) rendering of:

 

Scent and sediment / suspended – / autumn’s hot water.

 

To my final, 5-7-5 rendering of:

 

Infused with white steam – / a pinch of spiced tea gently / drifts into Autumn.

 

I’ve anguished a lot over whether nor not ‘drifts’ should be ‘floats’ – and it could easily be either; but, in the end, I felt that ‘drifts’ better serves as a bridge between the parallel inference of both the water-soluble and the airborne aspects of the poem’s central allusion. To my mind, ‘floats’ works well for the air, but otherwise it rather implies something simply borne on the surface of the water, rather than something equally suffused or suspended within the water and the air. Hence, recalling that old nostrum of earth and heaven: “As above, so below,” –  to my mind, in both eye and ear – ‘drifts’ successfully carries both connotations; as well as perhaps also a third, which is that sensual experience of the two combined in a feeling, as I described it earlier on, when I first broke down the essential elements of the original poem, i.e. – its autumnal essence.

 

Hatsunejaya (初音茶屋)

In his letter to his friend, Akutagawa described this haiku as being ‘commonplace,’ meaning he thought it too conventional or unoriginal.  Nevertheless, 110 years after it was first written, I think his poem is actually a very subtle and deft work of art. It is an exemplary haiku. It manages to do what the most challenging haiku strive to achieve, which is to embody and express a multitude (of images, ideas, and/or sensations through associations, suggestions, and allusion) in the simplest and sparest of forms.

 

Yoshida Hiroshi - Teahouse (1938)

In concluding his pioneering four-volume survey of Japanese haiku, the scholar, R.H. Blyth, observed: “The three-line translation [of haiku] obscures something fundamental in the originals, something that belongs to the Japanese mind, the Japanese language and the literature it produced and which produced it. We see it in linked poems, in the puns of the language of Nō[h], in the empty spaces of pictures, the absence of things in rooms, the silences of conversation. This ‘something’ is a certain continuity, a lack of division, a feeling of the whole when dealing with the parts.”* – I think this reflection sums up very well the challenge of translating Akutagawa’s haiku about a simple little wooden tea house at Sankeien into English in a way which attempts to do justice to the dense complexity, and yet also the light and buoyant subtlety, of his original poem.

 

ひとはかり浮く香煎（こうせん）や白湯（さゆ）の秋

Infused with white steam –

a pinch of spiced tea gently

drifts into Autumn.

 

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, 1915. 三溪園 (さんけいえん)

translated by Tim Chamberlain, 2025. 三溪園 (さんけいえん)

 

 

*R.H. Blyth, Haiku: Volume 4, Autumn-Winter (Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1982 [1952]), pp. 1008-1009.

Green Leaves

Loose Leaves – Art Inspired

 

Grace Gillespie - Under the Blossom (Indigo)

This poem was in part inspired by a wonderful photograph which I saw posted on Bluesky, but also by the sparrows which live in a tall hedge running along the lane behind where we live in Tokyo – and which I’ve written about several times before here on Shinobazu Pond 俳句 (see, Leaf 8, Leaf 229, and Leaf 372). There’s something about hearing and seeing a flock of sparrows which always brightens my mood. It often reminds me of the happy and carefree feeling I felt when running around with my friends in the summer’s back in England when I was kid.

 

青葉光るぺちゃくちゃ話す雀かな

あおばひかる | ぺちゃくちゃはなす | すずめかな

Aoba hikaru | pechakucha hanasu | suzume kana

 

Shining green leaves | chattering talk | sparrows (!)

 

 

Sunshine and

green leaves –

sparrows chatter. 

A different version of this poem was originally written and posted on Bluesky.

Red Summer Sun

Leaf 365 – Reflection

 

This poem consciously emulates a haiku by Bashō (see below). But it also attempts to connect Bashō’s poem to our own life here in modern day Tokyo. From our balcony we can see Mount Fuji to the west. Throughout the course of the year, I like to watch the wandering progress of the setting sun as it moves along the mountain ridge first one way and then heading back again. The late summer and early autumn sunsets are always the most spectacular, and they always seem to coincide with the setting sun’s alignment directly behind Mount Fuji. In my mind, it’s as if I’m seeing summer packing up and departing Tokyo for the winter, to spend the cold season of each year’s end in some other, warmer place somewhere beyond Mount Fuji. (As always, I’m not sure how well my Japanese version works; but both versions are 5-7-5).

 

富士山や   赤々の暮れ   秋の風

ふじさんや | あかあかのくれ | あきのかぜ

Mount Fuji | the crimson summer dusk | autumn wind

 

 

A last red sunset –

summer slips past Mount Fuji

with the autumn wind.

Or:

On the autumn wind –

summer’s last warm glow, setting 

behind Mount Fuji.

 

 

Tsukioka Kogyo - Barley Field at Sunrise (c.1900-1910)

 

Bashō’s haiku:

あかあかと日はつれなくも秋の風

 

     The sun bright red,

Relentlessly hot, –

     But the wind is of autumn.

(translated by R.H. Blyth)

 

 

Tsukioka Kogyo - Barley Field (c.1900)

Top photograph by Tim Chamberlain (2024).

Mountain Temple

Leaf 352 – Reflections

 

This haiku was written about a trip to Mitake-san near Ome, in the mountains to the west of Tokyo (see also, Leaf 41). Mitake-san is actually the site of a Shintō shrine rather than a Buddhist temple, but the poem could easily be about Hiei-zan, near Kyoto, which I’ve also visited and is a similar mountain with many temples atop its high vantage. Mitake-san is particularly steep, its stone staircases and the paths and roadways leading up to the top take a real effort to climb, as well as care in descending. A steep funicular railway carries you the first part of the way (the same as at Hiei-zan). At the top there are some wonderful views, and the air feels fresher and cooler compared to the narrow river valley below. The distinctive, melodious sound of uguisu (a kind of bush warbler, known as the Japanese nightingale) can be heard calling amidst the gentle ripple of the leaves in the treetops. This haiku is unusual in that it was first composed and refined in English after reading a haiku by Buson, which begins with the first line of ‘Yamadera ya.’ I then did my best to translate my English haiku into a proper 5-7-5 structured haiku in Japanese. I’m not sure how well it works as a haiku in Japanese, but the sentiment it strives for is very much what I feel whenever I visit holy mountains in Japan, such as Mitake-san or Hiei-zan.

 

 

山寺や   天上の段   上り猶

 

やまでらや   てんじょうのだん   のぼりなお

 

Mountain temple –

steps higher than heaven,

climbing higher still.

Photographs by Tim Chamberlain 

Uncertainty

Leaf 142 – Reflections

 

Illustration by Kiuchi Tatsuro

This is another one of those poems which seem to present themselves to me almost fully-formed in both English and Japanese. But, as always, I’m not 100% sure how well my Japanese version works – which is perhaps somewhat appropriate in this particular instance.

 

 

不確かさ夏の初めて蝉の声

futashika sa | natsu no hajimete | semi no koe

uncertainty | summer of first time | cicada(s) of voice

 

 

Sounding uncertain –

summer’s first

cicadas.

 

 

Unable to Sleep

Leaf 130 – Reflections

 

A famous haiku about sparrows by Kobayashi Issa (see below)

Sometimes when I write haiku, I kind of half-think them simultaneously in both Japanese and English. It can be a curiously head-muddling process. In this particular instance, the English version beat the Japanese one to the finish line. And so, this is really another of my attempts at translating a free-form haiku written in English back into proper 5-7-5 Japanese. As always, with my beginner’s Japanese, I’m not sure how effective it is, or if it works properly …

 

 

Unable to sleep –

a chorus of sparrows

start their day.

 

Or:

 

夜が明ける外で雀を合唱寝ない

よがあける | そとで すずめを | がっしょうねない

Yogaakeru | soto de suzume o | gasshō nenai

Dawn breaks | outside the sparrows | singing together I can't sleep

Seiko - Sparrow and Red Flower (1895)

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Photograph (top) & translation (below) credit: Project Haiku

我と来て　あそべや　親のない雀

ware to kite asobeya oya no nai suzume

Come to me / and let’s play / little orphan sparrow

- Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)

Old Edo East Sea Road

Leaf 103 – Looking Back

 

Utagawa Hiroshige - Tōkaidō at Hakone (1833)

See also, Leaf 62 & Leaf 63.

WALKING THE TŌKAIDŌ AGAIN – A TRAVEL HAIBUN, 5th MAY 2009

 

We set out very early this morning, taking the train from Shinjuku to Hakone-Yumoto, where we caught a local bus up to the village of Hatajuku. From there we joined the old Tōkaidō (East Sea Road) at the point where two old distance markers still stand. These are two sets of low circular stone walls, each surmounted by a mound of earth, and each with a small tree growing from the summit; one placed on either side of the old paved road, opposite one another.

 

Because this is the Golden Week holiday, Hakone-Yumoto was bustling with a great many people, most of whom have come to stay at the onsen ryokan (hot spring inns). The Tōkaidō, however, was much less busy. We passed or walked in line with a few other couples, small groups, or families at times, but mostly on our own. When I first walked this stretch of the Tōkaidō it was the middle of winter and I neither passed nor met another soul until I had reached Moto-Hakone – and this was from starting out on foot from Hakone-Yumoto itself.

 

Six years since –

so freshly scented,

the old wooded road.

 

The weather today was overcast, as it was when I walked here five or six years ago, only this time, it was much warmer and humid with it. Not long after midday a mist rolled down from higher up in the mountains. It passed between the tall tree trunks (hinoki and sugi), like a ghostly haze, illuminated by the light which penetrated the dense canopy of green leaves above, creating a beautifully serene and enchanting atmosphere. It began to rain with large drops of moisture falling from the tall greenery towering above us. The stones of the Tōkaidō became wet and slippery underfoot, we had to make our way with care so as not to slip or fall. Along the way, when we were nearing the end of our walk, we stopped at a popular tea house for some refreshments and a short rest.

 

The old Amazake-Chaya

– as busy as

the rain outside.

 

Old Hakone (c.1920s)

When we later reached Moto-Hakone and Ashinoko (Lake Ashi), Fuji-san was entirely hidden from view by cloud – just as it was when Matsuo Bashō passed by this way, and just as it was when I came here before in 2003/2004. Since then, the bus station has been modernised, and continuing down the tall cedar-lined part of the Tōkaidō to the Hakone Barrier (sekisho), a kind of wayfarer’s Customs post, we found that the Barrier itself has been reconstructed on its original foundations, just as it was in the Edo period, when Bashō would have walked through it. After savouring a lunch of hot soba noodles and mountain vegetables we took a look around the Barrier buildings and the small museum there before walking back to the bus station, where in 2003/2004 I’d met Emi Miyamoto, a Shinto pilgrim and tanka poet who had been travelling around all the Shinto shrines hereabouts on a New Year’s holiday pilgrimage.

 

At the sekisho

– no sword,

only my pen!

 

We took the bus back down to Hakone-Yumoto and strolled around the shops there in the pouring rain until it was time to board our train and head back to Tokyo.

 

Past times revisited

– the old Tōkaidō’s stones,

changing and unchanged.

 

 

Felice Beato - Tōkaidō (1825)

-------------------------------------------------------

This haibun contains my first attempt at writing a haiku in Japanese. Although it is really an attempt at translating a haiku written in English into Japanese, consequently it doesn’t quite work. It is a 5-7-5 haiku, but the syllable count is slightly off centre (6-6-5), and it is missing some of the more usual elements of haiku; plus I think the Japanese-usage is probably a little off kilter too. But for what it’s worth, here it is:

 

甘酒茶屋  人に満ちる  外も雨

あまざけちゃや  ひとにみちる  そともあめ

Amazake-Chaya | people filled (with) | outside also rain

 

Or:

 

The old Amazake-Chaya

– as full (or busy) as

the rain outside.

 

Colour photographs of the Tōkaidō by Tim Chamberlain, 2004 & 2009

Peace & Quiet

Leaf 59 – Reflections

 

Franz von Defregger - Der Leser

Another stab, this time done solo (see Leaf 38), at writing a proper 5-7-5 senryu in Japanese. Not sure how well or if it even works, but the autobiographical sentiment is true enough and sums me up well.

 

 

長閑さや   目のつかれたる   本終わり

のどかさや   めのつかれたる   ほんおわり

Tranquillity | tired eyes | the end of the book

 

Which is meant to suggest something like:

 

Ah, peace and quiet!

– my eyes grown weary,

reaching the book’s final page.

 

 

Tummy Rumbles

Leaf 38 – Senryu (or, witty tom-foolery)

 

My wife and I recently composed a joint haiku – or rather, a senryu (see, Leaf 33). It was a joking response to one of us suffering from a rumbling tummy the morning after a long night out over-indulging at a ‘yakiniku’ (Japanese barbeque) restaurant, punning upon the famous haiku about the sound of a frog jumping into an old pond, written by Matsuo Bashō (with apologies to Bashō!). We did so purely for our own amusement, and so we composed it under a non-sensical, shared ‘haijin’ name of “Negibu.” It conforms in Japanese to the proper 5-7-5 structure of senryu. I will neither confirm or deny which one of us it refers to.

 

古食堂     食べ過ぎたから     腹の音          葱ぶ

ふるしょくどう     たべ すぎたから     はらのおと          ねぎぶ

Furu shokudō     tabesugita kara     hara no oto          Negibu

 

Literally:

 

Old restaurant      having over-eaten     sound of stomach

 

Which roughly translates as:

 

Having over-eaten

at the old restaurant

– tummy grumbles.

 

* * *

 

 Bashō’ s haiku is: 

古池や　蛙飛び込む　水の音

furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto

The old pond – a frog leaps,  splash!

Photograph credit: Pikrepo.

Heian Roots

Leaf 28 – Looking back

 

Sometime around the late summer of 2007, I had dinner in a very warm and friendly, family-run 食堂 ‘shokudō,’  called のびる ‘Nobiru,’ in Midorigaoka in Tokyo’s Meguro-ku. We got chatting with the owner, Mr Yasuda, who told us that some of the house specialty dishes which he served were inspired by recipes that were first written down in the Heian Period (794-1185). When you mention the Heian Period to anyone who is interested in Japanese literature, they will of course first think of Murasaki Shikibu’s famous epic, ‘The Tale of Genji,’ or Sei Shōnagon’s ‘Pillow Book,’ or perhaps even the ‘Sarashina Nikki,’ the ‘Diary of Lady Sarashina.’ I mentioned my interest in Japanese literature to Yasuda-san and told him that I was particularly keen on haiku, especially the work (from the later, Edo era) of the haiku poet, Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694). Whereupon he very delightedly introduced me to another diner, also sitting at the counter, who was a fellow ‘haijin.’ This man very politely introduced himself and said his name was Hideki Ishikura. Ishikura-san is a very distinguished and long-time member of the World Haiku Association (WHA). We had a fascinating conversation and he very kindly gave me a copy of a recently translated work by his friend, Ban’ya Natsuishi, who is the Director of the WHA and also a Professor at Meiji University. Ishikura-san and I later sent each other some poetry publications of our own. But that evening, this unexpected and mutually enthusiastic meeting of two poets greatly amused Yasuda-san and his wife. When I was getting ready to leave, Yasuda-san asked me if I would write a poem for him to hang on the wall of his restaurant. I promised him I would, and so, just in time for the New Year holiday, I sent him the following poem written in black ink on some nice washi paper. The restaurant’s name, のびる ‘Nobiru,’ means ‘to grow.’ 

 

 

Fresh flavours,

rooted in the Heian –

のびる.