June 15 is the birthday of Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa. He was born in Kashiwabara, Japan in 1763. He is one of the masters of haiku.
Haiku packs so much into 17 Japanese characters in three distinct units.
Here is one by Issa that seems appropriate for Father’s Day this weekend.
if my father were here –
dawn colors
over green fields
What do the green fields of dawn have to do with his father? How would you fill in that unfinished thought “if my father were here” for your own life? The empty spaces in haiku often hold the meaning.
Issa spent most of his adult life traveling around Japan, writing haiku, keeping a travel diary, and visiting shrines and temples across the country. He was a lay Buddhist priest of the Jōdo Shinshū sect. He is known as simply Issa which was his pen name meaning Cup-of-tea.
Where there are humans
you will find flies
and Buddhas
Along with Bashō, Buson and Shiki, his poetry helped popularize the haiku form in Japan and later to the world.
O snail
Climb Mount Fuji,
But slowly, slowly!
He was no slacker. By the end of his life, he had written more than 20,000 haiku.
In this world we walk
on the roof of hell
gazing at flowers
Issa liked writing about the commonplace. He wrote 54 haiku on the snail, 15 on the toad, nearly 200 on frogs and about 230 on the firefly.
Everything I touch
with tenderness, alas,
pricks like a bramble.
I like Bashō’s haiku too, but he only wrote about 2000 in all
Kobayashi Issa died on January 5, 1828, in his native village.
This dewdrop world –
is a dewdrop world,
and yet, and yet…
MORE
The Kobayashi Issa Museum：Issakan in Nagano, Japan
Issa’s Haiku
Weekends in Paradelle 