Ｊａｍｅｓ　Ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ　Ｈｏｕｓｅ

I was in my favorite coffee shop when an ex-student of mine came in and sat down next to me and we started talking. He suddenly said that he had read my wife's profile in some book and that it said that I liked Yosa Buson. He looked straight at me, cocked one eye and asked, "Is that true??"

I've never understood why people find it hard to believe that I am interested in haiku. I don't study it so much now, but there was a time when I read and wrote haiku every day. So yes, I do like Yosano Buson, he is my favorite haiku poet and I find that he and the English poet John Keats are very similar in their ability to evoke strong imagery.





I recently was introduced to a haiku by Buson which I found interesting:

辻堂に死せる人あり麦の秋

There is a
dead person in
the crossroad's temple;
wheat the
color of autumn.


The word autumn (秋）is used in the seasonal word (季語) but the "kigo" of this haiku is summer　(夏）. The Kadokawa "Haiku Saijiki, summer" (俳句歳時記夏の部　角川書店編) says that 麦の秋 (wheat's autumn) is:

麦が熟する初夏のころをいい、吾ー六月にあたる。
(The time in early summer when the wheat crops are ripe in May or June.)

It also explains:

麦刈りの時期を控えて短く、農家の人たちは忙しく立ち動かなければならい
(The cutting of the wheat season is kept short because of the rainy season so farmers are very busy and must work very hard.)


Knowing that the wheat harvest is a hard and short time for the farmers, we can understand the meaning of this haiku. Farmers are too busy during this season, so if someone in a farming family dies, they don't have the time to give them a proper funeral. So, the dead body stays in the temple alone because everyone is out in the fields cutting the wheat.

Everyone knows that going to a funeral in Japan is a day long event. You start in the dead person's house in the morning, you go the crematorium, you go back to funeral hall, you go to the temple and then there usually is family party after. It's a long hard day.

Plus, given that funerals in Japan are still community events where neighboring houses send people to help out the bereaving family, a death during harvest would effect every household.

Buson lived in the 18th century, so imagine what a funeral was like in those days. It's easy to see why a wheat farming family during the harvest season wouldn't have the time to do a funeral.

I won't say that this is a great haiku by Buson, but I do think that it does give the sense of the quietness around a farming community when all people are busy working in the fields and it does evoke the bathos of a family who is too busy to honor its just dead. I do know that the next time I have to go to a funeral I will think about this haiku.