Virals is a section in which one person choses a haiku by another person and comments on that haiku. Then the author of that haiku is invited to select a haiku by someone else and comment on that poem, and so on. For an introduction to this section, see Virals.
Viral 5.6
Beauty in Haiku
BY Michael Dylan Welch
鮟鱇の骨まで凍ててぶちきらる
ankō-no hone-made itete buchikiraru
the anglerfish frozen
right down to its very bones
is hacked to pieces
—Katō Shūson (1905–1993)
(translated by Dhugal J. Lindsay)
This poem may startle readers because of its bluntness and violence. Many readers and writers of haiku prefer that haiku focus on the beautiful, so much so that they may believe that haiku should be limited to the beautiful. In Japan, however, the subjects of many haiku are often merely mundane, and not specifically beautiful. Moreover, subjects also appear that are decidedly unbeautiful, as in the preceding poem. Robert Bly has asserted that American haiku could represent darker content, in the way that Shiki’s haiku, for example, reflected the tensions of dying from tuberculosis, or the way Bashō’s haiku are often directly or contextually tinged with the dangers of travel. Our haiku, too, has plenty of room for duende, as well as dark subjects. Haiku need not dwell entirely on the dark or seemly, but just as too much salt spoils a meal, so does too much sugar. As James W. Hackett has said in his guidelines for writing haiku, “Lifefulness, not beauty, is the real quality of haiku.”
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Translation from Rose Mallow #58 (2003), page 46,
by permission from Dhugal J. Lindsay.
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Katō Shūson (1905–1993) cannot select the next poem, and so Viral 5 comes to a close.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
• Viral 5.1 (Metz ➾ Lyles)
• Viral 5.2 (Lyles ➾ Chang)
• Viral 5.3 (Chang ➾ Stevenson)
• Viral 5.4 (Stevenson ➾ Yarrow)
• Viral 5.5 (Yarrow ➾ Welch)
{ 20 comments }
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Merrill, if you find Gabi’s information about the fish ritual to be useful or interesting to you, that’s great, but I think it’s off the topic of the poem, and the point I was making. Also, my point is not about beauty at all. It’s about how some haiku poets may think that haiku should be limited to the beautiful. I used Kato Shuson’s poem as an example of something that’s deliberately not beautiful (and is even violent) to show the extremes that haiku can take — in contrast to the narrower view some English-language haiku writers may have of the genre.
Also, I’ve never said anything about the fish being prepared for dinner. What I’ve said is that the fish is frozen, as the poem says, so it cannot be a fresh fish that I presume is used in the ritual that Gabi describes. Thus the ritual seems to NOT be relevant to this poem and my discussion of it.
A more useful topic of discussion would seem to be what subjects are appropriate for haiku, and if we have biases that preclude a certain range of topics. I think perhaps we do. We may CHOOSE to write about beautiful things only, but making that conscious choice if better than unthinkingly defaulting just to certain subjects or tones. Again, as Hackett wrote, “Lifefulness, not beauty, is the real quality of haiku.” This understanding is a crucial one for haiku, and facilitates the dark as well as the light.
Michael
I think this poem is a perfect example of how haiku is about the individual and his place in the universe…his life…his destiny. It has nothing to do with beautiful…it is about the facts of life and the quality of life, and the real passing of life as the haiku poet is experiencing it.
I’m glad to have all of Gabi’s information about the ritual…and I do believe it helps us to understand what the poet is likening his life to… But I truly can not imagine that this would just be about a fish being prepared for dinner. The intensity of the poem itself indicates that it is about larger things. Perhaps the ritual itself was about larger things too.
Gabi, my question of you was about your comments regarding the fish being cut at the beach. I do not believe that applies to the poem. That’s because it is frozen. I don’t see how the poem can be interpreted as being at the beach at all.
Also, my commentary was not about the beautiful in haiku, but about the value of things that are NOT “beautiful.”
Michael
The death poem by Shuson is also dealing with the frozen earth
Six feet of soil in
the frost of earth becomes room
enough for the dead.
quoted from his obituary here
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-shuson-kato-1483946.html
.
“Gabi, are you sure what you say applies to this particular poem?”
Michael, I am glad you asked.
There is a lot more to this haiku than I first thought.
For example
The saijiki tells us that the use of the passive verb form “buchikiraru” implies a kind of pitifull compassion and pain with the fate of the fish. The author feels like the fish itself.
BUT
“That, however, is beside the point I’m trying to make about the misperception some Westerners have about haiku being merely “beautiful. Michael”
Since here you are concerned about BEAUTIFUL,
Check my BLOG for more on this ankoo fish and even an old ritual ceremony of cutting it and also … sake with the bones immersed in it
http://washokufood.blogspot.com/2010/02/ankoo-anglerfish.html
As for the BEAUTIFUL, I think tradtional Japanese haiku tell us about
the sunshine and the rain
the roses and the thorns
the life and the death in nature
Let us see what the discussion here brings about for English Language Haiku and Modern Haiku.
Gabi
Not knowing the tradition of hacking this fish, when fresh, on the beach, I imagined a restaurant or home kitchen. Hacking is necessary because the fish is frozen and probably slips around on the cutting board. It is a battle with a dead fish, a fish, when alive, might have given the fisherman a battle as well.
I don’t see a dark side, but the karumi written about in the previous Viral.
Adelaide
Beauty has been sentimentalized in modern culture. The violence of the phrase “hacked to pieces” partakes of the hyperbole of death (how else conceive of death but as very very other?). The two part structure of haiku allows for the key element in beauty — distance — to establish itself in the consciousness of the reader, who will see the extremity of the first phrase — frozen to the bones — as in itself hyperbolic, though not in the same register (the ambiguity of the phrase, see the conversation between Gabi and the presenter, does seem inherent in the figure of speech which can’t be taken literally, exactly, can it?). The poem balances immediacy (perhaps the sublime works here to continue to shock the conventional expectations of the reader) and the distance of the ultimate subject: annihilation of a given particular being. Didn’t Emily Dickinson write about the distance on the look of death? Personification aside, this haiku shares a bit of her world, don’t you think?
Gabi, are you sure what you say applies to this particular poem? The poem says that the fish is frozen to its bones, so I don’t imagine it’s still fresh on the beach. I think that’s the point of the poem, isn’t it, that it’s been in the deep freeze? I don’t see how the fish can be interpreted as being fresh on the beach at all.
It also wouldn’t surprise me if Shuson was not writing a shasei poem from direct or immediate experience, but maybe he was. That, however, is beside the point I’m trying to make about the misperception some Westerners have about haiku being merely “beautiful.”
Michael
Ok, I did my homework on the ankoo and its kigo …
ankoo no tsurushigiri 鮟鱇の吊し切り（あんこうのつるしぎり）
cutting an anglerfish while hanging it up
The fish is hung up on a triangular stand, with a metal hook in his jaws, at the beach in winter and cut with a few skillful choppings. Then the “seven vital parts 鮟鱇の七つ道具” of the fish are chopped off until only the jaw and bones are left.
This is often now used as a tourist attraction in Ibaraki, whith a tasting of the ankonabe soup right on the beach.
The details are now here
http://washokufood.blogspot.com/2010/02/ankoo-anglerfish.html
In the haiku
We might also see the author, just recovering from an illness, at the cold beach in the cold winter wind, he himself frozen to the bone.
.
ankoo, a speciality of Ibaraki, where the fish is cut on the beach with great skill and then put into a hodgepodge, ankonabe, and the liver is a speciality too.
This haiku shows the “shasei” of cutting the fish to pieces right at the beach …
ankoo hodgepodge and soup are kigo
http://washokufood.blogspot.com/2008/01/winter-food.html
I will try and find some photos from the cutting at the beach later.
Gabi
(just finished lunch …).
as for the DARK … this is a human judgement.
But haiku as shasei just shows things as they are.
.
aaa, here is a photo from the “hacking to pieces”
http://www.mito.ne.jp/~uosyu/ankou/ankou.html
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