Kobayashi Issa

Issa's portrait drawn by Muramatsu Shunpo 1772-1858 (Issa Memorial Hall, Shinano, Nagano, Japan)

Kobayashi Issa (小林一茶) (June 15, 1763 - January 5, 1828), was a Japanese poet and lay Buddhist priest of the Jodo Shinshu sect known for his haiku poems and journals. He is better known as simply Issa (一茶), a pen name meaning Cup-of-tea (lit. "one [cup of] tea"). He is regarded as one of the four haiku masters in Japan, along with Bashō, Buson and Shiki. Reflecting the popularity and interest in Issa as man and poet, Japanese books on Issa outnumber those on Buson, and almost equal those on Bashō.

Life

Issa was born and registered as Kobayashi Nobuyuki (小林 信之), with a childhood name of Kobayashi Yatarô (小林弥太郎), the first son of a farmer family of Kashiwabara, now part of Shinano-machi, Shinano Province (present-day Nagano Prefecture). Issa endured the loss of his mother, who died when he was three. Her passing was the first of numerous difficulties young Issa suffered. He was cared for by his grandmother, who doted on him, but his life changed again when his father remarried five years later. Issa's half-brother was born two years later, and when his grandmother died when he was 14, Issa felt estranged in his own house, a lonely, moody child who preferred to wander the fields. His attitude did not please his stepmother, who, according to Lewis Mackenzie, was a "tough-fibred 'managing' woman of hard-working peasant stock." He was sent to Edo (present-day Tokyo) to eke out a living by his father one year later. Nothing of the next ten years of his life is known for certain. His name was associated with Kobayashi Chikua (小林竹阿) of the Nirokuan (二六庵) haiku school, but their relationship is not clear. During the following years, he wandered through Japan and fought over his inheritance with his stepmother (his father died in 1801). After years of legal wrangles, Issa managed to secure rights to half of the property his father left. He returned to his native village at the age of 49 and soon took a wife, Kiku. After a brief period of bliss, tragedy returned. The couple's first-born child died shortly after his birth. A daughter died less than two-and-a-half years later, inspiring Issa to write this haiku (translated by Lewis Mackenzie):

露の世は露の世ながらさりながら

Tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sari nagara

The world of dew --

A world of dew it is indeed,

And yet, and yet . . .

A third child died in 1820, and then Kiku fell ill and died in 1823. Issa married twice more late in his life, and through it all he produced a huge body of work.

Issa lived in this storehouse on his last days. (Shinano, Nagano, Japan)

As a big fire swept the post station of Kashiwabara on July 24, 1827, according to the Western Calendar, Issa lost his house and had to live in his storehouse, which is still kept in the town. He died on January 5, 1828, in his native village. According to the old Japanese calendar, he died on the 19th day of Eleventh Month, Tenth Year of the Bunsei era. Since the Tenth Year of Bunsei roughly corresponds with 1827, many sources list this as his year of death.

Writings

Issa wrote over 20,000 haiku, which have won him readers up to the present day. Though his works were popular, he suffered great monetary instability. Despite a multitude of personal trials, his poetry reflects a childlike simplicity, making liberal use of local dialects and conversational phrases. His works also include haibun (passages of prose with integrated haiku) such as Oraga Haru (おらが春 "My Spring") and Shichiban Nikki (七番日記 "Number Seven Journal"), and he collaborated on more than 250 renku (collaborative linked verse).

One of Issa's haiku, as translated by R.H. Blyth, appears in J. D. Salinger's 1961 novel, Franny and Zooey:

O snail

Climb Mount Fuji,

But slowly, slowly!

Another, translated by D.T. Suzuki, was written during a period of Issa's life when he was penniless and deep in debt. It reads:

Trusting the Buddha (Amida), good and bad,

I bid farewell

To the departing year.

Another, translated by Peter Beilenson with Harry Behn, reads:

Everything I touch

with tenderness, alas,

pricks like a bramble.

References

• Bostok, Janice M. (2004). "Nobuyuki Kobayashi — Issa, 1763–1827" (online reprint at the Australian Haiku Society). Yellow Moon (16). Pearl Beach, N.S.W.: Yellow Moon Literary Group: p. 33–34. ISSN 1328-9047. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
• Hamill, Sam, trans. (1997). The Spring of My Life and Selected Haiku: Kobayashi Issa. Shambhala Publications. ISBN 1-57062-144-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) (pbk, 180 pp., 160 haiku plus The Spring of My Life, an autobiographical haibun)
• Lanoue, David G. (2004). Pure Land Haiku: The Art of Priest Issa. Buddhist Books International. ISBN 0-914910-53-1.
• Mackenzie, Lewis, trans. (1984) [1957]. The Autumn Wind: A Selection from the Poems of Issa. Kodansha International. ISBN 0-87011-657-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) (137 pp., 250 haiku)
• Suzuki, Daisetz T. (2002). Buddha of Infinite Light: The Teachings of Shin Buddhism, the Japanese Way of Wisdom and Compassion. Shambhala; New Ed edition. ISBN 1570624569.
• Ueda, Makoto (2004). Dew on the Grass: The Life and Poetry of Kobayashi Issa. Brill. ISBN 9004137238.

Further reading

• Bickerton, Max (1932). "Issa's Life and Poetry" (online at Google Books). Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan. ser. II, vol. 9. Tokyo: Asiatic Society of Japan: p. 110–154. ISSN 0913-4271. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help) (A biography and selection of translated haiku; TOC is on p. 111.)
• Lanoue, David G. (2005). "Master Bashô, Master Buson... and Then There's Issa" (online). Simply Haiku: A Quarterly Journal of Japanese Short Form Poetry. 3 (3, Autumn 2005). Web: www.simplyhaiku.com: section "Features: Interviews & Essays". ISSN 1545-4355. (An essay about the haiku persona of Issa, by the translator of the Issa Archive.)
• Hislop, Scot (2003). "The Evening Banter of Two Tanu-ki: Reading the Tobi Hiyoro Sequence" (online). Early Modern Japan: an Interdisciplinary Journal. 11 (2 (Fall 2003)). Columbus, OH: Early Modern Japan Network (EMJNet): p. 22–31. ISSN 1940-7947. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help) (A discussion of Issa's approach to haikai no renga including a translation of a hankasen by Issa and Kawahara Ippyō)

External links

• Haiku of Kobayashi Issa A searchable online archive of 9000 haiku by David G. Lanoue.
• Issa's 1818 self-portrait (fronstispce of the Bickerton 1932 source)
• Template:Ja 一茶発句全集 (The complete haiku of Issa)
• Issa Memorial Museum - Official English Site