Kobayashi Issa 小林 一茶 | |
|---|---|
 Issa's portrait drawn by Muramatsu Shunpo 1772-1858 (Issa Memorial Hall,Shinano, Nagano, Japan) | |
| Born | Kobayashi Nobuyuki (小林 信之) (1763-06-15)June 15, 1763 NearShinano-machi,Shinano Province, Japan |
| Died | January 5, 1828(1828-01-05) (aged 64) Shinano-machi, Shinano Province, Japan |
| Pen name | Issa (一茶) |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Nationality | Japanese |
Kobayashi Issa (小林 一茶; June 15, 1763 – January 5, 1828)[1] was a Japanese poet. He is known for hishaiku poems and journals. He is better known as simplyIssa (一茶), a pen name meaning Cup-of-tea[2] (lit. "one [cup of] tea"). He is regarded as one of the four haiku masters in Japan, along withBashō,Buson andShiki — "the Great Four."[3]
Reflecting the popularity and interest in Issa as man and poet, Japanese books on Issa outnumber those on Buson and almost equal in number those on Bashō.[4]
Issa was born and registered as Kobayashi Nobuyuki[2] (小林 信之), with a childhood name of Kobayashi Yatarō (小林 弥太郎), the first son of a farmer family of Kashiwabara, now part ofShinano-machi,Shinano Province (present-dayNagano Prefecture). Issa endured the loss of his mother, who died when he was three.[5] Her death 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. 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."[6]
He was sent toEdo (present-dayTokyo) by his father one year later to make out a living. 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). He wrote a diary, now calledLast Days of Issa's Father.
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[7] and soon took a wife, Kiku (菊). After a brief period of bliss, tragedy returned. The couple's first-born child died shortly after his birth. A daughter, Satoyo (里世), died less than two-and-a-half years later, inspiring Issa to write this haiku (translated by Lewis Mackenzie):
Issa married twice more late in his life, and through it all he produced a huge body of work.
A third child died in 1820. Then Kiku fell ill and died in 1823. "Ikinokori ikinokoritaru samusa kana" (生き残り生き残りたる寒さかな) [Outliving them,/Outliving them all,/Ah, the cold!] was written when Issa's wife died, when he was 61.[8]
He died on January 5, 1828, in his native village. According to theold Japanese calendar, he died on the 19th day of Eleventh Month, Tenth Year of theBunsei era. Since the Tenth Year of Bunsei roughly corresponds with 1827, many sources list this as his year of death.
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. His poetry makes liberal use of local dialects and conversational phrases, and 'including many verses on plants and the lower creatures. Issa wrote 54 haiku on the snail, 15 on the toad, nearly 200 on frogs, about 230 on the firefly, more than 150 on the mosquito, 90 on flies, over 100 on fleas and nearly 90 on the cicada, making a total of about one thousand verses on such creatures'.[9] By contrast, Bashō's verses are comparatively few in number, about 2,000 in all.[10] Issa's haiku were sometimes tender, but stand out most for their irreverence and wry humor, as illustrated in these verses translated byRobert Hass:[11]
Issa, 'with his intense personality and vital language [and] shockingly impassioned verse...is usually considered a most conspicuous heretic to the orthodox Basho tradition'.[12] Nevertheless, 'in that poetry and life were one in him...[&] poetry was a diary of his heart', it is at least arguable that 'Issa could more truly be said to be Basho's heir than most of the haikai poets of the nineteenth century'.[13]
Issa's works includehaibun (passages of prose with integrated haiku) such asOraga Haru [jp] (おらが春 "My Spring") andShichiban Nikki (七番日記 "Number Seven Journal"), and he collaborated on more than 250renku (collaborative linked verse).[14]
Issa was also known for his drawings, generally accompanying haiku: "the Buddhism of the haiku contrasts with the Zen ofthe sketch".[15] His approach has been described as "similar to that ofSengai....Issa's sketches are valued for the extremity of their abbreviation, in keeping with the idea of haiku as a simplification of certain types of experience."[16]
One of Issa's haiku, as translated byR.H. Blyth, appears inJ. D. Salinger's 1961 novel,Franny and Zooey:
(Katatsumuri sorosoro nobore Fuji no yama 蝸牛そろそろ登れ富士の山)The same poem, in Russian translation, served as an epigraph for a novelSnail on the Slope byArkady and Boris Strugatsky (published 1966–68), also providing the novel's title.[citation needed]
Another, translated byD.T. Suzuki, was written during a period of Issa's life when he was penniless and deep in debt.[citation needed] It reads:
Another, made up by Peter Beilenson withHarry Behn neither of whom know any Japanese,[citation needed] reads:
Issa's most popular and commonly known tome,[citation needed] titledThe Spring of My Life, is autobiographical, and its structure combines prose and haiku.
After a big fire swept through thepost station of Kashiwabara on July 24, 1827, Issa lost his house and was forced to live in hiskura (storehouse). "The fleas have fled from the burning house and have taken refuge with me here", says Issa. Of this same fire, he wrote:
This building, a windowless clay-walled structure, has survived, and was designated aNational Historic Site of Japan in 1933.[18][19]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) (pbk, 180 pp., 160 haiku plusThe Spring of My Life, an autobiographicalhaibun){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) (137 pp., 250 haiku){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) (pbk, 180 pp., 160 haiku plusThe Spring of My Life, an autobiographicalhaibun){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) (pbk, 96 pp., 45 haiku plus "Cup of Tea, Plate of Fish: An Interview withNanao Sakaki"){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)