by jkvincent | Dec 12, 2018 | haiku |
the white cat has disappeared snowy town Shironeko no / yukue wakarazu / yuki no machi 白猫の行衛わからず雪の町 It seems that Shiki was not satisfied with his first haiku about the cat on the roof that was heard but not seen. We know this because four years later, in 1889, he...
by jkvincent | Dec 11, 2018 | haiku |
the snow is falling
and a white cat on the roof
is heard but not seen Yuki furi ya / mune no shiro-neko / koe bakari
雪ふりや棟の白猫声ばかり[1] This is the first haiku that Masaoka Shiki wrote. He was seventeen years old and had been living in Tokyo for two...
by jkvincent | Dec 11, 2018 | haiku |
In January of 2017 I came back from a trip to Matsuyama, Japan with a suitcase full of more than three decades’ worth of back issues of the journal of the Matsuyama Shiki Society, donated by the Society to Boston University. The journal is a treasure trove of research...
by jkvincent | Oct 29, 2018 | haiku |
As I work on a biography of Masaoka Shiki these days, I’m feeling very grateful to my friend Nanae Tamura for recommending that I buy this book at the Shiki Memorial Museum in Matsuyama last year. It’s an index of all of the haiku that appear in the standard...
