Japanese Women Poets: An Anthology: An Anthology by Hiroaki Sato

Author:Hiroaki Sato [Sato, Hiroaki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, Public Policy, Economic Policy
ISBN: 9781317466970
Google: 5UffBQAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0765617838
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-12-18T06:00:00+00:00

Interludes

A Brief Survey of Senryū by Women

The 5-7-5-syllable senryū, like the hokku, derives from the longer verse form of renga. But unlike the hokku, which normally deals with natural or seasonal phenomena, the senryū is expected to deal with matters of human and social nature, often in a playful, satirical, or knowing manner. The hokku—called haiku today—carries a seasonal reference; the senryū doesn’t have to.

The distinction between the two genres of verse has been tenuous at best from early on, however, and in recent years the blurring of the differences has become such that Ōnishi Yasuyo has said, “If someone asks me how senryū differ from haiku, I tell the inquirer that the only distinction that can be made is by author’s name”—that is, if the author is known to write haiku, the pieces he or she writes are haiku; if the author is known to write senryū, the pieces she or he writes are senryū. Ōnishi herself is sometimes listed as a senryū poet, sometimes as a haiku poet.

Modern senryū, which dates from about the time of the haiku reform efforts of Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902), has taken such divergent perspectives as idealism (“the theory,” as an English dictionary puts it, “that the objects of external perception, in itself or as perceived, consist of ideas”), proletarianism, social realism, and individualism (“the tendency,” as a haiku dictionary puts it, “to sink deeply into one’s own individuality”).

One senryū observer has noted that if the period of 250 years since the senryū was established as a genre were to be divided into five ages, this would be the fifth, and women writers have dominated it. In the early part of the twentieth century, women senryū writers were, the pioneering Inoue Nobuko said, “fewer than the stars at daybreak. “

What follows is a brief survey of senryū by women. Most of the selection is made from Taira Sōsei’s anthology with commentary, Ryōran Josei Senryū (Midori Shobō, 1997).

Sakai Sobaijo (Died 1952)

A mother of seven children, Sakai Sobaijo was one of the first women to take up senryū in the Meiji era. Her husband was Sakai Kuraki (1869–1945), a leader in the Meiji senryū revival among whose senryū is “Kuraki has become a fool called a teacher,” which is a twist on an anonymous senryū, “He’s not such a fool as to be called a teacher.”

At every command he gives the second lieutenant jumps up

In a sudden shower a woman covers her obi first

Unable to compose a single piece on plum flowers she comes home

She says “sheeee!” to a burglar thinking he’s a rat

Receiving the evening sun a fishing boat is left in the dark

Itō Masajo (Born 1882)

“A woman experiences frustrations,” Itō Masajo said, “as an old woman, a little girl, a bride, a second wife, and a widow. She must capture such weaknesses” in her senryū. She was prolific and once turned China’s classical novel The Water Margin into a sequence of 285 senryū. But she had disappeared from the senryū world by 1920.

Cupid often

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