The Penguin Book of Haiku by Adam L. Kern

Author:Adam L. Kern
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141395258
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-05-01T16:00:00+00:00

‘thanks for carrying on / while I was away from my wife!’ / said unknowingly

to wa shirazu / sate rusuchū wa / osewasama

Author unnamed. This verse appears in a comic skit from the time (c.1774). The phrase to wa shirazu, literally ‘not knowing about it’, was a euphemism for a secret affair. Shirazu, ‘not knowing’, implies that someone other than the husband ‘knows’ in both senses of the word.

‘thanks for keeping / my wife unmolested!’ / said unknowingly

to wa shirazu / kanai anzen / nado to share

Yamaki. In Yanagidaru 47 (1809).

challenge:

proposed half-jokingly / for having a little fun

muri iikakete / nagusami ni sen

response:

fastest of friends – / so let me take advantage of / your nubile wife!

sochi to ware / nengoro gai ni / nyōbo kase

Chikusui. In Fukaku (ed.), Niiki (1693). The absurd logic here depends on the almost seamless slippage from one set of punning meanings to another: sochi, from ‘you’ to ‘yours’; and nengoro, from ‘many years’, through ‘hospitable’ and ‘intimate’, to ‘marriageable age’.

her so-called ‘cousin’ / always seems to be visiting / when hubby’s away

itoko nimo / shiro yō kuru to / tabi no rusu

Author unnamed. In Yanagidaru 12 (1777). Although shiro here with nimo means ‘even if’, shiro also carries the associations of ‘innocent person’ and, even more tellingly, ‘substitute’.

challenge:

from gaps in the duckboards / a draught wafting upwards …

sunoko no ai o / fukiaguru kaze

response:

for goosebumps, / a twin pillow for lovebirds?! / her sultry coo!

torihada wa / hiyoku no makura / kotoba nari

Hakukei. In Fukaku (ed.), Chiyomigusa (1692). The response is a tour de force of wordplay. Both torihada (goosebumps) and hiyoku no makura (an extra-long ‘pillow for lovebirds’) are associated with kaze (‘breeze’ – or, in the case of an upwards one, ‘draught’) and sunoko (the wood-slatted ‘duckboard’ base in a closet for storing a futon and its bedding). Although the ai of the challenge means ‘gap’, the response plays not only on this word’s alternative meanings of ‘love’ and ‘rendezvous’, but also on its orthographic rendering as ahi (though still pronounced ai), the hi of which can mean ‘fire’, by virtue of a homonym of hiyoku (lovebird) as hi (sun) and yoku (thoroughly). Moreover, makura (pillow) pivots between the phrases hiyoku no makura (pillow for lovebirds) and makura kotoba (a set epithet in poetry, though literally ‘pillow words’).

challenge:

how admirable! / how admirable!

yukashikarikeri / yukashikarikeri

response:

bachelors / withdraw to their rooms / and groan

hitorimono / uchi e kaeru to / unari dashi

Author unnamed. In Yanagidaru 1 (1765).

belly-cutting scene / suspended to watch a brawl / in the audience!

hara o kiri / kakete kenka o / kenbutsu shi

Kyūsei. In Yanagidaru 52 (1811). One or more kabuki actors on stage momentarily stop a samurai disembowelment scene to watch a real-life drama among the theatregoers. Similarly that same year, the comic author Shikitei Sanba (1776–1822) published his popular Kyakusha hyōbanki (Critique of Theatregoers, 1811), which cleverly turned the tables on the genre of actor reviewbooks (yakusha hyōbanki) by treating the audience members as the real celebrities. (For

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