梨さくや戦のあとの崩れ家 nashi saku ya ikusa no ato no kuzure ie Shiki - A pear tree is blooming, By a collapsed house, on an old battlefield

Masaoka Shiki's verse sets two things side by side and says nothing about either. The pear trees bloom because it is spring. The house has fallen in because a battle passed there. Readers have praised its calm: a scene after a war, with no grief pressed on it. The battle was not long ago. It had been fought five months before.

In the Japanese, 梨, the pear, is the season word, for its white spring blossom, and さくや, blooms, is the cut. あと is after, and it can also mean the traces of a thing, the ground where it stood. The second の ties the house to the battle. Some of the hands write いくさ, battle, in kana, and one writes くずれ in kana too. Some write 崩家 without the れ, an artistic choice that reads the same.

The English follows R. H. Blyth's, from his Haiku of 1949.

The verse is Shiki's own, written in his own hand at 金州 in the spring of 1895, where he had gone as a war correspondent as the Sino-Japanese War was ending, and first printed in 1902 in the selection of his verses he made himself.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 梨さくや戦のあとの崩れ家.

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