Block · kaisho 楷書 · VB6C
Block or kaisho (楷書) styles are the most common and recognizable styles. Block styles are easily read and are noted for their angular form and their vertical and horizontal lines.
A flash of lightning! The sound of dew Dripping down the bamboos[1] inazuma ni koboruru oto ya take no tsuyu 稲妻に こぼるる音や 竹の露 buson 蕪村
At a flash of lightning, the sound of dew spilling from the bamboo.
by Master Eri Takase
Born and raised in Osaka, Japan, Eri Takase received the rank of Shihan, master, from two calligraphy societies, the Bokuteki-kai and Bunka-shodō, and won best-of-category awards in all-Japan national competitions. She has created calligraphy for people around the world for more than thirty years, and with your order she will be creating calligraphy for you.
In a ritual as old as calligraphy itself, Master Takase prepares the ink, meditatively rubbing the ink stick against the stone until it reaches the perfect consistency for the paper. Then, properly loading the brush with ink, she brushes your scroll. And only when the scroll is just right and meets her approval, she signs it and affixes her seal, completing your original scroll.
12 1/4" × 43" (31 × 109 cm) Japanese Scrolls
The scrolls have woven damask borders and special layered Japanese paper (washi), designed to last generations by a scroll maker in Gifu, Japan, with whom we have worked for over two decades.
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Explanation
In our reading, Yosa Buson's verse is about the edge of hearing: lightning, the loudest thing in the sky, makes no sound here, and what is heard is dew, the quietest thing in the bamboo grove, because the flash has made the listener still. Some Japanese readers have called it too clever. Others hear the whole poem in that joining: two things came together, and the mind linked them.
In the Japanese, as Shiki read it and as we do, the words come in the order they were felt; Hekigotō held that logic wanted them the other way round. The flash comes, then a sound of spilling, and at last what spilled: the dew on the bamboo. 稲妻, lightning, is the autumn season word.
References:
[1] After R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 3, Summer–Autumn (Hokuseido Press, 1952), p. 69.
The verse is Buson's, first printed in 1784 in the 蕪村句集, the selection of his verse that his disciple Kitō 几董 published the winter after the poet's death; no witness dates its composition.
Learn More About This Haiku
We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 稲妻にこぼるる音や竹の露.
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