Semi-Cursive · gyōsho 行書 · VS6D
Semi-Cursive or gyōsho (行書) styles are a simplified and softer form of the kaisho styles. Gyōsho styles can be read by most Japanese.
In the spring rain
The pond and the river
Have become one
ike to kawa
hitotsu ni narinu
haru no ame
池と川
ひとつになりぬ
春の雨
buson
蕪村
The pond and the stream have become one; spring rain.
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
Yosa Buson's verse sets a large event under a small season word. A pond and a stream have run together and become one. In the summer rains that would be a flood. In our reading, as in Kōroku's, the spring rain makes the joining soft, a boundary that has melted away without force. Japanese readers have argued over how big the waters are: Hekigotō, in 1903, held that such a joining is a flood and belongs to the summer rains. We take the season word as settling it, since the rain is spring's.
In the Japanese, ひとつになりぬ means have become one, and ぬ marks a thing quietly finished. The verse breaks there, and 春の雨, the spring rain, stands apart as the season. It is the soft, steady rain of spring, not the summer rain that floods rivers.
The English is R. H. Blyth's, from his Haiku of 1952.
The verse is Buson's, first printed in 1900 in Mizuochi Roseki 水落露石's 蕪村遺稿, a gathering from a manuscript of the verses his 1784 selection had left out; Stephen Addiss, following the 1992 Kōdansha complete works, dates it to 1782.
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 池と川ひとつになりぬ春の雨.
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