苦の娑婆や 桜が咲けば 咲いたとて ku no shaba ya sakura ga sakeba saita tote issa 一茶 A world of grief and pain: Flowers bloom; Even then ...

A world of grief and pain:
Flowers bloom;
Even then ... ^[1]

苦の娑婆や桜が咲けば咲いたとて (ku no shaba ya sakura ga sakeba saita tote): this world of suffering; and if the cherry blooms, so it has bloomed.

苦の娑婆や桜が咲けば咲いたとて holds pain and beauty in a single breath. 娑婆 is the Buddhist word for this world, from the Sanskrit sahā, the land to be endured, and 苦の娑婆 was Issa's stock phrase for it. とて at the end is a shrug, even granting that. Both readings, the bitter and the accepting, sit inside that one particle, and the verse does not say which.

References:

^[1] Translation by R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 1 (Hokuseido Press, 1949), p. 177.

The verse is first written in Issa's verse journal for 1819, the 八番日記, among the verses of the tenth month and in a plainer form, and the cherry form on this scroll is the one he brushed over a seated figure he liked to draw as himself, on silk, signed 人も一茶.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 苦の娑婆や桜が咲けば咲いたとて.

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The scrolls are 12 1/4" W × 43" H (31 × 109 cm) with real silk borders and Japanese paper that are layered so the scroll hangs straight and will not warp over time. The scrolls themselves are made by Sankō (株式会社三幸) in Gifu prefecture, which has been making high quality scrolls since 1947, and we have worked with Sankō for over two decades.

Eri Takase was born and raised in Osaka, Japan, and holds the rank of Shihan, the highest rank in Japanese calligraphy, from the Bokuteki-kai and the Bunka-shodo. About Master Takase