世の中は 地獄の上の 花見哉 yo no naka wa jigoku no ue no hanami kana issa 一茶 In this world of ours, We walk above hell, Gazing at flowers

In this world of ours,
We walk above hell,
Gazing at flowers ^[1]

世の中は地獄の上の花見哉 (yo no naka wa jigoku no ue no hanami kana): this world is flower-viewing on the roof of hell. 世の中は sets up the human world as the subject of a definition; 地獄の上の is on top of hell, its roof or its lid; 花見 is the spring outing under the cherry trees, with food and drink; 哉 closes the definition as an exclamation. The Japanese has no we and no walk: it is a copula, and the poem is a sentence that defines us. Issa made it the hell verse of a six-realm set, and so gave hell a flower-viewing in this world. Japanese readers from 1908 to 1936 heard the Pure Land preacher in it, the world impermanent and damned and partying anyway; the critic Takayasu Gekkō in 1916 heard what keeps it from being only a sermon: in his tears there is laughter, in his laughter tears.

References:

^[1] After R. H. Blyth, A History of Haiku, vol. 1 (Hokuseido Press, 1963), p. 367.

Issa wrote the verse early in 1812 as the hell entry of a set on the six realms of rebirth, composed turn by turn with the priest-poet 鶴老, and entered it in his books 株番 and 七番日記, the diary placing it in the second month of that year (13 March to 11 April 1812).

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