やせ蛙 負けるな一茶 これにあり yasegaeru makeru na issa kore ni ari issa 一茶 Skinny frog, don't lose: Issa is here

やせ蛙負けるな一茶これにあり (yasegaeru makeru na issa kore ni ari): skinny frog, don't lose: Issa is here.

Issa watches frogs in a frog battle, the dictionaries' word for frogs crowding together to mate, which looks like a fight. He cheers on a thin one, tells it not to lose, and announces himself by name.

The diary dates the verse to the twentieth of the fourth month, 16 May 1816. The diary's entry for that day reads, in full, fair.

Issa wrote the verse twice in his diary. It is among the drafts he sent his patron Natsume Seibi for marking, and he copied it again in a late notebook.

The national primary-school reader of 1937 set the verse as やせ蛙まけるな一茶これにあり. The form on this scroll is that one, with 負けるな, which prints of 1897, 1902 and 1925 also use.

The diary files the verse among summer verses, by the old calendar. Today the デジタル大辞泉 quotes the verse under the frog, a seasonal word of spring.

Basil Hall Chamberlain put the verse into English in 1902: Emaciated frog! be not worsted in fight:—Issa is here. Michel Revon's French note of 1910 has Issa rescue a frog attacked by another animal. No Japanese witness read for this history tells that story.

Kobayashi Issa, in his diary, the 七番日記, among the verses of the fourth month of 文化13 (1816), under the headnote 蛙たゝかひ見ニまかる四月廿日也けり, in the spelling 瘦蛙まけるな一茶是ニ有; the place 竹の塚 in Musashi stands in the headnote of a copy made by his pupil 湯本希杖 in 1827, and in no witness in Issa's hand read for this history.

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