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池と川ひとつになりぬ春の雨 ike to kawa hitotsu ni narinu haru no ame Buson - In the spring rain, The pond and the river, Have become one

池と川ひとつになりぬ春の雨 (ike to kawa hitotsu ni narinu haru no ame), the pond and the stream have become one, spring rain, is Buson's. It is in print by 1900, among the verses his own selection of 1784 left out. This study follows a variant with a second と, a debate of 1903 in Shiki's circle, and three English renderings.

Japanese Scroll of Buson - In the spring rain, The pond and the river, Have become one (ike to kawa hitotsu ni narinu haru no ame) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Buson - In the spring rain, The pond and the river, Have become one池と川ひとつになりぬ春の雨ike to kawa hitotsu ni narinu haru no ame

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

池と川ひとつになりぬ春の雨, the pond and the stream have become one; spring rain, is Buson's, first printed in 1900 in Mizuochi Roseki 水落露石's 蕪村遺稿, a gathering of the verses the 蕪村句集 of 1784 left out, taken from a manuscript titled 遺稿. A second reading, 池と川と, with a second と, runs from Masaoka Shiki 正岡子規's own manuscript anthology into two dictionaries. A recorded discussion of 1903 has three of Shiki's circle arguing whether the joining of two waters can be a spring-rain scene at all, and a fourth reader in 1920 answers in Buson's own dream-voice. Blyth rendered it in 1952, Sawa and Shiffert in 1978 and Addiss in 2012; the Japanese readers heard the size of a garden, and Blyth heard a metaphysics of water.

Overview

The text. The scroll carries 池と川ひとつになりぬ春の雨, and so does the verse's first print: 水落露石's 蕪村遺稿 of 1900, a woodblock book in a cursive hand, where it stands second on the fourth leaf of the spring section, after 春雨にぬれつゝ屋根の手毬かな [1]. Every collected edition of Buson that followed prints the same words: the 1902 全集 [2], the 1904 評釈 [3], the 1906 標註 [4], the lecture record of 1903 [5], the 1921 annotated edition [6], Ebara's 1925 edition, which tags it 遺稿 [7], Handa's two editions by season word [8][9], the 1925 三千句 [10] and the 1928 index [11]. The other reading carries a second と after 川, 池と川と一つになりぬ春の雨. Shiki writes it so, with 一つ in kanji, in his manuscript anthology 俳家全集, among the spring-rain verses he marked as not in the 句集 [12], and the 1925 printing of that anthology in his collected works keeps it [13]. A haikai dictionary of 1909 prints it with the と and ひとつ in kana [14], and a writer's thesaurus of 1913 prints Shiki's form exactly [15]. With the と the first phrase runs to six syllables, い・け・と・か・わ・と, one over the count; without it the meter is five, seven, five: い・け・と・か・わ, ひ・と・つ・に・な・り・ぬ, は・る・の・あ・め. Naitō Meisetsu 内藤鳴雪, in a handbook of 1909, writes the 遺稿's words with 一つ for ひとつ [16]. Nothing in the sense turns on either difference.

The sense. One line and three readings, and they disagree about size rather than meaning. Everyone agrees the waters have joined; the question is whether the joining is small enough to be spring. Hekigotō 碧梧桐 in 1903 says no: a pond and a river becoming one is a flood, and floods are the summer rains' [5]. Kyoshi 虚子 the same afternoon says yes: make the waters small, a field-brook and a garden pond, and the season word governs [5]. Kōroku 紅緑 in 1904 says yes with the whole weight of the season word behind him: the spring rain is small, gentle, casual, feminine, and the verse's ひとつになりぬ has that casualness and none of the summer rain's decision [3]. 架空 in 1920 finds a way past the quarrel: the waters have not flooded together, they have come back level after the winter's low, and the oneness is of height rather than of body [17]. Blyth in 1952 reads none of this and hears a metaphysics, the omnipresence and omnipotence of water … what seemed three different things, lake, stream, and rain, are intrinsically one [18]. The Japanese readers were arguing about a garden; the English one about the world. The tradition's own answer, if the weight of the record is the answer, is 紅緑's: the season word decides, and the verse is soft.

The words. 池と川 is a pond and a stream, and the whole of the 1903 quarrel is about how big they are: Hekigotō hears a pond and a river, Kyoshi a field-brook hidden in the grass and a little pond beside it [5]. ひとつになりぬ is have become one; ぬ is the perfective, the thing has happened and is finished, quietly. Meisetsu in 1909 quotes the verse in his chapter on cutting words, marking the ぬ, as one of the verses whose middle phrase closes on it: the verse breaks there, and 春の雨 stands apart as the season [16]. 春の雨 is the spring rain, the season word: the soft, continuous, warm rain of spring, not the 五月雨 of early summer that floods rivers. Satō Kōroku in 1904 puts the whole distinction in a sentence, 五月雨は大きく烈しい感じで春雨は小さく緩やかな感じである, the summer rain is a large, violent feeling and the spring rain a small, gentle one [3]. The verse's device is that a large-sounding event, two waters become one, is placed under a small-sounding season word, and the reader has to decide which one governs. As words the line says: The pond and the stream have become one; spring rain.

The verse in English. Three renderings. Blyth's of 1952, reprinted in 1994, puts the rain first and keeps the joining as finished [18]. Yuki Sawa and Edith Shiffert, in a book of 1978 reissued in 2007, turn the verse into one sentence with the rain last [19]. Stephen Addiss in 2012 keeps the Japanese order and its break, pond and river / have become one— / spring rain, and alone of the three gives the verse a year, 1782 [20].

The historical record

1900. Mizuochi Roseki 水落露石, 蕪村遺稿, Osaka, 鹿田静七, printed 12 October and issued 16 October 1900. A woodblock book in a cursive hand, the spring section opening after a preface. The verse is the second on the fourth leaf of the spring section, recto, between 春雨にぬれつゝ屋根の手毬かな and a verse on the crane's seventh day, written 池と川ひとつになりぬ春の雨 with no headnote. The earliest known print [1].

About 1900. Masaoka Shiki, 俳家全集, the poet's manuscript anthology of earlier haikai poets' verse, dated 1900 in the National Diet Library's record. In Buson's spring-rain verses, 池と川と一つになりぬ春の雨, marked with a circled イ. The 1925 volume of Shiki's collected works that prints the anthology, poet by poet, keeps the form and the mark, and closes the group with the note 春雨下、句集ニナキ句, under spring rain, verses not in the 句集 [12][13]. The earliest witness to the second と.

1902. 山田三子, 蕪村俳句全集, a collected edition. The verse in the spring section, no note [2].

1903; serialized in ホトトギス, collected as a book in 1905, read here in the printing of 1907. Naitō Meisetsu, Kawahigashi Hekigotō, Takahama Kyoshi, 蕪村遺稿講義, the record of a reading meeting. The book's note says the three read the spring section of the 遺稿 at 老梅居 from May to December 1903 and ran their record in the magazine ホトトギス, keeping the 遺稿's characters and kana as the original has them [5]. 老梅居 is Meisetsu's own name for his house [21]. The first sitting opens by naming the book: 此書は遺稿と題せる寫本により水落露石が編める蕪村句集の拾遺なり, this book is 水落露石's gathering of the verses the 蕪村句集 left out, made from a manuscript titled 遺稿 [5]. The fourth session, headed 明治三十六年七月二十日老梅居に會する者、主翁、碧梧桐、虚子, those gathered at 老梅居 on 20 July 1903: the master of the house, 碧梧桐, 虚子, reads one leaf of the 遺稿's spring section. Kyoshi opens with the plain sense: 池の側に川がある。春雨の降り續いた爲に水がまして、池の水と川の水とが一つになつてぬまつてしまつた、といふのである, so printed, with a stray ぬまつて the compositor left in, there is a stream beside the pond; the spring rain has gone on so long that the water has risen and the pond's water and the stream's have become one. Hekigotō objects: 池と川といふと大きな感じで其水が一つになつてしまつた、といふのは五月雨の頃には見る景色だが、春雨の景色とは思へぬ, a pond and a river sound large, and their waters becoming one is a scene of the summer rains; I cannot think it a spring-rain scene. Kyoshi answers with the size of the waters, この池や川は大きいのでは無い。草隱れに流れて居る野川と其傍に在る小さい池とを想像すれば、春雨の趣きによくなつてゐると思ふ, this pond and stream are not large; imagine a field-brook running hidden in the grass and a little pond beside it, and it suits the feeling of spring rain well, cites the Chinese line 春水滿四澤, spring waters fill the four marshes, which he says has come up often in these sessions, and adds that the slow, drawn-out cadence of the verse is spring rain's, not the summer rain's. Hekigotō concedes the cadence and keeps the objection: 調子の延びてゐて春雨らしいといふ點には異論は無いが「池と川」といふとどうしても大きい感じになる、其を小さいものと解するのは無理ではあるまいか, I do not dispute that the drawn-out cadence is spring-like, but "pond and river" cannot help sounding large, and is it not forced to read them as small? The record moves to the next verse without a ruling [5].

1904. Satō Kōroku, 蕪村俳句評釈, a commentary. The fullest reading on the record, and it takes 虚子's side without naming him. 面白い趣向である、此の池は庭の池である池尻に籬かあつて山吹がそろ〳〵咲きかけて居る、平常は此の籬を通して池の水が小川に落合つて居るのだが、春雨のために水嵩が增して此の池と小川との區別がなくなり, an interesting conception: this pond is a garden pond, with a fence at its outlet and the yamabuki just coming into bloom; ordinarily the pond's water falls through the fence into a small stream, but the spring rain has raised the water until the distinction between pond and stream is gone. Then he sets the reader an exercise: 若し之れを五月雨にしたらば如何であらうか、「池と川ひとつになりぬ五月雨」此の點が考ふべき處ろである, what if one made it summer rain, "pond and stream become one: summer rain"? That is the point to think about. His answer follows on the next leaf: the summer rain is 大きく烈しい, large and violent, the spring rain 小さく緩やか, small and gentle; 五月雨は男の如く春雨は女の如くである, the summer rain is like a man, the spring rain like a woman; and the verse's phrase, 池と川ひとつになりぬといふも即ちなをざりの感じで五月雨の如く思ひ切つた感じでない, "pond and stream become one" has exactly that casual feeling, not the decisive feeling of the summer rain. Written a year after the 1903 sitting, the commentary answers the question the sitting had left open [3].

1906. Iwamoto Shiseki 岩本梓石, 蕪村俳句全集 標註, an annotated edition. The verse in the spring-rain run without a gloss [4].

1909. 武田桜桃, 俳諧辞典, a haikai dictionary. Under はるさめ, as an example: 池と川とひとつになりぬ春の雨, with the second と, under Buson's name [14].

1909. Naitō Meisetsu, 俳句作法, a handbook of composition. In the chapter 切字の要, on cutting words, among examples of a phrase closed by ぬ, the ぬ marked: 池と川一つになりぬ春の雨 [16].

1913. Ōmachi Keigetsu 大町桂月, 文章大辞林, a thesaurus for writers. In its part on the seasons, under 春雨: 池と川と一つになりぬ春の雨 (蕪村), Shiki's form character for character [15].

1920. 木村架空, 蕪村夢物語, a critic's book in which Buson answers his readers in a dream. The 1903 exchange is restaged and then the dream-Buson rules on it: 作者の意は矢張り碧氏のいふ通りの池と川とであるが、それが強ち接近して居るのでもなし。又双方の水が合流したのでもない。旣に冬からの減水も、春雨の降る頃は舊に復して、河水も池水も水量が略ば平均した樣を云つたものだ, the author did mean a pond and a river as 碧梧桐 says, but they are not necessarily side by side, nor have their waters merged; the winter's low water has come back to its old level with the spring rain, and the verse says that the river's water and the pond's are now about level. A third reading: not adjacent, not merged, but equal again [17].

1921. Hasegawa Reiyoshi 長谷川零余子, 蕪村俳句全集 校註解釈, an annotated edition. The verse in the run, no footnote [6].

1925. Ebara Taizō 潁原退蔵, 蕪村全集, the scholarly edition, and the 蕪村三千句 of the same year. In the one the verse stands on page 16 with the source tag (遺稿) and no note; in the other it is in the spring section [7][10].

1925 and 1935. Handa Ryōhei 半田良平, 蕪村俳句全集 季題別 and 季題別年代附, the collected verse by season word. Under 春雨, after the tag 右十四句、句集 closes the 句集 verses, the 遺稿 group opens with 春雨や珠數落したる潦 and 春雨にぬれつゝ屋根の手毬かな; this verse is its third, and the group closes eight verses after it with 右十一句、遺稿 [8][9].

1928. Katsumine Shinpū 勝峰晋風, 日本俳書大系, the index volume. The verse filed under イケト with its source volume [11].

The dictionaries today. The Nipponica entry on kotobank gives the poet's dates, 1716–1783, and does not mention the verse [22]. The 大辞泉 defines the season word as 春、しとしとと静かに降る雨, rain that falls quietly and steadily in spring, a spring kigo, and quotes another Buson verse on it, 春雨やものがたりゆく簑と傘; the Nihon kokugo daijiten finds the word first in a document of 762 [23].

The attribution. Every witness that names a poet names Buson. The verse is not in the 蕪村句集 of 1784, the selection his disciple Kitō 几董 published after his death, but in the 遺稿, the gathering of what the 句集 left out: the 1900 leaf carries it [1], the lecture record names the book and its manuscript source at the head of its first sitting [5], Ebara tags it 遺稿 [7], Handa closes its group with 右十一句、遺稿 [8][9], and Shiki files it among the spring-rain verses 句集ニナキ句 [13]. The 1900 leaf gives it no headnote. The one date offered is Addiss's, 1782, the year before the poet's death; his note says that his dates for Buson's verse are taken from the Kōdansha 蕪村全集 of 1992 [20].

What is not a source. The Chinese line Kyoshi quotes, 春水滿四澤, spring waters fill the four marshes, is the opening of a quatrain on the four seasons in the Chinese tradition and was, by his own words, a standing reference at these sittings; it is a parallel he reached for, not a source Buson names [5]. Kōroku's three Buson summer-rain verses, うき草も沈む許りよ五月雨, さみだれに見えずなりぬる徑かな and 五月雨や滄海を衝く濁水, are the contrast he sets the verse against, not its kin [3]. 架空's dream-Buson is a critic speaking in the poet's voice and is a witness to 1920, not to Buson [17]. None of these is a source for the verse; they are the company the argument keeps.

The verse in English

1952. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 4, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, in the volume's opening section on Buson. In the spring rain, / The pond and the river / Have become one, with the sentence before it, The above and all the remaining verses of this second section are by Buson, and the commentary quoted above on the omnipotence of water [18].

1978, read in the 2007 printing. Yuki Sawa and Edith Marcombe Shiffert, Haiku Master Buson, first published by Heian International and reissued by White Pine Press, which calls the second printing slightly different. The pond and the river / have joined together as one / in the spring rain., with the romaji below it, in the spring section on page 49 [19]. Shiffert's introduction takes the verse into a picture of the season, Buson's spring rain; how it touches everything, joins together pond and river, yet is light enough so that a frog may be able to keep his belly dry [19].

1994. R. H. Blyth, The Genius of Haiku, British Haiku Society and Hokuseido Press, pages 101–102 (the verse at the foot of 101, the comment opening 102, by the file's page markers). The same three lines reprinted [24].

2012. Stephen Addiss, The Art of Haiku, Shambhala, in the chapter on Buson, among the spring verses of his last years. ike to kawa / hitotsu ni narinu / haru no ame // pond and river / have become one— / spring rain, dated 1782. Addiss raises an allegory and sets it aside: It is tempting to imagine the pond as Bashō and the river as Buson, but this is probably reading too much into the poem [20].

The three renderings divide on where the rain goes. Blyth sets it first and makes the season the frame; Sawa and Shiffert set it last and make it the cause, joined together … in the spring rain; Addiss sets it last and keeps it apart behind a dash, which is the Japanese order and the Japanese break.

A reading

I side with Kōroku and 架空 against Hekigotō, and I think Hekigotō was the better reader for objecting. The verse sets a large event under a small season word on purpose, and the reader who feels the strain between them is feeling the poem; the reader who resolves it, as Kyoshi did by shrinking the waters and 架空 by leveling them, is explaining it. The season word governs, because in this form it always does: the rain is spring's, so the joining is soft, and ひとつになりぬ is a quiet completion, a boundary that has dissolved without force. Of the two texts, the 遺稿's is the verse; Shiki's second と spells the pair out and costs the first phrase its count, and the lightness it loses is the lightness the reading turns on. Blyth's omnipotence of water overshoots a garden pond; his three lines do not. Addiss's allegory of the two poets is one he declines himself, and he is right to.

References

  1. 水落露石 編『蕪村遺稿』, 鹿田静七, 大阪, 1900 (printed 12 October, issued 16 October, colophon), the spring section, leaf 4 recto. Niigata University Library, 佐野文庫, at the National Institute of Japanese Literature 国書データベース, canvas 8 (the colophon at canvas 39). https://doi.org/10.20730/300077399
  2. 山田三子 編『蕪村俳句全集』, 内外出版協会, 1902. National Diet Library pid 875715, scan 15. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/875715/1/15
  3. 佐藤紅緑『蕪村俳句評釈』, 大学館, 1904, printed pages 72–75. National Diet Library pid 875716, scans 41–42. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/875716/1/41
  4. 岩本梓石 編『蕪村俳句全集 標註』, 1906. National Diet Library pid 875714, scan 16. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/875714/1/16
  5. 内藤鳴雪・河東碧梧桐・高浜虚子『蕪村遺稿講義』, 俳書堂, 1907 printing (first book edition 1905), the note on the edition at scan 3, the first sitting's head at scan 4, the verse at printed pages 54–57. National Diet Library pid 875701, scans 3, 4 and 31–32. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/875701/1/31
  6. 長谷川零余子 編『蕪村俳句全集 校註解釈』, 1921. National Diet Library pid 968346, scans 20–21. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/968346/1/20
  7. 潁原退蔵 編『蕪村全集』, 有朋堂, 1925, printed page 16. National Diet Library pid 1018320, scan 36. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1018320/1/36
  8. 半田良平 編『蕪村俳句全集 季題別』, 1925. National Diet Library pid 964212, scan 13. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/964212/1/13
  9. 半田良平 編『季題別年代附』, 1935. National Diet Library pid 1090303, scan 11. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1090303/1/11
  10. 『蕪村三千句』, 1925. National Diet Library pid 924926, scan 7. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/924926/1/7
  11. 勝峰晋風 編『日本俳書大系』, the index volume, 1928. National Diet Library pid 1179400, scan 212. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1179400/1/212
  12. 正岡子規 編『俳家全集』, manuscript, volume 3, dated 1900 in the library's record. National Diet Library pid 2546172, scan 72. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2546172/1/72
  13. 『子規全集』 第11巻, アルス, 1925, printed page 461. National Diet Library pid 978848, scan 243. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/978848/1/243
  14. 武田桜桃 編『俳諧辞典』, 1909. National Diet Library pid 875374, scan 63. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/875374/1/63
  15. 大町桂月『文章大辞林』, 至誠堂書店, 1913. National Diet Library pid 951697, scan 46. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/951697/1/46
  16. 内藤鳴雪『俳句作法』, 博文館, 1909, printed page 196. National Diet Library pid 875595, scan 106. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/875595/1/106
  17. 木村架空『蕪村夢物語』, 1920. National Diet Library pid 947592, scans 191–192. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/947592/1/191
  18. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 4, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1952.
  19. Yuki Sawa and Edith Marcombe Shiffert, Haiku Master Buson, White Pine Press, Buffalo, 2007 (first published Heian International, 1978), pp. 32–33 and 49.
  20. Stephen Addiss, The Art of Haiku: Its History through Poems and Paintings by Japanese Masters, Shambhala, 2012, the chapter on Buson, The Final Years, and its note 9.
  21. 「内藤鳴雪」, デジタル大辞泉 and 日本人名大辞典+Plus, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/内藤鳴雪
  22. 「蕪村」, ニッポニカ, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/蕪村
  23. 「春雨」, デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/春雨
  24. R. H. Blyth, The Genius of Haiku, British Haiku Society and Hokuseido Press, 1994, pp. 101–102.

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · grok-4.6 (xAI), 2026-09-05, citations · gpt-6-astra (OpenAI), 2026-09-05, citations · Claude Sonnet (Anthropic), 2026-09-14, citations — every claim tested at its address; several corrections made — the 1907 meeting quote's OCR column order untangled, 虚子's reading resequenced to match the source, the 1925 潁原 leaf's illegibility restated as partial rather than total, and the Blyth page citation corrected by one page

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 池と川ひとつになりぬ春の雨 (ike to kawa hitotsu ni narinu haru no ame)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/ike-to-kawa-hitotsu-ni-narinu-haru-no-ame.