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Home › Library › Philology › Buson - A flash of lightning, The sound of dew, Dripping down the bamboos

稲妻にこぼるる音や竹の露 inazuma ni koboruru oto ya take no tsuyu Buson - A flash of lightning, The sound of dew, Dripping down the bamboos

This is a philological study of the haiku 稲妻にこぼるる音や竹の露 (inazuma ni koboruru oto ya take no tsuyu), given to Buson. It spans from its earliest known witness, the poet's own late selection printed in 1784, and examines a fork in the text's last word and how the verse came into English.

Japanese Scroll of Buson - A flash of lightning, The sound of dew, Dripping down the bamboos (inazuma ni koboruru oto ya take no tsuyu) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Buson - A flash of lightning, The sound of dew, Dripping down the bamboos (inazuma ni koboruru oto ya take no tsuyu)

Haiku by Buson on a traditional Japanese Scroll by Master Eri Takase.

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Abstract

稲妻にこぼるる音や竹の露, lightning, and the sound of dew spilling from the bamboo, is Buson's, standing in his own late selection, the 蕪村句集, compiled by his disciple Kitō 几董 and published in 1784, the winter after the poet's death. Every witness before 1946 but two reads 露, dew; two editions of 1925 read 聲, the bamboo's voice, and tag the 1784 book as their source, but the 1784 leaf itself reads 露, so the two 1925 books stand as one instrument against it, not a rival text. Blyth gave the verse's earliest known English rendering in 1952, and two later translators, Ueda in 1998 and Sawa in 2007, kept the dew.

Overview

The text. The scroll carries 稲妻にこぼるる音や竹の露, and the last word is the one that matters. The 蕪村句集 of 1784 prints 稲妻にこぼるゝ音や竹の露 in its autumn section, the 雨 radical over 路 unmistakable, in a run of four lightning verses [1]. Six later witnesses agree: the 1906 annotated edition, いな妻にこぼるゝ音や竹の露 [2]; the anthologies and manuals of 1909 and 1910, 稻妻にこほるゝ or こぼるゝおとや竹の露 [3][4][5]; the 1932 prefectural history; 藤井紫影's 1935 edition of the 句集, 稻妻にこぼるゝ音や竹の露 [6][7]. Two witnesses read otherwise. The 蕪村三千句 of 1925 and 半田良平's dated edition of the same year both print 稲妻にこぼるゝ音や竹の聲, the bamboo's voice, and 半田 tags the group 右四句、句集, claiming the 1784 book as his source for it [8][9]; the 1784 book reads 露, not 聲, and the two 1925 books, set in the same year and agreeing against every other witness, are probably one instrument, whether a shared slip or a shared manuscript reading. The first two phrases vary only in writing: 稲妻, 稻妻 and いな妻; こぼるる, こぼるゝ and こほるゝ. The meter is five, seven, five: い・な・ず・ま・に, こ・ぼ・る・る・お・と・や, た・け・の・つ・ゆ.

The sense. The tradition has one reading and it is Blyth's: the grove, the flash, the whole of nature drawn tight for an instant, and in that tension a sound so small it is heard only then [10]. Blyth writes that the drip-drip of dew … felt so deeply, it can be called hearing [10]. The 1925 variant makes a different poem, quieter about the dew and louder about the bamboo, the grove's own voice at the flash; it is a good poem and it is not Buson's, on the evidence of his own book.

The words. 稲妻 is lightning, the autumn season word; Buson's lightning verses travel together in the 句集, 八丈かけて, 一網打つや, 堅田泊り, and this one [1]. こぼるる音 is the sound of something spilling over, こぼる being what dew does from a leaf and tears from an eye; the sound is small and it is the whole poem. や cuts the line after the sound and holds it. 竹の露 is the dew on the bamboo, shaken loose by the flash or by the thunder that is not named. As words the line says: At the lightning, the sound of spilling: the dew on the bamboo. 露 is dew, and no witness has rain: the delicacy the verse depends on is that a flash of lightning shakes loose something as small as dew, in a grove quiet enough for it to be heard.

The verse in English. Blyth gave the verse's earliest known English rendering in 1949, The sound of drops / Falling among the bamboos, and a second in 1952 that keeps the dew [11][10]; Stewart rhymed it in 1960, a gift anthology of 1967 reprinted Blyth's 1952 lines without his name, and Sato in 1981, Ueda in 1998 and Sawa and Shiffert in 2007 kept the dew [12][13][14][15][16].

The historical record

1784. 蕪村句集, 前編 巻之下, 秋之部, edited by Kitō, the poet's own late selection. The verse stands in the lightning run, after いなづまや堅田泊りの宵の空 and before the headnote 春夜に句をとはれて that opens the next; it reads 稲妻にこぼるゝ音や竹の露 [1].

1889. 正岡子規, 発句類題全集, a manuscript compilation of verses by topic. The verse stands in the lightning topic; the poet's name is garbled [17].

1906. 岩本梓石, 蕪村俳句全集 標註, an annotated edition. いな妻にこぼるゝ音や竹の露, in the autumn section [2].

1909 and 1910. 古今名家愛吟集; 沼波瓊音, 俳句の作り方; 護竹軒主人, 閑日月. Three anthologies and manuals, each with the verse in an autumn column under Buson, 稻妻にこほるゝ音や竹の露 and 稻妻にこぼるゝおとや竹の露 with furigana [3][4][5].

1925. 蕪村三千句 and 半田良平, 蕪村俳句全集 季題別, two collected editions. The 三千句 prints 稻妻にこぼるゝ音や竹の聲 and 半田 prints 稻妻にこぼるる音や竹の聲, the old 稻 in both and the repeat mark only in the first; 半田 closes the group of four with 右四句、句集. The only witnesses to 聲 [8][9].

1932 and 1935. 広島県誌; 藤井紫影, 名家俳句集. The prefectural history quotes the verse inside a biographical notice; 藤井's edition of the 句集 prints it in place, 稻妻にこぼるゝ音や竹の露 [6][7].

The dictionaries today. The Nipponica entry on kotobank, 蕪村, gives the poet's dates 1716–1783; Shimizu Takayuki 清水孝之's judgment that the 句集 was the poet's own late selection is at the attribution below [18].

The attribution. Buson's, and never anyone else's. The 蕪村句集 that carries it was published under Kitō's name in 1784 with a postscript dated 天明四甲辰之冬十二月, the twelfth month of 1784, which falls in January or February 1785 by the Western calendar [1]; the encyclopedia entry on kotobank, following Shimizu Takayuki, holds that the selection was Buson's own, made in his last years from his own verse-books, and that Kitō copied it faithfully to print [18]. So the book is as close to the poet's hand as print comes. Shiki's manuscript compilation of classified verses, copied in 1889, has the verse under lightning with the poet's name garbled [17]; every printed edition from 1906 files it as Buson's; the 1928 index, the 1932 history and the 1935 edition likewise. The English record is Blyth's alone. No date of composition is given by any witness.

What is not a source. The three other lightning verses of the 句集 run, 稻妻や八丈かけて, 稻妻に一網打つやいせの海 and いなづまや堅田泊りの宵の空, are this verse's neighbors in Buson's own ordering and the reason 半田 could tag the group as 句集; they are its company, not its kin. The 1925 聲, being two books of one year against the poet's own print, is a variant to be explained by 潁原's apparatus, not a reading to be weighed against 露.

The verse in English

1949. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 1, Eastern Culture, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, page 270, under Haiku and Poetry. 稲妻にこぼるゝ音や竹の露 蕪村; A flash of lightning! / The sound of drops / Falling among the bamboos. Set after the sentence A haiku is the expression of a temporary enlightenment, in which we see into the life of things. Blyth's first rendering, with drops for 露 and falling for こぼるる, three years before his second [11].

1952. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 3, Summer–Autumn, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, under LIGHTNING, page 69. A flash of lightning! / The sound of the dew / Dripping down the bamboos, with the commentary on tension and hearing quoted above [10].

1960. Harold Stewart, A Net of Fireflies, Tuttle, page 43. A rhymed couplet under a title of the translator's, Prelude for Koto: A lightning-flash! The liquid chime of dew / Dripping throughout the forest-high bamboo. [12]

1967. Silent Flowers, Hallmark. Blyth's 1952 three lines, A flash of lightning! / The sound of the dew / Dripping down the bamboos., under the poet's name and no translator's [13].

1981. Hiroaki Sato, in From the Country of Eight Islands, edited and translated by Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson, Anchor Press / Doubleday, pages 344–345. One line under the heading Lightning: Lightning spills a noise: a dewdrop from bamboo [14].

1998. Makoto Ueda, The Path of Flowering Thorn: The Life and Poetry of Yosa Buson, Stanford University Press. at a flash / of lightning, the sound of dew / falling from a bamboo, with the romaji and the edition reference (1: 577) [15].

2007. Yuki Sawa and Edith Marcombe Shiffert, Haiku Master Buson, White Pine Press, page 130. With the lightning, / a sound of dripping down! / Dew on the bamboo [16].

Today. The house English, A flash of lightning / The sound of raindrops / Falling down the bamboo, is Blyth's shape and his first line to the word; its falling and its drops are his 1949 words, with rain put in front of the second, and its down the bamboo is his 1952 line with dripping taken out. A rendering of this line has one thing to keep, and the page has changed it: the word is dew, which Blyth left out in 1949 and restored in 1952. Crediting Blyth restores it; a house rendering must keep it.

A reading

The 1784 leaf settles what the account once held open, and it settles it for 露: the poet's own late selection reads 露, and the 1925 聲 goes into the apparatus as the shared reading of two Taishō editions, not as a rival. I read the verse as a poem about the threshold of hearing. Lightning is the loudest thing in the sky and it makes no sound here; what is heard is dew, the quietest thing in the grove, and it is heard because the flash has made the listener still. Blyth's dripping down the bamboos keeps that. Raindrops is wrong for 露 in every witness and in Blyth, and it is wrong for the poem: rain would drown the sound the verse exists to hear.

References

  1. 几董 編『蕪村句集』前編, 1784, 巻之下 秋之部. National Institute of Japanese Literature, 国書データベース, biblio 300106341, canvas 44. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/300106341/44
  2. 岩本梓石 編『蕪村俳句全集 標註』, 1906. National Diet Library pid 875714, scan 78. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/875714/1/78
  3. 『古今名家愛吟集』, 芳文社, 1909. National Diet Library pid 872345, scan 100. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/872345/1/100
  4. 沼波瓊音『俳句の作り方』, 文成社, 1909. National Diet Library pid 994608, scan 83. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/994608/1/83
  5. 護竹軒主人 編『閑日月』, 1910. National Diet Library pid 888988, scan 21. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/888988/1/21
  6. 『広島県誌』, 1932. National Diet Library pid 1030141, scan 583. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1030141/1/583
  7. 藤井紫影 校『名家俳句集』, 有朋堂, 1935. National Diet Library pid 1259717, scan 233. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1259717/1/233
  8. 『蕪村三千句』, 1925. National Diet Library pid 924926, scan 47, printed p. 89. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/924926/1/47
  9. 半田良平 編『蕪村俳句全集 季題別』, 1925. National Diet Library pid 964212, scan 31, printed p. 48. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/964212/1/31
  10. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 3, Summer–Autumn, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1952, under LIGHTNING, p. 69.
  11. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 1, Eastern Culture, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1949, p. 270.
  12. Harold Stewart, A Net of Fireflies, Charles E. Tuttle, Rutland and Tokyo, 1960, p. 43.
  13. Dorothy Price (ed.), Silent Flowers, Hallmark, 1967.
  14. Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson (ed. and tr.), From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry, Anchor Press / Doubleday, Garden City, 1981, pp. 344–345.
  15. Makoto Ueda, The Path of Flowering Thorn: The Life and Poetry of Yosa Buson, Stanford University Press, 1998, p. 30.
  16. Yuki Sawa and Edith Marcombe Shiffert, Haiku Master Buson, White Pine Press, Buffalo, 2007, p. 130.
  17. 正岡子規『発句類題全集』, 1889. National Diet Library pid 2586419, scan 7. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2586419/1/7
  18. 「与謝蕪村」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/与謝蕪村

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 — the run mis-paired its inputs, so its findings were set aside; every page image re-opened by hand afterwards and every citation found to resolve; two renderings added