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Home › Library › Philology › Issa - A world of grief and pain, Flowers bloom, Even then

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 - A world of grief and pain, Flowers bloom, Even then

This is a philological study of the haiku 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's, first written in his verse journal of 1819. It follows the verse's two forms, the journal's plainer line and the cherry form Issa brushed over his own painting, and its English renderings from Miyamori and Blyth on.

Japanese Scroll of Issa - A world of grief and pain, Flowers bloom, Even then (ku no shaba ya sakura ga sakeba saita tote) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Issa - A world of grief and pain, Flowers bloom, Even then (ku no shaba ya sakura ga sakeba saita tote)

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

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Abstract

苦の娑婆や桜が咲けば咲いたとて, this world of suffering; and if the cherry blooms, so it has bloomed, is Issa's, and it comes down in two forms, both his. It is first written in his verse journal for 1819, the 八番日記, among the verses of the tenth month, as 苦の娑婆や花か開けはひらくとて, the flower opens, so it opens; that plainer line is the one his pupils printed in 1829 and every collected edition since. The form with the cherry is the one he brushed on his own paintings: over a seated figure he liked to draw as himself, on silk, signed 人も一茶, a pair Ogiwara Seisensui photographed in 1938 and Blyth reproduced in 1950. The English renderings, from Miyamori and Blyth on, carry both forms; no witness gives the verse an occasion, and the death of a child sometimes named with it is written at none.

Overview

The text. The scroll carries 苦の娑婆や桜が咲けば咲いたとて. The first phrase is one text everywhere; the second and third come down in two forms, and both are Issa's. The first is the journal's. In the 八番日記, Issa's verse journal for 1819 to 1821, known from a copy made line for line and finished in 1851, the verse is written among the verses of the tenth month of 1819 as 苦の娑婆や花か開けはひらくとて [1]. On a sheet in his hand, one of the bundle he titled だん袋 and his pupil 雲士 kept at Naganuma, he wrote it again between entries of the twelfth and the fifteenth of the second month of 1823, 苦の娑婆や花が開ばひらく迚 [2]. The 一茶発句集 his pupils printed in 1829, for the third anniversary of his death, sets it among the blossom verses of spring, 苦の娑婆や花か開けハひらく迚 [3]; 一具's enlarged edition of 1848 keeps it in the same place [4]; and the collected editions read the same: Ōtsuka 大塚 in 1902, 苦の娑婆や花が開けば開くとて [5]; Katsumine 勝峰 in 1921 [6] and 1926 [7]; Shimada 島田 in 1925 [8]; Handa 半田 in 1935 [9]. The second form is the brush's. On a pair of silk hangings he wrote 苦の娑婆やさくらが咲ばさいた迚, as Blyth's plate transcribes it, over a seated figure drawn in one stroke, the figure he liked to draw as himself, and signed it 人も一茶; Ogiwara Seisensui 荻原井泉水 photographed the pair in 1938 at the house called 水石亭 and wrote that both its verses were ones often seen [10], and Blyth reproduced the same pair in 1950 [11]. The 1928 index of the 日本俳書大系 files the cherry form from the series' own selection of Issa, 苦の娑婆や櫻が咲ばさいたとて [12], and Sōma Gyofū 相馬御風 quotes it so in 1935 [13]. Miyamori, who printed both forms side by side in 1932, calls them one verse with exactly the same meaning [14]. He is right about the sense; the difference is where each was written, the journal or the painting. The meter of the brushed form is five, seven, five: く・の・しゃ・ば・や, さ・く・ら・が・さ・け・ば, さ・い・た・と・て; the journal's form runs five, seven, five: は・な・が・ひ・ら・け・ば, ひ・ら・く・と・て.

The sense. One sense and two tempers. Fujii Otoo in 1906 hears a proverb in haiku, the common word doing the work [15]; Tsuda Sōkichi 津田左右吉 in 1921 calls the verse a Buddhist-style pessimism, 佛教式悲觀思想, and adds that it is only one side of Issa's thought, who was by no means a pessimist at root [16]; 市島 in 1929 hears a truth with satire in it [17]; Miyamori in 1932 gives the Sanskrit and the plain meaning and says the two Japanese forms mean the same [14]; Blyth in 1950 makes it a statement of the relation between pain and beauty, the major problem, not only of poets, but of all men, and says in the insolubility of the problem lies the meaning [11]; Hamill, from 1995, renders it three ways and hears resignation, a shrug and a wry laugh by turns [18][19]. The とて allows both a pessimistic and an optimistic reading, and the verse does not tell you which.

The words. 苦の娑婆 is the world as a place of suffering. 娑婆 is the Buddhist word for this world, the Sanskrit sahā in Chinese letters, translated 堪忍 and 能忍, enduring: the place where beings who cannot shake off their passions live by bearing their pain [20]; Miyamori gives the derivation and adds that in ordinary use it simply means the world [14]. The phrase is Issa's stock, not a coinage for this verse: the 1908 全集 carries 苦の娑婆やヤレ花見ソレ月見とて, this suffering world: now flower-viewing, now moon-viewing, and 苦の娑婆と艸さへ伏すか秋の暮 on the same words [21]. 桜が咲けば咲いたとて is if the cherry blooms, well, it has bloomed, and, with とて the concessive shrug at the end, even granting that; the journal's 花が開けばひらく迚 says the same with flower and open, in the plainer words Fujii Otoo praised Issa for, 俗語を愛す, he loved the common word [15]. Both a pessimistic and an optimistic reading are in the とて: the particle carries a resignation that can be heard either way, and that is the verse's own mechanism, not a translator's choice. As words the brushed line says: This world of suffering; and if the cherry blooms, so it has bloomed.

The verse in English. Miyamori in 1932 printed both Japanese forms side by side and rendered them once, Ours is a world of suffering, / Even if cherry-flowers bloom [14]; Bowers in 1996 prints the same two lines under the journal's romaji and credits them to Max Bickerton's paper on Issa of December 1932 [22]. Blyth carried the cherry form, in two renderings: A world of grief and pain: / Flowers bloom; / Even then...... in 1949 [23], and A world of grief and pain, / Even when cherry-blossoms / Have bloomed in 1950 [11]. Mackenzie in 1957 [24], Hamill from 1995 [18][19] and the anthologies that reprint Blyth [25] carry the cherry form too; Donegan in 2010 renders the journal's, this world of suffering— / even if the flower opens / even if it opens [26]. All of them keep the shrug of とて as a concession rather than a plain conditional.

The historical record

1819, the tenth month. Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶, the 八番日記, the verse journal, as the 1946 edition prints it from the 1851 copy. Among the winter verses of paper robes: 紙衣似合と言れしも昔也 / 目出たからるゝともしよせん紙衣哉 / 苦の娑婆や花か開けはひらくとて / 目出度と人はいへとも紙衣哉. No headnote at the verse. The earliest known writing of it [1].

1823, the second month. Issa, a sheet of だん袋. 田中河原 / 文政六、二月十二日 / 畠打や通してくれる寺參り … then 苦の娑婆や花が開ばひらく迚, then 齒ももたぬ口に咥へてつぎ穗哉, then 二月十五日 and せうばんに我らもごろり涅槃哉 [2].

Undated. Issa, a pair of silk hangings, as Blyth's plate transcribes them. Right: a seated figure in one stroke, and 苦の娑婆やさくらが咲ばさいた迚 / 人も一茶. Left: a house, and にはの蝶子が這へばとび這へばとぶ / 家も一茶 [10][11].

1829. The 一茶発句集, printed by his pupils. In the spring, among the blossom verses: 今の世や猫も杓子も花見笠 / あり様ハ我も花より団子かな / 苦の娑婆や花か開けハひらく迚, and then a headnote on 山下常楽院. The earliest print [3].

1848. 一具's enlarged 一茶發句集, as the 有朋堂文庫 reprints it. The verse in the same run, 苦の娑婆や花が開けばひらく迚, now followed by さる人は病氣をつかふ花見かな. 一具's preface says the pupils' collection of 1829 had been printed privately and not for sale, and that he added to it verses heard and verses found in letters and prints [4].

1902. Ōtsuka Kōzan, 一茶俳句全集. 苦の娑婆や花が開けば開くとて, between 今の世や猫も杓子も花見笠 and さる人は病氣を遣ふ花見かな [5].

1906. Fujii Otoo, 俗諺論, an essay on proverbs. 近世の俳人にして巧に諺を用ひしは俳諧寺一茶なり。一茶は滑稽を好み、俗語を愛す, of the poets of the recent age, the one who used proverbs skillfully was Issa; he loved humor and loved the common word, and this verse among his examples [15].

1921. Tsuda Sōkichi, 文学に現はれたる我が国民思想の研究. 「苦の娑婆や花が開けば開くとて」のやうな佛教式悲觀思想をさへ時には述べてゐるのであるが、それは彼の思想の一面に過ぎないのであつて, he sometimes even states a Buddhist-style pessimism, as in this verse, but that is only one side of his thought [16].

1921 to 1935. Katsumine Shinpū's 新選一茶全集 [6] and 一茶発句集 [7]; Shimada Seihō's 一茶選集 [8]; Handa Ryōhei's 季題別年代附 [9]. The journal's form, 花が開けばひらく迚 or 開けば開くとて.

1928. Katsumine Shinpū, 日本俳書大系, the index volume. クノシ (選抄) 苦の娑婆や櫻が咲ばさいたとて, the cherry form, tagged as from the series' own selection [12].

1929. 市島謙吉, 春城漫筆. The verse among Issa's that carry 含蓄 and 諷刺 and of themselves lodge a deep truth, beside 露の世を押しあひへし合萩の花; 以上一茶 [17].

1935. Sōma Gyofū, 道限りなし. 俳諧寺一茶の次の如き句である。苦の娑婆や櫻が咲けば咲いたとて, glossed 何てまあ苦勞や苦情の絕えない世の中ぢや, what a world, never free of toil and complaint [13].

1938. Ogiwara Seisensui, 一茶を尋ねて. At the house called 水石亭: 一茶が自畫像として好んで書いてゐる一筆がきの坐像に題して, over the one-stroke seated figure Issa liked to draw as his self-portrait, 苦の娑婆や櫻がさけば咲いたとて; and over a house, にはの蝶子が這へばとび這へばとぶ. 双方とも、しばしば見かける句だけれども, both are verses one often sees, but a pair on silk, set against each other, is careful work for Issa [10].

The dictionaries today. The kotobank entry for the poet gives his dates, 1763–1828 [27].

The attribution. Issa's, at every witness that names a poet: in his own verse journal, on a sheet in his hand, and over his signature on his own painting. The 八番日記 sets the verse among the verses of the tenth month of 文政2, 1819, in his fifty-seventh year by the old count; it is the journal of the year of おらが春 and of the year his daughter Sato died, as the 1946 editor's introduction recounts, and it gives the verse no headnote [1]. The journal survives in a copy made by 風間新藏 and finished in 1851, which its first editor calls exact; the autograph is lost [1]. Four years later Issa wrote the verse again, on a sheet the 1930 editors place in だん袋, the bundle of his autograph sheets from the early 文政 years that his pupil 雲士 kept at Naganuma under a title slip in Issa's own hand, between entries dated the twelfth and the fifteenth of the second month of 1823 [2]. The cherry form is written over a painting: Ogiwara names the figure as the seated one Issa liked to draw as himself [10], and Blyth, printing the same pair, calls the painting the poet's own [11]. Fujii Otoo in 1906 made the verse the type of Issa's proverb-flavored haiku [15], Tsuda Sōkichi in 1921 the type of his Buddhist pessimism [16], 市島謙吉 in 1929 one of the verses that lodge a truth [17], and the English translators from Miyamori to Donegan all name Issa [14][26].

What is not a source. A paraphrase sometimes given as Blyth's, beauty had the audacity to be in the same world made Issa's pain all the greater, is not his: the word audacity occurs in none of Blyth's renderings or essays on this verse, and the passage it paraphrases says the problem is insoluble, not that the flowers add to the pain [11]. The occasion sometimes given for the verse, the death of a child, is written at no witness: the journal sets the verse in the year Sato died and gives it no headnote, and a date beside a grief is a neighbor, not a cause [1]. The other 苦の娑婆 verses are the phrase's company in Issa, not sources for this one [21].

The verse in English

1932. 宮森麻太郎 Asatarō Miyamori, An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern, Maruzen, Tokyo, page 538. Both Japanese forms printed side by side, 苦の娑婆 花が開けば ひらくとて and 苦の娑婆 櫻が咲けば さいたとて, then Ours is a world of suffering, / Even if cherry-flowers bloom, the Sanskrit derivation, and the judgment that the two forms have exactly the same meaning [14]. The same two lines are credited by Bowers to Max Bickerton, "Issa's Life and Poetry," in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan of December 1932 [22].

1949. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 1, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, page 177. In the chapter on Zen, after It is in the painful things that happen when we are happy, in the pleasant things that happen when we are sorrowful: 苦の娑婆や櫻が咲けばさいたとて, A world of grief and pain: / Flowers bloom; / Even then...... [23].

1950. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 2, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, page 351 and the plate before it. A world of grief and pain, / Even when cherry-blossoms / Have bloomed, with the sentences on pain and beauty quoted above; and the silk pair reproduced, with the note the haiga is also by the poet and the signature rendered The people, and Issa, too [11].

1957. Lewis Mackenzie, The Autumn Wind, John Murray, London (Kodansha, 1984), no. 118. A world of care! / And if the Cherry flowers— / Well; it has flowered!, followed by (Men—and Issa too), the painting's signature [24].

1967. Silent Flowers, Hallmark, from Blyth's four volumes. His 1949 lines, A world of grief and pain: / Flowers bloom; / Even then [25].

1995 and 1997. Sam Hamill, The Sound of Water and The Spring of My Life and Selected Haiku, Shambhala. A world of trials, / and if the cherry blossoms, / it simply blossoms in 1995 [18]; in 1997 that and two more: This suffering world: / the flowers will blossom, but / even at that . . .; Pain and suffering— / even if the old cherry / had somehow blossomed [19].

1996. Faubion Bowers, The Classic Tradition of Haiku, Dover, page 68. ku no shaba ya / hana ga hirakeba / hiraku tote, Ours is a world of suffering, / Even if cherry-flowers bloom, credited to Bickerton [22].

2010. Patricia Donegan with Yoshie Ishibashi, Love Haiku, Shambhala. The journal's form, ku no shaba ya hana ga hirakeba hiraku tote: this world of suffering— / even if the flower opens / even if it opens [26].

2022. R. H. Blyth, Poetry and Zen, Shambhala. The 1949 lines again, in the essay Haiku as Poetry Transcended: A world of grief and pain: / Flowers bloom: / Even then…., with the remark that the loneliness of Issa is that of Bashō, but with less of nature and more of man [28].

A reading

The attribution is sound, and so is the cherry form: it is not a translator's variant but the form Issa set over his own painting and signed. The plainer line is the journal's and the printed collections'; the cherry is the brush's, the form he chose when the verse was to hang on a wall, and Ogiwara's often seen says he chose it more than once. Miyamori is right that the two mean one thing. Read as words, the verse is a man looking at a cherry in bloom and declining to be consoled by it; Tsuda was right that this is one side of Issa and not the whole of him, and the とて keeps the other side in the same breath. The journal puts the verse in the year Sato died. The verse does not say so, and it needs no death to be true.

Sources not seen

『上田郷友會月報』, 1893, National Diet Library pid 13342193, and 『國學院雜誌』, 1897, pid 3364670. The library's full-text search finds 苦の娑婆や花 in both, the oldest periodical prints it knows; both are on its restricted service, and they would show what the verse was read as before the collected editions.

Asatarō Miyamori, One Thousand Haiku Ancient and Modern, 1930, National Diet Library pid 1680896. The full-text search finds the verse in it; it would show whether Miyamori's English is earlier than 1932, and so whose the two lines Bowers gives to Bickerton are.

Max Bickerton, "Issa's Life and Poetry," Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, second series, vol. 9, 1932, credited by Bowers with Miyamori's rendering [22].

『集古』, 1935 and 1936, pids 1890780 and 1890784: a sale list the full-text search reads as naming a tanzaku by Issa, 苦の娑婆やさくらがさけは咲た迚; 荻原井泉水 編『一茶真蹟集』, 1937, pid 1172481; and 『日本古典文学全集』42, 『近世俳句俳文集』, 1972, which the search reads as describing a painting inscribed 苦の娑婆やさくらが咲ばさいた迚 一茶. Each would add to the brushed witnesses of the cherry form; the history rests that form on the two it has read.

『一茶八番日記』, 1927, pid 1186726, the journal's first edition, from the same 1851 copy as the edition cited.

The 一茶全集, 信濃毎日新聞社, 1976–1979, which would date the silk pair and give every witness in one place.

A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.

References

  1. 小林一茶 著, 栗生純夫 校訂『新校八番日記』, 信濃郷土誌出版社, 1946, printed pages 78–79 (the verse) and the 解題 at the front. National Diet Library pid 1128414, scans 41 and 3–5. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1128414/1/41
  2. 信濃教育会 編『一茶叢書』, 1930, printed pages 528–529 (the verse) and the 解題 of だん袋. National Diet Library pid 1186739, scans 58 and 56. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1186739/1/58
  3. 『一茶発句集』, 文政12 (1829), 県立長野図書館 copy, canvas 17, left page. National Institute of Japanese Literature, 国書データベース BID 100005293. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100005293/17
  4. 藤井紫影 校『名家俳句集』, 有朋堂, 1935, 一茶發句集: 一具's preface, printed pages 783–784, and the verse. National Diet Library pid 1259717, scans 425–426 and 432. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1259717/1/432
  5. 大塚甲山 編『一茶俳句全集』, 1902, printed pages 68–69. National Diet Library pid 874848, scan 37. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/874848/1/37
  6. 勝峰晋風 編『新選一茶全集』, 1921. National Diet Library pid 970100, scans 24, 244. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/970100/1/24
  7. 勝峯晋風 編『一茶発句集』, 1926. National Diet Library pid 1019188, scans 17, 74. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1019188/1/74
  8. 島田青峰 編『一茶選集』, 1925. National Diet Library pid 977663, scan 52. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/977663/1/52
  9. 半田良平 編『一茶俳句全集 季題別年代附』, 1935, printed pages 22–23. National Diet Library pid 1034501, scan 18. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1034501/1/18
  10. 荻原井泉水『一茶を尋ねて』, 育英書院, 1938, printed pages 184–185. National Diet Library pid 1261240, scan 110. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1261240/1/110
  11. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 2, Spring, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1950, p. 351 and the plate facing it.
  12. 勝峰晋風 編『日本俳書大系』, the kana index, 1928, printed pages 200–201. National Diet Library pid 1179400, scan 266. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1179400/1/266
  13. 相馬御風『道限りなし』, 厚生閣書店, 1935. National Diet Library pid 1236313, scan 20. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1236313/1/20
  14. Asatarō Miyamori, An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern, Maruzen, Tokyo, 1932, p. 538.
  15. 藤井乙男『俗諺論』, 1906. National Diet Library pid 902816, scan 167. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/902816/1/167
  16. 津田左右吉『文学に現はれたる我が国民思想の研究』第4巻, 1921, printed page 706. National Diet Library pid 1913174, scan 367. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1913174/1/367
  17. 市島謙吉『春城漫筆』, 1929. National Diet Library pid 1174229, scans 212–213. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1174229/1/212
  18. Sam Hamill, The Sound of Water, Shambhala, 1995.
  19. Sam Hamill, The Spring of My Life and Selected Haiku, Shambhala, 1997.
  20. 「娑婆」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/娑婆-511583
  21. 俳諧寺可秋 編『一茶一代全集』, 1908 (kin verses on the same stock phrase; this verse absent). National Diet Library pid 874846, komas 47, 98, 141.
  22. Faubion Bowers, ed., The Classic Tradition of Haiku, Dover, 1996, p. 68 and the key to translators.
  23. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 1, Eastern Culture, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1949, p. 177.
  24. Lewis Mackenzie, The Autumn Wind: A Selection from the Poems of Issa, John Murray, London, 1957; Kodansha International, 1984, no. 118.
  25. Silent Flowers, Hallmark, 1967.
  26. Patricia Donegan with Yoshie Ishibashi, Love Haiku, Shambhala, 2010.
  27. 「小林一茶」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/小林一茶
  28. R. H. Blyth, Poetry and Zen, Shambhala, 2022.

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 meter corrected and one page citation corrected