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Home › Library › Philology › Shiki - A pear tree is blooming, By a collapsed house, on an old battlefield

梨さくや戦のあとの崩れ家 nashi saku ya ikusa no ato no kuzure ie Shiki - A pear tree is blooming, By a collapsed house, on an old battlefield

This is a philological study of the haiku 梨さくや戦のあとの崩れ家 (nashi saku ya ikusa no ato no kuzure ie), given to Shiki. It spans from its earliest witness, the poet's own manuscript of 1895, and examines where the verse was written, how its aftermath has been read, and how it came into English.

Japanese Scroll of Shiki - A pear tree is blooming, By a collapsed house, on an old battlefield (nashi saku ya ikusa no ato no kuzure ie) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Shiki - A pear tree is blooming, By a collapsed house, on an old battlefield (nashi saku ya ikusa no ato no kuzure ie)

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

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Abstract

梨さくや戦のあとの崩れ家, pear trees in bloom, and a house fallen in, where the battle was, is Shiki's, written in his own hand in the fourth book of his manuscript 寒山落木, at 金州 in the spring of 1895, a month after the Sino-Japanese War ended, where he had gone as a correspondent. Every witness after it, in Japanese and in English, agrees on the poet, and the sense holds across every writing of it. Blyth set it among the first examples of the loneliness of haiku and translated it twice; Higginson, Watson and Sato followed him into English, and a 1942 textbook assigned the verse to the wrong war by ten years.

Overview

The text. The scroll carries 梨さくや戦のあとの崩れ家, and the record carries one text in three writings. The autograph writes 梨咲くやいくさのあとの崩れ家 [1]: 咲 in kanji, いくさ in kana. The 1915 typeset from the same manuscript writes 梨さくや, kana for the verb [2], and so do Blyth's two books [3][4] and most of the Meiji and Taishō printings; the scroll follows them and writes 戦 for the kana いくさ, as Blyth's later reprint writes 後 for あと [5]. One real misquotation: the 1929 railway guide to South Manchuria prints 梨咲くや戰のあと崩れ家, dropping the second の and a syllable with it, on a page that sets the verse under Nogi Maresuke 乃木希典's Chinese quatrain on the same battlefield [6]. The sense holds across all of them. The meter is five, seven, five: な・し・さ・く・や, い・く・さ・の・あ・と・の, く・ず・れ・い・え. The three designs served for this text do not all brush the catalogue's form: two write いくさ in kana, as the autograph does, and one writes 戦.

The sense. Hekigotō 碧梧桐, who nursed the poet at Kobe on his way home, read the 金州 verses in 1907 as calm and without bluster; he is the verse's first critic and its best [7]. The 1942 textbook, wanting war poetry, saw no war in them. Blyth in 1949 set the verse in his chapter on Zen as the first example of the loneliness of haiku, not that of the poet as a recluse, not that of desolate places and forgotten men, though it may be induced by them [3]; in 1950 he gave it a picture: the house has fallen down for no apparent reason, from disuse and lack of repair perhaps. Near it, thousands of human beings gouged one another's eyes out … But this too time can change into something of pathos and faint splendour. A pear-tree stands there, its white blossoms quite still. What has it to do with battles long ago, or this tumble-down hut? [4] Watson in 1997 gives the place and the month and no reading [8].

The words. 梨 is the pear, its white bloom a spring season word; さくや, blooms, and, the cut. いくさ is battle, war; のあとの, of after the, so the after-battle, and the second の binds it to the house. 崩れ家 is a house fallen in, kuzure-ie, a compound the poet makes. As words the line says: Pears in bloom: the fallen house of after the battle. Nothing in the Japanese says old; あと is after, and the after was five months.

The verse in English. Blyth translated the verse twice, in 1949 [3] and 1950 [4], and again in his Poetry and Zen [5]; Higginson gave it in 1985 [9], Watson in 1997 [8], and Sato rendered it as one line in 2018 [10].

The historical record

1895, spring. Shiki at 金州, in his own hand. [1]

1902–1908. The first printed collections. Kyoshi 虚子's 1902 selection [11], 瀬川's 子規句集 (1908, 1909), Sokotsu 鼠骨's 明治四大家俳句集 (1906) and Hekigotō's 新俳句研究談 (1907) [7], which reads the 金州 verses as calm, graceful, tolerant, with nothing pressing in them, and, though they are scenes after a war, not a trace of exaggeration, no pointless tragic diction, no bluster.

1915. Sokotsu (ed.), 寒山落木より 子規句集, 俳書堂. Under 梨花: 梨老て花まばらなり韮畑 二八 / 金州二句 / 梨さくやいくさのあとの崩れ家 二八 / 梨花白し此頃美女を見る小家 三〇, the two 金州 verses in the reverse of the manuscript's order and the headnote between them [2].

1918–1925. 子規名句集; 子規全集. The verse in the 1918 selection [12] and in the 1925 アルス 全集's printing of the manuscript [13].

1929. 南満洲鉄道 (ed.), 南満洲鉄道旅行案内, the 金州 pages. Under 玉皇廟と鐵牛, Nogi Maresuke's 山川草木轉荒凉。十里風腥新戰場。征馬不レ前人不レ語。金州城外立二斜陽一。, with the kaeriten as the guidebook prints them and 凉 for the received 涼, then, as Shiki's, 城壁の上に見えけり春の山 / 梨咲くや戰のあと崩れ家 / 古城や菫花咲く石の門, then Numanami Keion 沼波瓊音's verses [6]. The railway's guidebook quotes the verse a syllable short and gives it a company.

1942. 厚生研究会 (ed.), 文学入門, the chapter on war haiku. 戰ひのあと少き燕哉 子規 / なき人のむくろを隱せ春の草 同 / 梨咲くやいくさのあとの崩れ家 同 / 古城やいくさのあとの朧月 同 / 行く春の酒をたまはる陣屋哉 同 / これらは、日露戰爭の折、正岡子規が從軍し金州で作つた句でありますが、ほとんど戰蹟俳句とも見られるやうな、戰爭の只中にあるなま〳〵しい息吹は…, these are verses Shiki made at 金州 as a correspondent in the Russo-Japanese War, almost battlefield-site haiku, without the raw breath of being in the midst of war. The wrong war by ten years, and the right observation [14].

The attribution. Shiki's, in his own hand, and dated by the manuscript's arrangement and by his own headnote. 寒山落木 is Shiki's fair copy of his verses by year and season; the fourth book is Meiji 28, 1895. On the 梨花 leaf: 鞦韆の影静かなり梨花の月, then the headnote 金州二句, two verses at 金州, then 梨咲くやいくさのあとの崩れ家 and 梨老いて花まばらなり韮畠, each with Shiki's own selection circle and the second with Hekigotō's red 碧 beside it; the facing page carries Chinese poems [1]. 金州 is Jinzhou near Dairen, which Shiki reached as a correspondent for 日本 in April 1895, the month the Sino-Japanese War ended (Watson's note [8]; kotobank: 日清戦争に記者として従軍 [15]). The 1915 typeset dates both pear verses 二八 [2]. So the verse is spring 1895, written on the ground where the battle of the previous November had been fought, by a man who arrived after it.

What is not a source. The railway guide's 戰のあと崩れ家 is a misquotation, not a variant. The 1942 textbook's 日露戰爭 is wrong; the manuscript's own book is Meiji 28.

The verse in English

1949. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 1, Eastern Culture, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, page 177, in the chapter on Zen. 梨さくやいくさのあとの崩れ家 子規; By a house collapsed, / A pear tree is blooming; / Here a battle was fought. [3]

1950. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 2, Spring, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, pages 323–324, PEAR-BLOSSOMS. 梨さくやいくさのあとの崩れ家 子規; Nashi saku ya ikusa no ato no kuzure-ie; By a house collapsed, / A pear-tree is blooming; / Here a battle was fought [4]. With the paragraph quoted above. Again in his Poetry and Zen, a 2022 reprint [5].

1985. William J. Higginson, The Haiku Handbook, McGraw-Hill. In the account of Shiki as war correspondent: the pear blossoming / after the battle this / ruined house, interlinear with the romaji [9].

1997. Burton Watson, Masaoka Shiki: Selected Poems, Columbia, page 34, no. 36, Chin-chou. Pears in bloom— / a wrecked house / left from the battle; 1895 SPRING; the footnote on the city and the month [8].

2018. Hiroaki Sato, On Haiku, New Directions. Pear blooms: after a battle a collapsed house, one line, with the Japanese and the romaji [10].

Today. The house page's A pear tree is blooming, / By a collapsed house, / on an old battlefield is Blyth's first two lines of 1949 and 1950 in the other order, with a house collapsed made a collapsed house, and a third line of its own; it should lose old. On an old battlefield is the page's; the Japanese has あと, and the battle was five months old.

A reading

I read the verse as its first critic did: a scene after a war, with nothing pressed. The pear blooms because it is spring; the house has fallen because a battle passed; the verse holds them side by side and says nothing about either, and the second の, which the railway guide dropped, is what keeps the house the battle's and the pear its own. Blyth's battles long ago is his, not the poem's; the battle was that winter.

References

  1. 正岡子規 Masaoka Shiki 自筆『寒山落木』巻四, 1895. National Diet Library pid 2546168, scan 44. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2546168/1/44
  2. 寒川鼠骨 Samukawa Sokotsu 編『寒山落木より 子規句集』, 俳書堂, 1915, pp. 72–73. National Diet Library pid 954209, scan 69. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/954209/1/69
  3. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 1, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1949, p. 177.
  4. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 2, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1950, pp. 323–324.
  5. R. H. Blyth, Poetry and Zen, Shambhala, 2022.
  6. 南満洲鉄道 編『南満洲鉄道旅行案内』, 1929, pp. 18–19. National Diet Library pid 1915520, scan 39. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1915520/1/39
  7. 河東碧梧桐 Kawahigashi Hekigotō『新俳句研究談』, 1907. National Diet Library pid 875170, scans 83–85. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/875170/1/83
  8. Burton Watson, Masaoka Shiki: Selected Poems, Columbia University Press, 1997, p. 34.
  9. William J. Higginson, The Haiku Handbook, McGraw-Hill, 1985, p. 22.
  10. Hiroaki Sato, On Haiku, New Directions, 2018.
  11. 高浜虚子 Takahama Kyoshi 編『獺祭書屋俳句帖抄』, 1902. National Diet Library pid 875216, scans 38–40. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/875216/1/38
  12. 『子規名句集』, 1918. National Diet Library pid 933037, scan 53. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/933037/1/53
  13. 『子規全集』, アルス, 1925. National Diet Library pid 978836, scan 53. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/978836/1/53
  14. 厚生研究会 編『文学入門』, 1942, pp. 128–129. National Diet Library pid 1127096, scan 69. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1127096/1/69
  15. 「正岡子規」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/正岡子規

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), 2026-09-06, citations · Claude Sonnet (Anthropic), 2026-09-14, citations — a couple of renderings added — Higginson and Satō, missed though both carry the poem; several OCR readings marked