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三千の俳句を閲し柿二つ sanzen no haiku o kemishi kaki futatsu Shiki - Three thousand, Haiku to examine, Two persimmons

三千の俳句を閲し柿二つ (sanzen no haiku o kemishi kaki futatsu) is Shiki's, of three thousand haiku read through and two persimmons. It stands among his verses of the autumn of 1897 and is in print from 1909. This study traces the fever later tellers add to Kyoshi's novel of 1915, and follows its English from Blyth to Sato.

Japanese Scroll of Shiki - Three thousand, Haiku to examine, Two persimmons (sanzen no haiku o kemishi kaki futatsu) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Shiki - Three thousand, Haiku to examine, Two persimmons三千の俳句を閲し柿二つsanzen no haiku o kemishi kaki futatsu

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

三千の俳句を閲し柿二つ, three thousand haiku read through, and two persimmons, is Shiki's, from the autumn of 1897: it stands among that year's verses in his manuscript, and it was first printed in June 1909, with its year and its headnote, in the 子規句集 that Kyoshi 虚子 and Hekigotō 碧梧桐 selected from his manuscripts. The headnote tells of a day and a night at the bottom of the haiku box; the fever that later tellers add comes from Kyoshi's novel 柿二つ of 1915, whose preface says its deeds are fact and everything in its minds his own imagining, and Kyoshi's own gloss of the verse, printed in 1933, has the box and the two persimmons and no fever. Blyth rendered the verse in 1950 and 1952, five translators have followed, and Watson and Sato give the headnote in English.

Overview

The text. Every witness has the same words: 三千の俳句を閲し柿二つ. The only split in the verse is the form of one character, 閲 in the modern books, 閱 in the prewar prints, one character in new and old form. Two scanned readings are noise, not variants: 俄句 for 俳句 in the novel's copy, and 一一つ for 二つ in Iwaki 岩城's. The headnote is written two ways: 或日夜にかけて俳句凾の底を叩きて in the selection of 1909 and its reissue of 1915 [1][2], ある日夜にかけて俳句函の底を叩きて in the print of the manuscript itself in 1925 [3]; the words are the same. The four designs brush the same words and differ in writing: two write 閲し柿二つ as the page gives it; one writes 柿 in kana, 閲しかき二つ; one writes the verb and the number in kana, 俳句をけみし 柿ふたつ, and so settles its reading of the verb as けみし. The meter is five, seven, five: さ・ん・ぜ・ん・の, は・い・く・を・け・み・し, か・き・ふ・た・つ. The verb 閲す has two readings, けみす from the Japanese and えっす from the Chinese [4], and the English translators split on it below.

The sense. The verse has been read one way, and the way comes from one man, Kyoshi, who told it twice. In his novel of 1915 he gave it a night: the persimmons from 愚庵, the letter, the box, the fever [5]. In his gloss of 1933 he gave it plainly: the box of submissions kept at Shiki's pillow emptied, perhaps three thousand verses read to the end, relief and weariness, and two of the persimmons he loved [6]. Iwaki in 1925 took the scene from the novel by name and made the verse the picture of Shiki's life and work in one [7]; the school textbooks' notes of 1928 and 1930 and Blyth in 1952 retell the novel's night [8][9][10]; 貝島 in 1937 reads it as a persimmon lover's verse and quotes the headnote [11]; 宇野 in 1938 files it among the plain verses no one else could write [12]. Blyth: With no more than the above words we should be obliged to draw very freely upon our fancy to understand the connection, but fortunately Kyoshi has described the matter quite minutely, and then the box, the bed, the persimmons as a kind of reward [10]. Watson gives the headnote in English and lets the verse stand [13]. What the readers agree on is what the headnote already says: the box, emptied, and the fruit.

The words. 三千の俳句 is three thousand haiku, a round count, the box's worth; Kyoshi's gloss says perhaps three thousand [6]. 閲し is 閲する, to look through, to examine, the selector's verb [4]; Blyth examining, Watson checked [10][13]. 柿二つ is two persimmons, the reward or the ration at the end. The headnote, which the scroll and the page do not carry and Shiki's manuscript does, is 或日夜にかけて俳句凾の底を叩きて, one day, on into the night, striking the bottom of the haiku box: the box by his bed where the verses sent in for selection were kept, and the sound of the last of them [1]. Watson renders the headnote Working All Day and into the Night to Clear Out My Haiku Box [13]. As words the line says: Three thousand haiku looked through; two persimmons.

The verse in English. Blyth rendered the verse twice, in 1950 and 1952, reading the verb differently each time [14][10]; Henderson followed in 1958 [15], Bownas and Thwaite in 1964 [16], Stewart in 1969 [17], Watson in 1981 and again, with the headnote and the date, in 1997 [18][13], and Sato, who also renders the headnote, in 2018 [19].

The historical record

1897. Masaoka Shiki 正岡子規, in his manuscript. The verse stands in 俳句稿, the manuscript of his verses from 1897 on, among the autumn verses of 明治三十年, under its headnote. The manuscript is read here in its two prints, the selection of 1909 and the full print of 1925, below [1][3].

1909 (20 June). Takahama Kyoshi 高浜虚子 and Kawahigashi Hekigotō 河東碧梧桐 (eds.), 子規遺稿 第五編, 子規句集, 俳書堂. The colophon names both editors and gives 明治四十二年六月二十日出版. The preface, signed by Kyoshi on 9 May 1909, says the selection was made with Hekigotō from Shiki's 寒山落木, the 俳句稿 he had not yet fair-copied, and the verses written at the end of 仰臥漫錄, and that the figure under each verse is the year it was made. Printed pages 114–115, the 植物 section, heading 柿: the persimmon verses in order with their years in a right-hand column, 柿くへば鐘が鳴るなり法隆寺 under the headnote 法隆寺の茶店に憩ひて with 二八; 柿くふや道灌山の婆が茶屋 二九; three verses 同; つり鐘の蔕のところが澁かりき under its headnote with 三〇; 御佛に供へあまりの柿十五 under 愚庵より柿をおくられて, 同; then 或日夜にかけて俳句凾の底を叩きて / 三千の俳句を閱し柿二つ, 同. The first print of the verse, with its headnote and its year [1].

1915. The same 子規句集, reissued in 子規遺稿 by 籾山書店. The same pages, 114–115, set the same way, the verse, the headnote and the year column as in 1909 [2].

1915. Takahama Kyoshi, 柿二つ, a novel, serialized in the 東京朝日新聞 and printed by 新橋堂 in May; reprinted 春陽堂 1932. In the novel the box is an empty castella box his mother brought in to gather the submissions. Printed pages 24–25: Shiki writes to 愚庵, 十月二十八日, 愚庵禪師御もと, with three verses for the fifteen persimmons sent, 御佛に供へあまりの柿十五, 柿熟す愚庵に猿も弟子も無し, and, since the persimmons were of the kind called 釣鐘, 釣鐘の蔕のところが澁かりき; signs 根岸 病庵主; and the narrator adds 此句は三句共紙に臨んで考へた句であつた, all three were composed at the paper. He turns down the lamp. 頭の興奮は容易に收まりさうにもなかつた, the excitement in his head would not easily settle; his mind is still on the day's work, and the verse comes: 三千の俳句を閱し柿二つ. He keeps a diary in a 博文館 book, ten verses a day, and thinks to add this one tomorrow; 疲勞が一時に出て來るやうに思はれて頭がぐら〳〵した。彼は初めて熱の高いことを覺えたのであつた, fatigue seemed to come over him all at once and his head swam; for the first time he noticed how high his fever was. The novel gives the day and the month, not the year [5]. Kyoshi's preface, dated 3 May 1915, says what kind of book it is: 此「柿二つ」は正しく居士を書かうと思つて書いたもので、少しも虛構を加へずに事實其儘を寫生したものである, I wrote it meaning to portray the master truly, sketching the facts as they were and adding no invention; and then, 居士の言行は如何なる些細な事でも事實に相違せぬやうにとつとめたのであるけれども、而かも心理上の事は悉く私の想像になつたものである, though I tried to keep his words and deeds true to fact in every detail, everything of the mind is my own imagining; so, he says, a novel and not a biography [5].

1925. 正岡子規, 子規全集 第三巻, アルス. Printed page 376, the manuscript 俳句稿 in print, the autumn of 明治三十年. Here the verse does not follow the 愚庵 verse: after 愚庵より柿をおくられて / 御佛に供へあまりの柿十五 come seven other autumn verses, 柿に思ふ奈良の旅籠の下女の顔 among them, and then the headnote, ある日夜にかけて俳句函の底を叩きて, and the verse; on the facing page, with no headnote of its own, 文賣らん柿買ふ錢の足らぬ勝 [3].

1925. Iwaki Juntarō, 明治大正の国文学. Pages 40–41, in a chapter on the reform of verse: Shiki's state of mind then was complex, 恐らく虛子が小說「柿二つ」に描いたやうな心持があつたであらうと思へる, probably as 虚子 painted it in his novel; then: 「三千の俳句を閱し柿二つ」の句は、「日本」の募集俳句を閱してゐた時の實感を詠んだものであるが、子規の生活と事業とが微妙に表現せられてゐる。自分は此の句を讀む每に、根岸草廬の病子規の風姿を想起する, the verse sings the actual feeling of reading through the haiku submitted to 日本, and Shiki's life and his work are delicately expressed in it together; every time I read it I see the sick Shiki in his 根岸 hut. He names the novel as his source [7].

1928. 平林治徳, 新国文大綱 巻二 備考, a school textbook's notes. Under the verse, a statement of Kyoshi's quoted at length: the novel took its title from the verse, この句の意味はその文章に書いた通り, the verse means what that book says, and 三千の澤山ある俳句を閱し終つて、柿二つを食ふといふ句, a verse about eating two persimmons after reading through the three thousand, the many, for 日本 or for ホトトギス; Shiki kept 古い大きな菓子箱, an old, large confectionery box, at his pillow for the submissions, and once said, half in jest, that he had eaten a feast as his reward for a piece of work, so the persimmons are a reward too. The fever is not mentioned [8].

1930. 平林治徳, 女子国文大綱 巻二 備考. The novel's source given, 東京朝日新聞に連載 … 大正四年五月、新橋堂から單行本, and the scene retold in the book's own words: 日記に每日の出來事を句にして書いてゐたが、今三千の俳句を閱しの句を案出した。その時始めて熱の高いことを知つた, he had been setting each day's happenings as verses in his diary; now he composed the verse; then for the first time he knew his fever was high [9].

1933. Takahama Kyoshi, 古句一百, in 改造; reprinted in his 正岡子規, 1943. Printed pages 540–541 of the reprint, under the headnote and the verse: 俳句函の底を叩く、といふのは子規の枕頭に備へつけてあつた俳句の投稿を入れる函から投稿を取出して悉く見終つた、といふのである。句數は三千も有つたらう、其三千の俳句を見終つて、やれ〳〵とがつかりして好きな柿を二つ喰べた、といふ句である。子規の病床に於ける起居は此一句によつて想像される, "striking the bottom of the haiku box" means he took the submissions out of the box kept at his pillow and read every one; there must have been three thousand of them; having read them through, weary and let down, he ate two of the persimmons he loved. Shiki's days on his sickbed can be imagined from this one verse. No 愚庵 and no fever [6].

1935–1939. 国語 学習指導の研究, 巻四, 岩波書店, a teachers' guide to a textbook that carried the novel's scene. 三千にも餘る俳句を見終つてほつと安心し、樂しみにとつておいた柿を二つ食べた、といふ意, having read through more than three thousand haiku, relieved, he ate the two persimmons he had been saving; the verse is 實景そのまゝに違ひない, surely the scene as it was; and the guide notes that in the 全集 the headnote stands over two verses, this one and 文賣らん柿買ふ錢の足らぬ勝 [20]. A second guide of 1939 quotes Shiki's letter of thanks to 愚庵 from his collected letters, dated 明治三十年十月二十八日 [21].

1937. 貝島慶太郎, 富士を仰ぎて, an essay 秋三題, 柿. Pages 4–5: after his own persimmon-and-crow verse, 子規も柿が好物であつたらしい。彼の句に 三千の俳句を閱し柿二つ と言ふのがある。そして、その前書に 或日夜にかけて俳句の凾の底を叩きて, Shiki too, it seems, loved persimmons; he has the verse …, and its headnote reads …. The headnote quoted whole, with の between 俳句 and 凾 where the 1909 leaf has none [11].

1938. 宇野浩二, 一途の道. The persimmon verses that Shiki liked best: 柿食へば鐘が鳴るなり法隆寺, which 宇野 dates 明治二十八年, then this verse, 樽柿を握るところを寫生かな and the 釣鐘 verse, かういふ平凡なやうで眞似の出來ない句, verses that seem ordinary and cannot be imitated [12].

The dictionaries today. kotobank's entry for Masaoka Shiki gives the poet's dates, his post at the newspaper 日本, and 寒山落木, and does not quote the verse [22].

The attribution. Shiki's at every witness, with no rival. The thread runs: his manuscript 俳句稿, selected by Kyoshi and Hekigotō and printed with the headnote and a year in June 1909, reissued in 1915, and printed in full in 1925 [1][2][3]; Kyoshi's novel 柿二つ of 1915 and his gloss of 1933 [5][6]; Iwaki in 1925, the school textbooks' notes of 1928 and 1930, 貝島 in 1937, 宇野 in 1938 and the teachers' guides of 1935 to 1939, all naming 子規 [7][8][9][11][12][20]; Blyth in 1950 and 1952 [14][10]; Watson in 1981 and 1997 [18][13]. The date is 1897: the 1909 selection dates the verse by its year column, the verse two above it, つり鐘の蔕のところが澁かりき, carrying 三〇, 明治三十年, and the two beneath, 御佛に供へあまりの柿十五 and this one, carrying 同, the same; the print of the manuscript sets it among the autumn verses of 明治三十年; Watson prints it under 1897 AUTUMN.

What is not a source. The fever is the novel's. Shiki's own headnote has the day and the night and the box; it has no persimmons from 愚庵 and no temperature, and the manuscript sets the 愚庵 verse and this one seven verses apart. The novel is by the man who edited the papers, and by his own preface everything of the mind in it is his imagining; the fever the novel's Shiki noticed for the first time is of that kind. Kyoshi told the verse again in 1933, and that time there is the box, the three thousand and the two persimmons, and no fever. So the anecdote every later telling leans on has one witness, Kyoshi, however many books repeat it, and he told it two ways. The date is not in dispute. That Shiki read haiku by the thousand for the newspapers is what Iwaki and kotobank say.

The verse in English

1950. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 2, Spring, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, page 100, SKY AND ELEMENTS. Under Shiki's 薫風や千山のみどり寺一つ, on the meaning of numbers in haiku: There is another verse by Shiki, afterwards explained, which has this similar contrast: 三千の俳句を閲し柿二つ, Sanzen no haiku wo etsushi kaki futatsu, Examining / Three thousand haiku,— / Two persimmons. The verb romanized etsushi, its Chinese reading [14].

1952. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 4, Autumn-Winter, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, page 133, PERSIMMONS. 三千の俳句を閲し柿二つ, Sanzen no haiku wo kemishi kaki futatsu, Examining / Three thousand haiku: / Two persimmons. Shiki. The verb now kemishi; the dash of 1950 now a colon; then the paragraph from 虚子 quoted above [10].

1958. Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku, Doubleday Anchor. In the Shiki chapter, as one of his poems of the period whose humor needs the story: Haiku! Reading through / three thousand, I have here / persimmons—two!, with the romaji Sanzen-no haiku wo etsushi kaki futatsu and his word-for-word gloss [15].

1964. Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite, The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse, page 165. Looking through / Three thousand haiku / On two persimmons. [16]

1969. Harold Stewart, A Chime of Windbells, Tuttle. In a rhymed couplet: Three thousand haiku: over them I've pored / To earn these two persimmons as reward [17].

1981. Burton Watson, in Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson, From the Country of Eight Islands, Anchor, page 422. I checked / three thousand haiku / on two persimmons, without the headnote; the contents give the Shiki section as tr. watson [18].

1997. Burton Watson, Masaoka Shiki: Selected Poems, Columbia University Press, page 62, no. 91. The 1981 rendering, now under 1897 AUTUMN and with the headnote as title: Working All Day and into the Night to Clear Out My Haiku Box. / I checked / three thousand haiku / on two persimmons; the romaji at the foot, sanzen no / haiku o kemishi / kaki futatsu [13].

2018. Hiroaki Sato, On Haiku, New Directions, in the chapter "Modern Haiku". The headnote, in Sato's words One day, into the night and exhausting the haiku box, and the verse, I've inspected 3,000 haiku on two persimmons, with the romaji Sanzen no haiku o kemishi kaki futatsu; Sato adds that Shiki edited both the tanka and the haiku for the newspaper 日本, so the other box must have contained tanka submissions [19].

The novel in English. Kyoshi's 柿二つ was itself translated, as The Two Persimmons, in 1951 [23].

A reading

I read the verse with its headnote, which is Shiki's and better than any gloss: a day and a night knocking at the bottom of the box, and at the end two persimmons, the reward a sick man allows himself. Kyoshi's night in the novel is a novelist's; by his own word its deeds are fact and its minds are his, and when he glossed the verse himself he left the fever out. So do I: the verse does not need it. The romaji stands: kemishi is Watson's, Sato's and Blyth's second choice, one of the designs writes けみし in kana, and Blyth's etsushi of 1950 is the other reading of the same character, not a different word. A rendering of this line has two things to keep: the count first, the two persimmons last, and nothing between them but the verb.

References

  1. 高浜虚子・河東碧梧桐 編『子規遺稿』第五編, 子規句集, 俳書堂, 20 June 1909, printed pages 114–115; the preface (凡例, dated 9 May 1909) at scan 4; the colophon at scan 97. National Diet Library pid 871911, scan 69. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/871911/1/69
  2. 高浜虚子 編『子規遺稿』, 子規句集, 籾山書店, 1915, printed pages 114–115. National Diet Library pid 937217, scan 71. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/937217/1/71
  3. 正岡子規『子規全集』第3巻, 俳句全集3, アルス, April 1925, printed pages 376–377 (俳句稿 卷一, 明治三十年); the colophon at scan 395. National Diet Library pid 978838, scan 199. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/978838/1/199
  4. 「閲する」, デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/閲する
  5. 高浜虚子『柿二つ』, 新橋堂, 1915: the preface, dated 3 May 1915, scans 4–8; the box, scan 10; printed pages 24–25 at scan 21 (reprinted 春陽堂, 1932: pid 1108188, scan 10). National Diet Library pid 954165. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/954165/1/21
  6. 高浜虚子「古句一百」, 改造, March 1933; reprinted in 高浜虚子『正岡子規』, 甲鳥書林, 1943, printed pages 540–541, with the editor's note on the essay's first printing at scan 289. National Diet Library pid 1069383, scan 278. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1069383/1/278
  7. 岩城準太郎『明治大正の国文学』, 成象堂, 1925, printed pages 40–41. National Diet Library pid 968884, scan 35. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/968884/1/35
  8. 平林治徳『新国文大綱備考』巻2, 立川書店, 1928. National Diet Library pid 1032983, scan 102. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1032983/1/102
  9. 平林治徳『女子国文大綱備考』巻2, 立川書店, 1930. National Diet Library pid 1037204, scans 68–69. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1037204/1/69
  10. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 4, Autumn-Winter, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1952, p. 133.
  11. 貝島慶太郎『富士を仰ぎて』, 1937, printed pages 4–5. National Diet Library pid 1257511, scan 11. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1257511/1/11
  12. 宇野浩二『一途の道』, 三和書房, 1938. National Diet Library pid 1230227, scan 170. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1230227/1/170
  13. Burton Watson, Masaoka Shiki: Selected Poems, Columbia University Press, 1997, p. 62, no. 91.
  14. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 2, Spring, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1950, p. 100.
  15. Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku, Doubleday Anchor, 1958, p. 165.
  16. Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite, The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse, Penguin, 1964, p. 165.
  17. Harold Stewart, A Chime of Windbells: A Year of Japanese Haiku in English Verse, Tuttle, Rutland, Vermont, 1969. Internet Archive chimeofwindbells00stew. https://archive.org/details/chimeofwindbells00stew
  18. Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson, eds. and trans., From the Country of Eight Islands, Anchor Press, 1981, p. 422; the Shiki section credited tr. watson in the contents.
  19. Hiroaki Sato, On Haiku, New Directions, 2018, chapter "Modern Haiku".
  20. 岩波編輯部 編『国語 学習指導の研究』巻4, 岩波書店, 1935, second part, scans 13–15; the same notes in the printings of 1936, 1938 and 1939 (pids 1457749, 1457689, 1458899). National Diet Library pid 1457665. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1457665/1/15
  21. 能勢朝次 編『醇正国語 教授参考書』2学年用, 文学社, 1939, scan 247. National Diet Library pid 1026965. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1026965/1/247
  22. 「正岡子規」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/正岡子規
  23. Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, Kodansha, 1993, the entry "Takahama Kyoshi".

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 · Claude Sonnet (Anthropic), 2026-09-14, citations — every claim tested at its address; one rendering added — Henderson, wrongly said not to carry the verse, does; one correction made

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 三千の俳句を閲し柿二つ (sanzen no haiku o kemishi kaki futatsu)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/sanzen-no-haiku-o-kemishi-kaki-futatsu.