三千の俳句を閲し柿二つ sanzen no haiku wo kemishi kaki futatsu Shiki - Three thousand, Haiku to examine, Two persimmons
This is a philological study of the haiku 三千の俳句を閲し柿二つ (sanzen no haiku wo kemishi kaki futatsu), given to Shiki and dated 1897. It traces the anecdote every English teller repeats — the fever, the persimmons from 愚庵 — to its one witness, his disciple 虚子's novel, and examines the verse's own headnote and its four English renderings.
Abstract
三千の俳句を閲し柿二つ, three thousand haiku read through, and two persimmons, is Shiki's, dated 1897 by the year column of his own collection as Kyoshi 虚子 printed it in 1915. The verse's headnote, in Shiki's own papers, tells only of a day and night at the bottom of the haiku box; the fever and the persimmons from 愚庵 that every later teller adds come from Kyoshi's novel of the same year, the anecdote's one witness. Blyth rendered the verse twice, in 1950 and 1952, and Henderson and Watson followed; Watson alone gives the headnote and the date in English.
Overview
The text. The scroll carries 三千の俳句を閲し柿二つ, and every witness has these words. The only split is in the form of one character: 閲 in the modern books and on the scroll, 閱 in every prewar print, one character in old and new 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. No witness varies a word. 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, 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's novel gave it a night: the persimmons from 愚庵, the letter, the box, the fever [1]. 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 [2]; the 1930 textbook and Blyth in 1952 retell the novel's night [3][4]; 貝島 in 1937 reads it as a persimmon lover's verse and quotes the headnote [5]; 宇野 in 1938 files it among the plain verses no one else could write [6]. 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 [4]. Watson in 1997 gives the headnote in English and lets the verse stand [7]. 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. 閲し is 閲する, to look through, to examine, the selector's verb; Blyth examining, Watson checked [4][7]. 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 own papers do, 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 to the newspaper 日本 for selection were kept, and the sound of the last of them [8]. Watson renders the headnote Working All Day and into the Night to Clear Out My Haiku Box [7]. 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 [9][4]; Henderson followed in 1958 [10] and Watson in 1997 [7], the only translator to give the headnote and the date in English.
The historical record
1897. Masaoka Shiki 正岡子規, in his own record, with its headnote. The verse under 柿, 明治三十年 by the year column of his collection as printed in 1915 [8].
1915. Takahama Kyoshi (ed.), 子規遺稿, 子規句集, 籾山書店. 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 verse with its headnote and its year, in the poet's own collection [8].
1915. Takahama Kyoshi, 柿二つ, a novel, 新橋堂; reprinted 春陽堂 1932. 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 scene every later account tells [1].
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 [2].
1930. 平林治徳, 女子国文大綱 巻二 備考, a school textbook's notes. 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 (the novel's ten a day is not repeated here) [3].
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 1915 leaf has none [5].
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 [6].
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 [11].
The attribution. Shiki's at every witness, with no rival. The thread runs: his own papers, edited by Kyoshi and printed in 1915 as 子規遺稿, where the verse sits under 柿 in the 植物 section of 子規句集 with its headnote and a year [8]; Kyoshi's novel 柿二つ of the same year, which sets the verse in a night of October 1897 [1]; Iwaki in 1925 and 1926, a school textbook's notes on the novel in 1930, 貝島 in 1937 and 宇野 in 1938, all naming 子規 [2][3][5][6]; Blyth in 1950 and 1952 [9][4]; Watson in 1997 [7]. The date is 1897: the 1915 遺稿 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; 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 1915 collection sets the 愚庵 verse and this one side by side without connecting them. The novel is by the man who edited the papers, and every later telling, Iwaki's, the textbook's, Blyth's, leans on it; so the anecdote has one witness however many books repeat it. The date is not in dispute: 1897 by the year column and by Watson. 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 [9].
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 [4].
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 [10].
1997. Burton Watson, Masaoka Shiki: Selected Poems, Columbia University Press, page 62, no. 91. Under 1897 AUTUMN, 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. The one translator who gives the headnote and the date [7].
Today. The house page carries no English. A rendering of this line has two things to keep: the count first, the two persimmons last, and nothing between them but the verb.
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. 虚子's night is a novelist's and it is probably true, since he was in the house; but the verse does not need the fever. The romaji stands: kemishi is Watson's and Blyth's second choice, and Blyth's etsushi of 1950 is the other reading of the same character, not a different word.
References
- 高浜虚子『柿二つ』, 新橋堂, 1915, printed pages 24–25 (reprinted 春陽堂, 1932). National Diet Library pid 954165, scan 21; pid 1108188, scan 10. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/954165/1/21
- 岩城準太郎『明治大正の国文学』, 1925, printed pages 40–41. National Diet Library pid 968884, scan 35. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/968884/1/35
- 平林治徳『女子国文大綱 巻二 備考』, 1930. National Diet Library pid 1037204, komas 68–69. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1037204/1/69
- R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 4, Autumn-Winter, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1952, p. 133.
- 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
- 宇野浩二『一途の道』, 1938. National Diet Library pid 1230227, scan 170. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1230227/1/170
- Burton Watson, Masaoka Shiki: Selected Poems, Columbia University Press, 1997, p. 62, no. 91.
- 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
- R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 2, Spring, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1950, p. 100.
- Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku, Doubleday Anchor, 1958, p. 165.
- 「正岡子規」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/正岡子規