Fine Japanese Calligraphy

The Art of Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase

0
Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, PayPal accepted
Home › Library › Philology › Bashō - Not spilling the glistening dew, the bush clover, undulating

白露をこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな shiratsuyu o kobosanu hagi no uneri kana Bashō - Not spilling the glistening dew, the bush clover, undulating

白露をこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな (shiratsuyu o kobosanu hagi no uneri kana) is Bashō's verse of bush clover swaying without spilling its white dew. He inscribed it on a painting of his own, dated by the oldest witness to the autumn of 1693. This study follows the particle its earliest witnesses contest, も or を, from the poet's own generation on.

Japanese Scroll of Bashō - Not spilling the glistening dew, the bush clover, undulating (shiratsuyu o kobosanu hagi no uneri kana) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Bashō - Not spilling the glistening dew, the bush clover, undulating白露をこぼさぬ萩のうねりかなshiratsuyu o kobosanu hagi no uneri kana

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

All Fonts ›

Abstract

白露をこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな, the bush clover sways and spills not one white drop of dew, is Bashō's, an inscription on a painting of his own, dated by the oldest witness to the autumn of 1693 at Sanpū 杉風's garden and by a biography of 1762 to Iga in 1694. It is the one verse in the catalogue whose particle its own earliest witnesses contest: his first posthumous collection, his own letter and his disciples' memorial books read も, while Fūkoku 風国's 泊船集 of 1698 reads を and became the received text of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and of most English translators. The scroll brushes the を text, which is early, honest, and the one the twentieth century's leading Bashō philologist defended as the poet's own final word.

Overview

The text. The scroll carries 白露をこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな, 白露 brushed in kana, and the record carries three forms on two words, all three from the Genroku years, and two later ones. The particle. を: in 風国's 泊船集 of 1698, in the 萩 run of the autumn book, no headnote; in two more early books the 1932 and 1947 critical editions name beside it, 翁草 and 木枯, neither available here; in the 芭蕉句選 of 1739, in its autumn book; in the 一葉集 of 1827, whose hokku section prints 畫賛 しら露をこほさぬ萩のうねり哉; and from there in nearly every Meiji and Taishō anthology, in the school readers, in Shiki's list of the master's finely wrought verses, and in Stephenson, Miyamori, Henderson's first book, Yasuda, Blyth, Haldane and Aitken. も: in the 1696 芭蕉庵小文庫, the first collection after the poet's death, しら露もこぼさぬ萩のうねり哉, under 仝 for the poet, in the run that opens 不破にて; in the letter to Mukai Kyorai 去来 in both its transmitted versions; in Kikaku 其角's 三上吟 of 1700, in the headnote of Sengin 專吟, to whom the poet had given the inscribed picture; in 類柑子 (1707) by the 1928 index, the 1947 edition and the Edo commentator 積翠, who reports its headnote 自畫賛; in the 芭蕉翁全傳 of 1762 under the poet's last year; in Shirao 白雄's 寂栞; in Chōmu 蝶夢's 芭蕉翁発句集 of 1774 under the headnote 畫讃; in Shiki's essay on bush clover in the same 1893 book that lists the を form elsewhere; in the 1925 and 1934 editions; as the first form in Ebara Taizō 潁原's apparatus of 1932 and 1947; and in the English of Kuribara 1901, Porter 1911, Henderson 1958, Barnhill, Reichhold and Fitzsimons. The verb. こぼさぬ, does not spill, the clover the agent, everywhere but three books that print Sanpū's headnote over the verse: his own collection, printed in 1785; the 栞集 of 1812; and the 名所図会 of the 1830s, which read こぼれぬ, is not spilled; Ebara took that for the poet's first draft. The 1885 いろは文庫's こやさぬ is the scanner's. A fourth form, 月かげをこぼさぬ, moonlight for dew, is reported from a book called 鳩の水 by 積翠 and, from him, by Ebara, who never saw the book; from 1900 a story is told about it, below. A fifth, 一つゆもこぼさぬ, not one dewdrop, is printed in a 1907 teaching manual and reported by Henderson in 1958 among the other versions; it has no early witness in the record and has the look of a memory crossed with the poet's winter verse 一露もこぼさぬ菊の氷かな. The sense holds across all of them: the clover moves and the dew stays. The scroll's を is neither the house's slip nor a Meiji editor's: it is Fūkoku's text of 1698, two years after the 小文庫, and it became the received text of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and of most English translators. The poet's own hand as the tradition preserves it, the first posthumous collection, Kikaku's memorial anthology, the 1762 biography and the eighteenth-century selection of Chōmu read も. The poem changed once, early, between two disciples' books; which of the two the poet meant last is the one thing not settled here, and the century's leading Bashō philologist, Ebara Taizō, argued in 1948 that を was Bashō's own improvement on a first draft. The meter is five, seven, five: し・ら・つ・ゆ・を, こ・ぼ・さ・ぬ・は・ぎ・の, う・ね・り・か・な.

The sense. The Japanese record comments three times before the translators take it up. 積翠 dates and sources the verse and does not read it. Shiki reads it in 1893 as a perfect rendering of the plant's bearing, 萩の風姿, quoting it with も, and files the を text among the master's finely wrought verses, 繊巧, beside 落ちさまに水こぼしけり花椿, the camellia that spills its water as it falls: the two verses that turn on spilling, one that does and one that does not. Hattori Kōseki 服部畊石 in 1932 reads the choice of verb: こぼれぬ is the more natural, but こぼさぬ gives the clover a will, 有情化, and that is the poem's intent; も, he says, carries a reasoning in it, 理智. Ebara in 1948 reads the choice of particle, を against も, as the poet's move from figure to thing. In English, Aston made it an exclamation: Ah! the waving lespedeza, / Which spills not a drop / Of the clear dew! Stephenson in 1919 gave it a paraphrase he called bungling, how tenderly they cradle the dew-drops and do not let them fall! Miyamori headed it On a Picture and called it a beautiful verse quite worthy of the graceful flower. Henderson read the dew as dew is read in Japanese, whenever dewdrops are mentioned most cultured Japanese immediately associate them with fleeting human lives, and wrote in 1958 that its explanations range from the highly religious to the erotic. Blyth gave it a picture, the bushes move in waves, but the white and red blossoms do not drop the dew or rain that they hold, and added, this verse is to some extent a picture, but only a poet could paint it, and only a poet could see it.

The words. 白露 is white dew, an autumn season word and a solar term. をこぼさぬ is does not spill it, the clover the agent; もこぼさぬ is does not spill even the dew, or the dew, too, it does not spill; もこぼれぬ is even the dew is not spilled. Ebara's 1948 reading of the difference: もこぼれぬ sounds like a figure of speech and loses the concreteness, をこぼさぬ puts the white dew on the branch before the eye. 萩 is bush clover, Lespedeza to Yasuda and Miyamori, one of the seven grasses of autumn, its long stems bending and swaying. うねり is the long undulation of a bough in wind; Blyth for all their swaying, Aitken despite their swaying, Fitzsimons swaying this way that, and Henderson, who took it for the wave that runs over a field, though its waves are never still. かな closes on the swaying. As words the line says: The white dew it does not spill: the swaying of the bush clover.

The verse in English. Aston's rendering of 1899 is the earliest known, and it gives no Japanese, so its text cannot be told. Kuribara Motoi's followed in 1901 on the も text, then Porter's in 1911 on も, Stephenson's in 1919 on を, Miyamori's in 1932 on を, Henderson's in 1933 on を and again in 1958 on も, Yasuda's in 1947, Blyth's in 1952, Stryk's in 1985, Barnhill's in 2004, Haldane's in 2006, Reichhold's in 2008, Aitken's in 2011 and Fitzsimons's in 2022. Six of them read も: Kuribara, Porter, Henderson in 1958, Barnhill, Reichhold and Fitzsimons.

The historical record

1693, autumn, by the record's oldest dating. Bashō, at Sanpū's 採茶庵 in 深川, an inscription on his own painting. The occasion from Sanpū's headnote as the 名所図会 quotes it, from 三上吟's seven years before, and from the headnotes 畫讃 and 自畫賛 the eighteenth-century books give the verse [1][2][3].

Undated. The letter to Kyorai. Quoted whole below, in the 一葉集's text (1827) and the 眞蹟拾遺's, with 白露もこぼさぬ / しら露もこぼさぬ and the two editors' doubts [4].

1696. Fumikuni 史邦 (ed.), 芭蕉庵小文庫, the first collection after the poet's death. In the lower volume, after the prose piece 閉關之説 and before 更科姨捨月之辨, a run of autumn hokku: 盆過て宵闇くらし虫の聲 ばせを, 牛部屋に蚊の聲よわし秋の風 仝, 雀子の髭も黒むやあきのかぜ 式之, then under the headnote 不破にて: あき風や藪もはたけも不破の関 はせを, はつ嵐ふけども青し栗のいが 仝, 初茸やまだ日数へぬ秋の露 仝, しら露もこぼさぬ萩のうねり哉 仝, ひよろひよろと猶露けしや女郎花 仝, 弓かためとる頃なれやふぢばかま 支老, 玉かづらなまりも床し爪根花 史邦. No headnote of its own. The kana forms are a normalization of the woodblock hand (the leaf writes 志ら露 and こほさぬ). The same text in the 1916 博文館 typeset [5].

1698. Fūkoku (ed.), 泊船集, the fourth book, autumn. Under the section head 荻萩: 七株の萩の手もとや星のあき, かゞ小松にて しほらしき名や小松ふし萩すゝき, 萩はらや一夜はやどせ山の犬 with its note on 續みなしぐり and 笈日記, 小萩ちれますほの小貝こさかづき, しら露をこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな, then をみなへし and ひよろひよろと猶露けしやをみなへし. No headnote, no name: a run of the master's own hokku. The same text in the 1909 寸珍叢書 typeset. The を is Fūkoku's, then, and not a Meiji typesetter's [6].

1700. Kikaku (ed.), 三上吟, the seventh-memorial collection. In the memorial run, before a verse by Sengin 專吟, his headnote: しら露もこぼさぬ萩のうねり哉。とからびたる有ましを、ゑさんしてたうびける、七とせ先のいき顏を、見ぬ世の友におもひなして, he inscribed a spare sketch with 白露もこぼさぬ萩のうねり哉 and gave it to me; that living face of seven years ago I now take for a friend from a world I never saw, and then 專吟's verse 畫心のしはめるさまや比巴の花 [2]. So the picture was the poet's gift, and the verse is dated from the gift. The Edo commentator 積翠 quotes the same passage in his 芭蕉句選年考 under the entry 白露をこぼさぬ萩のうねり哉: 元祿六七年の句なるか … 七とせ先の畫讃と有り ○按するに此三上吟は芭蕉七回忌の句なり … ○類柑子に自畫賛と有りて、白菊もと見えたり ○鳩の水には、月かげをと五文字あり, a verse of 1693 or 1694? … 類柑子 has it with the headnote 自畫賛 and, as I read it, 白菊も; 鳩の水 has 月かげを for the first five [7].

1707 and after. 類柑子, 寂栞. 類柑子 (Kikaku's circle, 1707): 白露もこぼさぬ萩のうねり哉 under 自畫讃, by the 1928 index, the 1947 apparatus and 積翠. Shirao's 俳諧寂栞, in the 1928 typeset: among the master's verses a beginner should recite, 春もやゝ氣色とゝのふ月と梅, ほとゝぎす大竹原をもる月夜, 白露もこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな, 煤はきや暮行やどの高鼾, with 道に入より此四句を常に吟じて、初學はまどひ安き故なり。旦暮の龜鑑とすべし [8][9].

1739 and 1774. The two selections that made the popular text. 擲筆庵 Tekihitsuan's 芭蕉句選 (1739), in the lower volume's autumn book: しら露をこほさぬ萩のうねり哉, between the verse on the pine of 當麻寺 and 萩原や一夜はやどせ山の犬 [10]. Chōmu's 芭蕉翁発句集 (1774): 畫讃 / 白露もこほさぬ萩のうねりかな, between 牛部屋に蚊の聲よはき殘暑哉 and 霧雨の空を芙蓉の天気哉 [3]. So the two most-read eighteenth-century selections disagreed, and both forms had Edo currency.

1762. 芭蕉翁全傳, the biography given to Chikujin 竹人. In the entries for the poet's last year, after the Iga verses at 猿雖 Ensui's house and before 九月八日旅立, departed on the eighth day of the ninth month: 其とし伊賀にて名殘の畫賛は、白露もこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな, his parting inscription on a painting in Iga that year was 白露もこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな [11]. Whose the biography is has been argued since 1969; the verse's place in it has not.

1785. Sanpū's collection, 杉風句集, compiled by Baijin 梅人. In the autumn book, under the heading 萩, Sanpū's own headnote: 予閑居採茶庵それか垣根に秋萩をうつし植て初秋の風ほのかに露置わたしたる夕, in my retreat 採茶庵 I transplanted autumn clover to its hedge, and one evening when the first autumn wind and the dew lay over it, then 白露もこぼれぬ萩乃うねり…, then このあはれにひかれて and his own 萩植てひとり見ならふ山路かな. The host's book was printed ninety-one years after the poet's death [12].

1827. 仏兮 and Kochū 湖中, 俳諧一葉集, in both its parts. The hokku section: いろの濱 小萩ちれますほの小がひ小さかづき, 畫賛 しら露をこほさぬ萩のうねり哉, ひとつ家に遊女も寢たり萩と月; and in the letters section the letter to 去来 with しら露もこぼさぬ. One book carrying both forms, the を as the poem and the も as the poet's own words; and the nineteenth century read the poem [4].

Edo, 1834–36. Saitō Chōshū 斎藤長秋, 江戸名所図会, the 採茶庵 entry, quoting 杉風句集. 予閑居採茶庵それかかきねに秋萩をうつしうゑて初秋の風ほのかに露かきわたしたるゆふへ, then 白露もこぼれぬ萩のうねりかな with はせを beneath it, then このあはれにひかれて, drawn by that feeling, and 萩うゑてひとり見ならふやま路かな with 杉風 beneath. The same in a second Edo printing and in the 1927 有朋堂 typeset [1].

1885. Tamenaga Shunsui 為永春水, いろは文庫, a gesaku. 蕉翁 asked for a verse at a gathering, and this one; reception, not record [13].

1893. Shiki, 獺祭書屋俳話, twice, once each way. In the essay 萩: 白露もこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな 芭蕉 / 實によくも萩の風姿を形容したりけりと坐ろに歎賞せらる, how well it renders the bearing of the clover; one cannot help admiring it. In 芭蕉雜談, among the finely wrought verses, 繊巧なる者には: 白露をこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな, between 眉掃を俤にして紅の花 and 行秋や手をひろげたる栗のいが [14].

1900 and after. A legend of the 月影 form. A 1900 essay collection tells how Bashō once wrote a verse on a lord's painting of white clover under the moon, 芭蕉甞て某矦の爲に月に白萩を〓ける幅に賛し, and was corrected [15]. Ichishima Shunjō 市島春城 told it whole in 1922 and again in 1935 as 反故の幅, the spoiled scroll: Kikaku, shown the lord's painting with 白露をこぼさぬ萩のうねり哉 on it, struck out 白露 and wrote 月影 over it; the lord barred him from the house; Bashō, hearing of it, said 月と云へば、露は言外にあるものを、吾は拙かりし, say moon, and the dew is there without being said; mine was the clumsier, and signed the scroll with 上二字は其角の加筆, the first two characters are Kikaku's [16]. No telling found names a source, and 鳩の水, the one book reported to print 月かげを, is not in the national catalogue of premodern Japanese books; it is a legend, and its earliest telling found is 1900.

1904–1935. The commentaries and anthologies. Meisetsu 鳴雪's 評釈 (1904) and Chikurei 竹冷's 講義 (1911) gloss the を form under 讃; Ōmachi Keigetsu 大町桂月's 文章大辞林 (1913), Shimada 島田's 1927 全集, the 1933 児童百科大辞典 under 露と霜, all を; Handa 半田's 1925 season-and-year edition, ○白露もこぼさぬ萩のうねり哉 (元四); Fujii Shiei 藤井紫影's 1935 名家俳句集, 畫讃 白露もこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな [17][18][19][20][21][22]. A 1907 teaching manual gives the verse as an example to teach from in the form 一つゆもこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな [23].

1926, 1935, 1942. Hagiwara Ragetsu 萩原蘿月. In 詩人芭蕉 (1926): 其とし伊賀にて名殘の畫賛は、白露もこぼさぬ萩のうねりかななどとある, the 全傳's sentence, and in 芭蕉の全貌 (1935) he names 竹人の「全傳」 for it. In 芭蕉の精神 (1942), of the ninth month of 1694: 十一日、其角送別の會を無名庵に開く。白露をこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな座右之銘も此頃の作であつた, a placing built on the letter [24].

1928. Katsumine Shinpū 勝峯晋風, 俳諧全句索引, the index to the 日本俳書大系. Under シラツユ, seven lines for this verse and none with を: (類聚)白露もこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな, (書翰)しら露もこぼさぬ萩のうねり哉, (書翰)白露もこぼさぬ萩のうねり哉, (小文)しら露もこぼさぬ萩のうねり哉, (杉風)白露もこぼれぬ萩のうねり哉, (類柑)白露もこぼさぬ萩のうねり哉, (寂栞)白露もこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな, each with its volume and page in the series. The index reports what the series prints, which is the Genroku books and not the popular selections [25].

1932. Hattori Kōseki, 芭蕉句集新講. Under the year 1694, the three forms as three lines: 白露をこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな (木枯), 白露もこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな (小文庫), 白露もこぼれぬ萩のうねりかな (栞集). He notes that Katsumine's three editions date it 1691, sets against that the 全傳's Iga entry and 三上吟's seven years, and concludes 六年或は七年と見るが妥當であらう … まづ七年と見て置く, 1693 or 1694 is the sound view … provisionally 1694, since a painting's inscription need not be of the season it was written in [26].

1932, 1947, 1948. Ebara Taizō, the critical editions and the essay. The 1932 校註 芭蕉俳句集 prints the forms as separate lines, each with its witnesses: しら露もこぼさぬ萩のうねり哉 (小文庫・三上吟), 白露をこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな (翁草・木枯・泊船集), then 杉風's headnote over 白露もこぼれぬ萩のうねり哉 (栞集), then 月かげをこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな (鳩の水), with the notes ○予間居云々—これは杉風の文である and ○月かげを—芭蕉句選年考による. The 1947 新校 芭蕉俳句全集 keeps the order and adds 自畫讃 白露もこぼさぬ萩のうねり哉 (類柑子) and the note ○しら露も 三上吟所載專吟の句の前書にはこの句形で見え. Then, in 俳句周辺 (1948), 潁原 writes the verse as 白露をこぼさぬ萩のうねり哉 and argues: この句も初案は「白露もこぼれぬ」であつたらしい。… 然るにそれが「白露もこぼれぬ」では比喩的な表現にも聞えて、その具象性は甚だ弱くなるのである。そこで芭蕉は、「白露をこぼさぬ」と改めたのであらう, this verse too seems to have had 白露もこぼれぬ as its first draft; but in that form it sounds figurative and loses its concreteness, so Bashō, I suppose, revised it to 白露をこぼさぬ. The scholar who set も first in his apparatus took を for the poet's last word in his prose [27].

1934. 芭蕉名句集 (俳句研究会). Under 萩, the three forms in sequence, 白露もこぼさぬ, 白露もこぼれぬ, 白露をこぼさぬ [28].

The dictionaries today. kotobank's page for 松尾芭蕉 does not quote the verse [29].

The attribution. Bashō's, from the first print. The 1696 小文庫 sets the verse under 仝 after はせを at the head of the run [5]; 泊船集 sets it among the master's hokku [6]; 三上吟 tells of the poet giving the inscribed picture [2]; every later Japanese witness prints 芭蕉; Aston, Kuribara, Porter, Stephenson, Miyamori, Henderson, Yasuda, Blyth, Haldane, Reichhold, Aitken and Fitzsimons all give it to him. The one witness that could be read otherwise cannot be, now that its leaf is open: the 江戸名所図会's 採茶庵 entry quotes 杉風句集, then 白露もこぼれぬ萩のうねりかな with はせを beneath it, then このあはれにひかれて, drawn by that feeling, and 萩うゑてひとり見ならふやま路かな with Sanpū beneath [1].

The date is 1693 on two witnesses, 1694 on one, and 1691 on one. Sanpū's headnote sets the verse in his garden at 深川 in early autumn and gives no year. Kikaku's 三上吟 (1700), the collection for the seventh memorial, has Sengin say that the poet gave him the inscribed picture seven years before, 七とせ先, which 積翠 reckons to 1693 or 1694 and Fitzsimons, with the modern editors, to the autumn of 1693 [2][7][30]. The 全傳 sets a parting inscription of the verse in Iga in the autumn of 1694, weeks before the poet's death, and Hattori followed it [11][26]. Against both stands the letter: 前日は寛々閑對不淺存候。然ば其角も一兩日中には東武歸國申候。左候はゞ今夕餞別一會いたし遣し度候條、丈草など被仰合、暮前より御來駕まち入候, the other day's long talk was a pleasure; 其角 goes back east within a day or two, so I would give him a farewell gathering this evening; please come before dusk, with 丈草 and the others, dated 長月十一日, to 落柿舎主人, with the postscript 尚々今朝の吟御目にかけ申候 and the verse, and here is this morning's verse, then Kikaku's reply 古庵や寝せず起さず萩の花. A second transmission of the same letter, from 芭蕉翁眞蹟拾遺, is dated 八月廿八日 and reads 古庭や寢もせず起ず萩の花. If the letter is the poet's, the verse was made in a morning in Kyoto or Ōtsu, with Kyorai, Jōsō 丈草 and Kikaku at hand, which is why Handa dated it 1691, as Katsumine's editions did; Henderson in 1958 gives the same year [4]. Its own editors doubt it: Numanami 沼波 prints both versions with the note 此書簡何れか一方は傳寫の錯誤ならん, one of the two must be a copyist's error, and Katsumine writes 其角が上方から歸つた年次と符合しない, it does not fit the year 其角 came back from the west. The painting and the gift can be two occasions, as Hattori allowed, and a poet may inscribe one verse more than once. I hold 1693 and Sanpū's garden, on 三上吟 and the headnote, carry the 全傳's Iga inscription as a second occasion, and carry the letter as the dissenting document.

What is not a source. The を of the scroll is not the poet's letter's or the 1696 print's; it is 泊船集's, and it is a text with an early and honest witness, two years younger than the earliest. The Sanpū collection's こぼれぬ is the host's text, printed long after, or the poet's first draft, not the poem as the poet's own books carry it. Hagiwara's first placing is the 全傳's; his second, at 無名庵 in 1694, is built on the letter and contradicts it. The letter dates nothing by year, and its two editors doubt it. The 月影 story is a legend. The 名所図会's layout first seemed to leave the first verse to Sanpū; the leaf gives it to はせを. An earlier draft named the 小文庫's compiler 文邦; he is Fumikuni 史邦, and the error was mine.

The verse in English

1899. W. G. Aston, A History of Japanese Literature, Heinemann, London, page 295, under BASHO, among some of the more lucid. Ah! the waving lespedeza, / Which spills not a drop / Of the clear dew! No Japanese is given [31].

1901. Kuribara Motoi, in The Japan Evangelist, Yokohama, vol. VIII, no. 9, in the series Floral Japan, IV, The Nanakusa. Shiratsuyu mo / Kobosanu hagi no / Uneri kana. / The bush-clover wavers tenderly in the morning breeze, / But the pearls on the leaves enjoy safely their brief happiness. —Basho, with the footnote Translated by Mr. Motoi Kuribara [32]. Ernest W. Clement, the magazine's editor, reprinted the passage in his Japanese Floral Calendar (1905), dropping the romaji and adding Aston's lines as the version concisely put [33].

1911. William N. Porter, A Year of Japanese Epigrams, Oxford University Press, page 67, for 6 September, Dewdrops on the Clover. Shira tsuyu mo / Kobosanu hagi no / Uneri kana; The breeze across the plain / Has waved the wild bush clover, but / The dewdrops still remain [34].

1919. E. S. Stephenson, Japanese Popular Odes, in The Theosophical Path 16, page 163. Shiratsuyu wo kobosanu / Hagi no uneri kana!; Ah! those feathery, willow-like branches of the hagi curving so softly — How tenderly they cradle the dew-drops and do not let them fall! [35].

1932. Asatarō Miyamori, An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern, Maruzen, Tokyo, page 209, no. 106, 畫讃, On a Picture. 白露をこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな 芭蕉; Shira-tsuyu wo / Kobosanu hagi no / Uneri kana; The lespedeza flowers sway and sway, / But not enough to shake down their white dews. With the note on the plant and Aston's lines beneath. Reprinted unchanged in the Dover Classic Haiku (2002), page 163, with Aston's lines beside it [36].

1933. Harold G. Henderson, The Bamboo Broom; Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1934, page 33. Hagi does not spill / The small white dewdrops, though its waves / Are never still; the romaji Shiratsuyu wo kobosanu hagi no uneri kana, with the note that the rhymed version takes uneri for waves like the waves of a wheatfield [37].

1947. Kenneth Yasuda, A Pepper-Pod, Knopf; Tuttle. Shiratsuyu wo / Kobosanu hagi no / Unerikana, Bashō; Lespedezas sway but drop / Not white dews from them [38].

1952. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 4, Autumn-Winter, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, page 101, LESPEDEZA. 白露をこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな 芭蕉; Shira-tsuyu wo kobosanu hagi no uneri kana; The flowers of the bush-clover / Do not let fall, for all their swaying, / Their drops of bright dew. With the paragraph quoted above [39].

1958. Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku, Doubleday Anchor, page 45, dated 1691. Bush-clover does not spill one small white dewdrop—though its waves are never still; Shira-tsuyu mo kobosanu hagi-no uneri kana, with the note Other versions have wo for mo, and hito-tsuyu (one dewdrop) for shira-tsuyu [40].

1985. Lucien Stryk, On Love and Barley: Haiku of Bashō, University of Hawaii Press, number 108. Though bush-clover always stirs, / not one dewdrop falls [41].

2004. David Landis Barnhill, Bashō's Haiku, SUNY Press, number 636, page 139, under Autumn 1693. without dropping / its bright white dew, / a bush clover sways, romaji shiratsuyu mo / kobosanu hagi no / uneri kana [42].

2006. Michael Haldane, in Bashō and the Haikuists, Delphi Classics, 2022. without spilling / white dew – the swaying / lespedeza, with the romaji shira tsuyu o / kobosanu hagi no / uneri kana [43].

2008. Jane Reichhold, Bashō: The Complete Haiku, Kodansha USA, number 849. glistening dew / not spilling from bush clover / still it sways, the lines disentangled from a scan that interleaves two poems on the page; in the notes, shira tsuyu mo / kobosa nu hagi no / uneri kana and 1693—autumn. This verse was a description of the hedge around Sanpū's house [44].

2011. Robert Aitken, The River of Heaven, Counterpoint, THE BUSH CLOVER. shiratsuyu wo / kobosanu hagi no / uneri kana; The bush clover flowers / don't let their white dew fall / despite their swaying [45].

2022. Andrew Fitzsimons, Bashō: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Bashō, University of California Press, no. 805. Glistening dewdrops / from bush clover unfallen / swaying this way that; shiratsuyu mo / kobosanu hagi no / uneri kana; Autumn, 1693. Written at the hut of Sanpū; source 芭蕉庵小文庫 (1696); listed among the poems on Bashō's own paintings [30].

A reading

I read the verse as a painting's inscription, which is what 三上吟, 類柑子, the 全傳 and Chōmu called it, what Miyamori put at its head, and what Blyth felt without being told: the clover in its long sway, and the dew held. The restraint is the poem. On the particle I hold a settled account and an unsettled judgment. The account: を is Fūkoku's, printed in 1698 on a leaf I have read, and it is the text the world has read since, from 芭蕉句選 through 一葉集 to Blyth; も is the first posthumous collection of 1696, the poet's letter, his disciple's memorial book of 1700, the biography of 1762, and every critical apparatus's first line. The judgment: I count も the better-attested and set it first, as Ebara did in his editions, because the early instruments agree on it and one disagrees. But Ebara's 1948 argument is a real one, that a poet who wrote もこぼれぬ first and をこぼさぬ last was moving from figure to thing, and Hattori came at the same verse from the verb and found the same intent; I cannot refute them from the sources, only note that the argument skips the middle form もこぼさぬ, which is the one Ebara's own apparatus puts first. A rendering has one thing to keep: the swaying comes last, after the dew has already not fallen. So: the scroll brushes a text that is early, honest and received, and that the discipline's own master defended as the poet's final word. It is not a mistake.

References

  1. 斎藤長秋 Saitō Chōshū『江戸名所図会』, 1834–36, 採茶庵 entry. National Diet Library pid 2559057, scan 19. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2559057/1/19
  2. 其角 Kikaku 編『三上吟』, 1700, the headnote of 專吟 Sengin; in 勝峯晋風 編『俳人其角全集』, 1935, p. 185. National Diet Library pid 1231577, scan 101. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1231577/1/101
  3. 蝶夢 Chōmu『芭蕉翁発句集』, 1774. National Diet Library pid 2540314, scan 62. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2540314/1/62
  4. 一葉集 消息之部, 1925 typeset. National Diet Library pid 1018232, scan 233, p. 455. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1018232/1/233
  5. 史邦 Fumikuni (ed.), 芭蕉庵小文庫, 1696; 1916 博文館 typeset. National Diet Library pid 950169, scan 251, pp. 470–471.
  6. 風国 Fūkoku (ed.), 泊船集, 1698; 1909 typeset. National Diet Library pid 875664, scan 47, pp. 76–77.
  7. 積翠『芭蕉句選年考』, 1911 typeset, quoting 三上吟 (1700). National Diet Library pid 991655, scan 33, pp. 48–49. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/991655/1/33
  8. 類柑子, 1707 (reported by the 1928 index, the 1947 apparatus and 積翠).
  9. 白雄 Shirao, 俳諧寂栞, in 日本俳書大系, 1928 typeset. National Diet Library pid 1179396, scan 182, p. 329. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1179396/1/182
  10. 擲筆庵 Tekihitsuan 編『芭蕉句選』, 1739, lower volume, autumn; the verse at canvas 40. National Institute of Japanese Literature, 国書データベース, the 八戸市立図書館 copy, BID 100059428. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100059428/40
  11. 『芭蕉翁全傳』, preface 1762, given to 竹人 Chikujin; 樋口功 校註 typeset, 1924, p. 22. National Diet Library pid 977297, scan 15. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/977297/1/15
  12. 杉風 Sanpū『杉風句集』, 梅人 Baijin 編, 1785; the 萩 run at canvas 24. National Institute of Japanese Literature, 国書データベース, the 東京大学総合図書館 洒竹文庫 copy, BID 100411929. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100411929/24
  13. 為永春水 Tamenaga Shunsui『いろは文庫』, 1885. National Diet Library pid 877754, scan 27.
  14. 正岡子規 Masaoka Shiki『獺祭書屋俳話』, 1902 printing. National Diet Library pids 875218, scans 30 and 59.
  15. 松霞子『青年文学時文断片』, 1900. National Diet Library pid 904047, scan 22. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/904047/1/22
  16. 市島春城 Ichishima Shunjō『芸苑一夕話』, 1922; 『文人墨客を語る』, 1935, pp. 524–525. National Diet Library pids 964421 (scan 80) and 1236083 (scan 283).
  17. 内藤鳴雪 Naitō Meisetsu, 評釈, 1904. National Diet Library pid 875663, scan 24.
  18. 角田竹冷 Tsunoda Chikurei, 講義, 1911. National Diet Library pid 875654, scan 43.
  19. 大町桂月 Ōmachi Keigetsu『文章大辞林』, 1913. National Diet Library pid 951697, scan 130.
  20. 島田青峰 Shimada Seihō 編『芭蕉俳句紀行全集』, 1927. National Diet Library pid 1194541, scan 48.
  21. 『児童百科大辞典』, 1933. National Diet Library pid 1720353, scan 281.
  22. 半田良平 Handa Ryōhei, 1925; 藤井紫影 Fujii Shiei 校『名家俳句集』, 1935. National Diet Library pids 920858 (scan 29) and 1259717 (scan 82).
  23. 福沢悦三郎『韻文教授法』, 1907. National Diet Library pid 812034, scan 96.
  24. 萩原蘿月 Hagiwara Ragetsu『詩人芭蕉』, 1926; 『芭蕉の全貌』, 1935; 『芭蕉の精神』, 1942. National Diet Library pids 968903 (scan 366), 1235698 (scan 318) and 1899874 (scan 139).
  25. 勝峯晋風 Katsumine Shinpū『俳諧全句索引』, 1928. National Diet Library pid 1179400, scan 187.
  26. 服部畊石 Hattori Kōseki『芭蕉句集新講』, 1932, pp. 854–855. National Diet Library pid 1145829, scan 163. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1145829/1/163
  27. 潁原退蔵 Ebara Taizō『校註 芭蕉俳句集』, 1932; 『新校 芭蕉俳句全集』, 1947; 『俳句周辺』, 1948. National Diet Library pids 1170439 (scan 82), 1128353 (scan 97), 1128206 (scan 94).
  28. 『芭蕉名句集』, 俳句研究会, 1934. National Diet Library pid 1053042, scan 90.
  29. 「松尾芭蕉」, at kotobank.
  30. Andrew Fitzsimons, Bashō: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Bashō, University of California Press, 2022, no. 805.
  31. W. G. Aston, A History of Japanese Literature, William Heinemann, London, 1899, p. 295.
  32. The Japan Evangelist, Yokohama, vol. VIII, no. 9, 1901, Floral Japan. IV.—The Nanakusa, p. 267. https://archive.org/details/japanevangelist0000unse_a1f2
  33. Ernest W. Clement, The Japanese Floral Calendar, Open Court, Chicago, 1905, pp. 40–41. https://archive.org/details/japanesefloralca00clemrich
  34. William N. Porter, A Year of Japanese Epigrams, Oxford University Press, 1911, p. 67.
  35. E. S. Stephenson, "Japanese Popular Odes," The Theosophical Path 16, 1919, p. 163. https://archive.org/details/IAPSOP-theosophical_path_v16_jan-jul_1919
  36. Asatarō Miyamori, An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern, Maruzen, Tokyo, 1932, p. 209, no. 106.
  37. Harold Gould Henderson, The Bamboo Broom: An Introduction to Japanese Haiku, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1934, p. 33.
  38. Kenneth Yasuda, A Pepper-Pod, Alfred A. Knopf; Charles E. Tuttle, 1947.
  39. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 4, Autumn-Winter, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1952, p. 101.
  40. Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku, Doubleday Anchor, 1958, p. 45.
  41. Lucien Stryk, On Love and Barley: Haiku of Bashō, University of Hawaii Press, 1985, no. 108.
  42. David Landis Barnhill, Bashō's Haiku, SUNY Press, 2004, no. 636, p. 139.
  43. Michael Haldane, in Bashō and the Haikuists, Delphi Classics, collected 2022 (rendering first published 2006).
  44. Jane Reichhold, Bashō: The Complete Haiku, Kodansha USA, 2008, no. 849.
  45. Robert Aitken, The River of Heaven, Counterpoint, 2011.

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; a couple of corrections made — a closing phrase's characters corrected, and an elided clause restored; its Sato doubt refuted from the 1981 copy held here

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 白露をこぼさぬ萩のうねりかな (shiratsuyu o kobosanu hagi no uneri kana)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/shiratsuyu-o-kobosanu-hagi-no-uneri-kana.