Fine Japanese Calligraphy

The Art of Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase

0
Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, PayPal accepted
Home › Library › Philology › Issa - The snow melts, and the village is full of children

雪とけて村一ぱいの子どもかな yuki tokete mura ippai no kodomo kana Issa - The snow melts, and the village is full of children

雪とけて村一ぱいの子どもかな (yuki tokete mura ippai no kodomo kana) is Issa's verse on the first children out after the snow. He wrote it in his diary early in 1814. Two months later he wrote the town for the village, and that is not the form the world kept.

Japanese Scroll of Issa - The snow melts, and the village is full of children (yuki tokete mura ippai no kodomo kana) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Issa - The snow melts, and the village is full of children雪とけて村一ぱいの子どもかなyuki tokete mura ippai no kodomo kana

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

All Fonts ›

Abstract

雪とけて村一ぱいの子どもかな, the snow melts, and the village is full of children, is a hokku Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 (1763–1827) wrote in his diary, the 七番日記, in the first month of 文化11 (1814), as 雪とけて村一ぱいの子ども哉 [1][2]. Two months later the same diary has it with 町, town, for 村, village, and tries sparrows in place of the children; that year Issa printed the 町 form in an anthology he edited, under the name of another poet, 柯尺, and his own later fair copy keeps 町 [3][4][5][6]. The verse everyone knows, and the one the schoolbooks print today, is the diary's first draft, with 村 [7]. I read 村 as Issa's first word and 町 as his later one, and the verse the world chose as no less his.

Overview

The text. The verse as brushed here, 雪とけて村一ぱいの子どもかな, is the form a Japanese primary-school reader prints today, character for character [7]. Issa's diary wrote it 雪とけて村一ぱいの子ども哉, with the closing kana in the kanji 哉 [2]. The other forms are Issa's own, from his diary's third month, the anthology 『三韓人』 and the fair copy 『淺黃空』, and they differ from the first draft in the word for the place: 雪とけて町一ぱいの雀哉, with 子共 set beside 雀; 雪とけて町一はいの子とも哉; 雪とけて町一ぱいの子供哉 [3][4][5]. Point by point, the forms are set out in the Notes.

The sense. 雪とけて is the snow melting or the snow having melted: デジタル大辞泉 defines 雪解け as 春になって、降り積もった雪がとけること。また、そのころ, in spring, the melting of the snow that has fallen and lain; also that season, a seasonal word of spring [8]; 精選版 日本国語大辞典, under ゆきどけ【雪解】, gives the same, with its first example from a poem collection of about 1244 [9]. The older reading of 雪解, ゆきげ, is in the 万葉集 [9]. 村一ぱい is the whole village, full: 日本国語大辞典 enters いっぱい after a noun as a suffix meaning ある物、場所などが、すっかり何かに満たされる, a thing or a place entirely filled with something, with a first example from 1691, 糸桜腹いっぱひに咲にけり [10]. So the village, as a place, is filled to its edges with children. No dictionary read for this history quotes the verse.

The words. 一ぱい is today's いっぱい, written in the dictionaries 一杯; the cupful and the drink are other senses of the same word, and they do not fit a place [10]. 子ども is the plural that became a word: 日本国語大辞典's note says 元来は「子」の複数を表わす語, originally a word expressing the plural of 子, and that 子共 came into use from about the twelfth century and 子供 in the early modern period [11]. So 子ども, 子共 and 子供 in Issa's witnesses are three spellings of one word. かな and 哉 are one exclamatory particle, the hokku's closing cry; the diary writes it 哉 and the schoolbook かな [2][7]. The village has been read as Issa's own, 柏原 in northern Shinano, where he was born and where he had settled [12]; that is a reading, taken below.

The text in English. The earliest known English rendering, on the Internet Archive's full text and the house's shelf, is R. H. Blyth's, in 1942: The snow having melted, / The village / Is full of children [13]. Harold G. Henderson, in 1958, made the village overflowing and read a flood into it, which later translators took up as the verse's turn; Lewis Mackenzie's And suddenly the whole village / Is full of children! and Henderson's are the two reprinted most often in the books on the Internet Archive's full text. The translations are taken in order below.

The historical record

1814, the first month. The diary, 七番日記. Issa kept the 七番日記 from the first month of 文化7 (1810) to the end of 1818; it holds his own verse and some of his friends' [14]. The manuscript is in private hands. It was printed in 1910 by the 一茶同好会, and again in 1930 by the Shinano education society, whose editor collated the manuscript (本書を復刻するに當り、原本と校合したのが昨年の六月であつた, it was June last year that, for this reprint, I collated the manuscript) and kept its spelling (新校本は送り假名助辭等皆そのまゝに保存して置いた, the new edition keeps the kana endings, the particles and the rest just as they are) [15]. In the 1930 edition the year 文化十一甲戌歳 opens on p. 301, under the running head 新校七番日記 (十一、一), the eleventh year, first month, and the first verse on p. 302 is [2]:

雪とけて村一ぱいの子ども哉

The snow melts, and the village is full of children. The verses after it on the page are about the same snow: 丸い雪四角な雪も流れけり, round snow, square snow, all of it flows away, and 汚れ雪それも消るがいやじやげな, dirty snow: even that, they say, hates to melt [2]. The day column for that month notes, on the ninth, 柯尺來, 柯尺 came [2].

1814, the third month. The diary again. Under the heading 三月, on p. 319 of the same edition, the diary has [3]:

雪とけて町一ぱいの雀哉

The snow melts, and the town is full of sparrows, with 子共, children, set in small type beside 雀, as an alternative the manuscript offers. Next to it stands 十ばかり鍋うつむける雪解哉, ten or so pots set upside down: the snow melting [3]. The edition's index has one entry for each form, 雪とけて村 at p. 302 and 雪とけて町 at p. 319 [16]. The 1970 edition's note to the verse records these as 別案, alternatives, 「町一ばいの子共哉」「町一ぱいの雀哉」 [17]. So in two months Issa had moved the verse from the village to the town, and had tried sparrows for children.

1814. 『三韓人』, under 柯尺's name. 『三韓人』 is an anthology Issa edited and printed in 文化11; its close is dated 文化十一年霜月十九日, the nineteenth of the eleventh month, and its colophon names 信州俳諧寺一茶 [18][19]. A study of 1957 calls it the book that marked Issa's leaving the Edo haikai world [20]. Its verses are set by province, and under 信濃, Issa's own province, the last verse on the page reads, in the woodblock [4]:

雪とけて町一はいの子とも哉　柯尺

The woodblock writes its kana without the voicing marks, so 一はい is 一ぱい and とも is ども: the verse is the diary's third-month 町 form with the children restored. It stands under the name 柯尺, not Issa's [4][18]. The editors of the 1976 『一茶全集』 identify 柯尺 as 善光寺町の俳人, a haikai poet of the town of Zenkōji, and say of this verse: 『三韓人』では一茶自作(文化十一年三月の作)「雪とけて町一ぱいの子ども哉」をこの人の作として出している, in 『三韓人』 Issa presents his own verse (written in the third month of 文化11) … as this man's [6]. No source read for this history says why. The diary records that 柯尺 came to see Issa in the first month of that year [2].

Later. Issa's fair copies. 『淺黃空』 is a notebook in which Issa fair-copied a selection of his spring verses; its 1930 editors judged it a work of his last years [21]. It has, among its snow-melt verses, beside 十ばかり鍋うつく伏せる雪げ哉 [5]:

雪とけて町一ぱいの子供哉

The 1979 『一茶全集』's apparatus to the diary's verse lists the same 町 in a second copy, the 希杖本, and in Issa's 自筆本, which begins 雪げして町一ぱいの, the snow melting, the whole town … [22]. Every witness of Issa's own after the first month of 1814 that was read for this history has 町, and the 1979 apparatus reports 町 in every copy it lists.

1926 to 1942. The verse in print. The earliest prints read for this history are of 1926, and both carry the diary's 村: 『七番日記抄』 sets 雪とけて村一ぱいの子ども哉, and Kawashima Tsuyu 川島つゆ's 『一茶俳句新釈』, verse 一八, sets 雪とけて村一ぱいの子供哉 [23][24]. Kawashima's commentary, read in the 1936 edition, is the earliest read for this history. He hears noise in it: 「村一ぱい」といふ誇張した言葉の中に、彼等の騒音が聽かれるやうな氣がする, in the exaggeration "the whole village" I seem to hear the noise they make, and he places it, with a hedge: これは一茶の郷里の方と見ても差支へないだらう, there is no harm in taking this to be the region of Issa's home [25]. In 1928 Kawai Suimei 河井酔茗 printed it 雪溶けて村一ぱいの子供かな, with the kana かな, and a teaching manual of 1939 has the same form and calls 「村一ぱいの子供」 a bold phrase: 如何にも思ひきつた句である [26][27]. Ogiwara Seisensui 荻原井泉水, in 1942, sets it in Issa's village life: 村に遊ぶ子供たちの有樣を眺めてゐる日もありました, there were days when he watched the children playing in the village [28]. The scholarly editions keep 哉; the popular books, from 1928 on what was read, end the verse in kana.

Today. The schoolbook. A study of 2019 reports the verse in the third-year reader 『新編 新しい国語』 (東京書籍), in the unit 「俳句に親しもう」, as 雪とけて村一ぱいの子どもかな, beside Bashō's 閑かさや and Buson's 菜の花や [7]. That is the form brushed here.

The attribution. The verse is Issa's: it is in his diary twice, in two forms, and in his own fair copy [2][3][5]. Its one printing in his lifetime gave it to 柯尺, and the editors who say so call it 一茶自作, Issa's own [4][6]. Neither the diary nor any other source read for this history says whether 柯尺 knew, or asked.

What is not a source. Shiki's 雪解に馬放ちたる部落哉, which R. H. Blyth set beside this verse in 1950 as one that may be a distant reminiscence of Issa's, is a later poem by another poet [29].

The verse in English

1942 and 1950. R. H. Blyth. In Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, 1942, among Issa's verses on children: The snow having melted, / The village / Is full of children [13]. He kept it in Haiku, vol. 2, 1950, p. 123, and wrote: In three lines, Issa has expressed the life of man and of nature, seen most vividly in spring [29]. Blyth's full of is the first English; later versions keep it (Mackenzie, Addiss) or turn it to fills up, brimful, brimming over, overflowing and flooded.

1957. Lewis Mackenzie. The snow thaws— / And suddenly the whole village / Is full of children! [30]. Mackenzie adds suddenly, which the Japanese does not have. On the Internet Archive's full text it is the version the English children's anthologies of the 1960s to the 1980s reprint.

1958. Harold G. Henderson. An Introduction to Haiku, p. 138: Snow melts, / and the village is overflowing— / with children, with the remark This certainly starts one on a picture of disaster, which is suddenly—and delightfully—smashed by the last line [31]. The disaster is the flood that a snow-melt brings. No Japanese source read for this history reads the verse so; Kawashima hears crowding and noise, not water [25].

1973 to 1997. Daniel C. Buchanan, 1973: Snow having melted, / The whole village is brimful / Of happy children, explained through Issa's own children, who all died young [32]; but Issa did not marry until 1814, at fifty-two by the Japanese count, and the verse is from the first month of that year [1]. Hiroaki Sato, 1981, in one line: Snow gone, the village fills up with children [33]. Steven D. Carter, 1991, dated 1814: Snow starts melting / and the village overflows— / with children [34]. David G. Lanoue, 1991, makes the children the punch line, snow melting village brimming over … kids!, and argues against putting them first, as in Children flood the village of melting snow, which would spoil the joke [35]. Robert Hass, 1994: The snow is melting / and the village is flooded / with children, Henderson's flood made a word [36]. Sam Hamill, 1997: Once snows have melted, / the village soon overflows / with friendly children [37].

2002 to 2018. Haruo Shirane, 2002, from the diary's first month of 1814: Melting snow / and the village overflowing / with children!, with the note Instead of the expected floodwaters, the village is suddenly filled with children [38]. Stephen Addiss, 2009: Snow has melted— / the village is full / of children [39]. Adam L. Kern, 2018: late-thawing snow / and the village overflows … / with little kids!, with the note that snow melting as late as mid-spring typically brings flooding, and that the twist is the children flooding out into the streets [40]. Every English version read for this history renders 村; none mentions 町 or 柯尺.

Today. A rendering should keep the snow, the village and the fullness, and the order that puts the children last: the snow melts, and the village is full of children. Overflowing and flooded add a flood that is Henderson's reading, not the Japanese.

A reading

The verse most people know is the one Issa wrote first. In the first month of 1814 he wrote 村; two months later, in the same diary, he wrote 町, and that year, when he printed the verse, he printed 町, under another poet's name [2][3][4]. His later fair copy keeps 町, and so do the copies the 1979 apparatus reports [5][22]. On the evidence of the witnesses, 町 was his revision, and 村 the draft he left behind. The world took the draft back, from the first prints of 1926 to the schoolbooks today, and I think it chose well: a village is a place one can see whole, and the whole village full of children is a sight, where a town full of them is only a crowd [23][7]. That is my reading; Issa's own was 町.

Where he saw it is not known. Kawashima allowed that it might be Issa's home, and said no more than that it might [25]. I hear in it what Kawashima heard: not a flood, but a noise, a winter's worth of children let out at once. Signed, 典.

Notes

The forms of the verse. Point by point, against the prints and today's schoolbook:

Sources not seen

荻原井泉水 編, 『一茶真蹟集』, 1937 (National Diet Library, https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1172481, served only inside Japan). It reproduces the leaf of the 七番日記 that carries the verse at the manuscript's own size, and would show Issa's hand for the first-month entry.

束松露香 校訂, 『七番日記』, 一茶同好会, 1910, listed in the 国書総目録 under the 七番日記 (国書データベース work 1202444). The first printing of the diary, and so very likely the verse's first printing, which would date the verse's entry into print.

矢羽勝幸, 「一茶の門人柯尺」, 『信濃毎日新聞』, 1993, listed in the bibliography of that year's papers in 『連歌俳諧研究』 87 (https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/haibun1951/1994/87/1994_87_46/_article/-char/ja/). The one study found whose title names 柯尺; it may say who he was and whether anything is known of the 『三韓人』 attribution.

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」, デジタル大辞泉 and other dictionaries and encyclopedias, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/小林一茶-16260
  2. 信濃教育会 編, 『一茶叢書』 第4編 『新校七番日記』 上, 1930, pp. 301–302, scans 169–170, at the National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1186690/1/170
  3. 信濃教育会 編, 『一茶叢書』 第4編 『新校七番日記』 上, 1930, pp. 318–319, scan 178, at the National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1186690/1/178
  4. 『三韓人』, 一茶 編, 文化11 (1814), 国文学研究資料館 copy (ナ3-236), canvas 15, at the 国書データベース. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/200036596
  5. 信濃教育会 編, 『一茶叢書』 第9編 『小篇三十種』 下, 1930, 『淺黃空』 p. 566, scan 77, at the National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1186739/1/77
  6. 『一茶全集』 第3巻, 1976, note to 文化十一年 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12457590
  7. 「小学校での『古典教育』─愛知県岡崎市の場合─」, 『人間と環境』 11, 2019, p. 34, at J-STAGE. https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/uheok/11/0/11_31/_article/-char/ja/
  8. 「雪解け」, デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/雪解け-651606
  9. 「雪解」, デジタル大辞泉 (ゆきげ) and 精選版 日本国語大辞典 (ゆきげ and ゆきどけ), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/雪解-651549
  10. 「一杯」, デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/一杯-434512
  11. 「子供」, デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/子供-503268
  12. 「柏原」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 and ブリタニカ国際大百科事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/柏原-42836
  13. R. H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, Hokuseido, 1942, p. 361, read on the house's shelf.
  14. 「七番日記」, デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/七番日記-520901
  15. 解題, in 信濃教育会 編, 『一茶叢書』 第4編 『新校七番日記』 上, 1930, 「七番日記に就て」, pp. 一〇–一三, scans 16–17, at the National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1186690/1/16
  16. 信濃教育会 編, 『一茶叢書』 第4編 『新校七番日記』 下, 1930, index, pp. 88–89, scan 185, at the National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1186695/1/185
  17. 『古典俳文学大系』 15, 1970, the note to the verse (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12456895
  18. 信濃教育会 編, 『一茶叢書』 第9編 『小篇三十種』 上, 1930, 『三韓人』 p. 306, scan 163, and p. 313, scan 166, at the National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1186732/1/163
  19. 「三韓人」, work record 208344, at the 国書データベース. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/work/208344
  20. 「一茶の政治性」, 『連歌俳諧研究』 13, 1957, at J-STAGE. https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/haibun1951/1957/13/1957_13_1/_article/-char/ja/
  21. 解題 to 『淺黃空』, in 信濃教育会 編, 『一茶叢書』 第9編 『小篇三十種』 下, 1930, scan 69, at the National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1186739/1/69
  22. 『一茶全集』 第1巻, 1979, the apparatus to the verse (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12457587
  23. 荻原井泉水 編, 『七番日記抄』 下, 春陽堂, 1926 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/977720
  24. 川島つゆ, 『一茶俳句新釈』, 紅玉堂書店, 1926, no. 一八 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1019779
  25. 川島つゆ, 『一茶俳句新釈』, 1936 edition, no. 一八 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1107240
  26. 河井酔茗, 『日本立志物語』, アルス, 1928, p. 121, scan 67, at the National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1717243/1/67
  27. 光風館編輯所 編, 『昭代女子国文教授要領』 巻四, 光風館書店, 1939, p. 二三五, scan 140, at the National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1438395/1/140
  28. 荻原井泉水, 『一茶物語』, 1942 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1718385
  29. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 2, Spring, Hokuseido, 1950, p. 123, read on the house's shelf.
  30. Lewis Mackenzie, Autumn Wind Haiku: Selected Poems by Kobayashi Issa, Kodansha International (first published by John Murray, London, 1957, as The Autumn Wind), no. 78, p. 68, read on the house's shelf.
  31. Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku: An Anthology of Poems and Poets from Bashō to Shiki, Doubleday Anchor, 1958, p. 138, read on the house's shelf.
  32. Daniel C. Buchanan, One Hundred Famous Haiku, Japan Publications, 1973, p. 31, read on the house's shelf.
  33. Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson, From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry, Anchor, 1981, p. 390 (the Issa section is Sato's, by the contents), read on the house's shelf.
  34. Steven D. Carter, Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology, Stanford University Press, 1991, no. 1058, p. 421, read on the house's shelf.
  35. David G. Lanoue, Issa: Cup-of-Tea Poems: Selected Haiku of Kobayashi Issa, Asian Humanities Press, 1991, introduction p. 9 and selection p. 16, read on the house's shelf.
  36. Robert Hass, The Essential Haiku: Versions of Bashō, Buson, and Issa, Ecco Press, 1994, p. 153, read on the house's shelf.
  37. Sam Hamill, The Spring of My Life and Selected Haiku, Shambhala, 1997, among the selected haiku (EPUB, no page numbers), read on the house's shelf.
  38. Haruo Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900, Columbia University Press, 2002, p. 940 and note 16, read on the house's shelf.
  39. Stephen Addiss, Haiku: An Anthology of Japanese Poems, Shambhala, 2009, among Issa's verses (EPUB, no page numbers), read on the house's shelf.
  40. Adam L. Kern, The Penguin Book of Haiku, Penguin, 2018, p. 62 and the commentary p. 263, read on the house's shelf.

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Not yet reviewed.

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 雪とけて村一ぱいの子どもかな (yuki tokete mura ippai no kodomo kana)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/yuki-tokete-mura-ippai-no-kodomo-kana.