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Pressing Sushi

© Sandra Linville

Pressing Sushi;

After a while,

A lonely feeling.

Yosa Buson, a Japanese haiku poet and artist, wrote this "aha" moment captured in three lines. He could have been writing about a teeth-gritting Santa Ana wind in the San Fernando Valley or a Kansas summer evening after chasing fireflies. Or maybe he was talking about a sushi master smoking a cigarette in the alley behind his restaurant in October. Maybe none of those since he was born in 1716 and died in 1783. However, he does seize the universal glimpse. He, along with Basho, Issa and Shiki, was one of the great haiku masters.

Haiku is a traditional Japanese verse form expressing a single emotion or idea with 17 syllables. These syllables are arranged in lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. Sometimes. Basho's motto was "learn the rules, and then forget them." Many languages don't lend themselves to the metrical break of 5, 7 and 5 and some don't work with the 17 syllables. And Japanese haiku, when translated, doesn't maintain this form either. Traditionally, haiku should also contain a seasonal reference and imply a hidden, deeper meaning behind seemingly common words. Simple words in haiku do not convey cliches, but target an emotion or idea with new vision.

The Santohka school of haiku eliminates the 5, 7, 5 form and presents a singular image in a very short form. American haiku uses this often.

You need to see, smell, taste, touch or feel haiku. When writing haiku, use tangible images, no abstract motifs of love, lust, glory - all those unwieldy Western themes. Shun adverbs. Many haiku writers consult "kigo" lists, lists of season words. "Sajikis" or season word reference books help Japanese writers by providing thousands of entries for each season. In many ways, haiku is drawing a picture or stroking a cat with words. Feel it, don't think it.

Issa fathered his first five children after fifty years of age. After his last child had died, he wrote:

World like a dewdrop

though it's only a dewdrop

even so, even so

Another selection from "Osaka Asahi" published in 1929.

From infant bathtub

to burial tub changing

This utter nonsense!

Basho was the pseudonym of Matsuo Munefusa, considered to be the finest writer of Japanese haiku during its beginning years. He was also a samurai who adopted the name Basho, "banana tree", around 1681 after moving into a hut next to a banana tree. At his death, he was the haiku teacher to 2,000 people. His last written haiku follows.

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