Winter Haiku
Matsuo Bashō
trudging through the fallen snow –
seventeen footsteps
– Ink
Suggested listening:
Sakamoto Ryūichi
“Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence”
Originally published on Instagram
December 25, 2022
Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) is regarded as the greatest of all Japanese haiku masters. After spending his early life among the feudal and intellectual elites of Kyoto and Edo (modern-day Tokyo), Bashō renounced city living and set out to wander the wilderness of Japan, where he documented his adventures in a thousand masterpieces of seventeen syllables each.
In Japanese, haiku syllables (‘mora’ for the purists) are called ‘onsetsu’ (音節) or ‘on’ (音). In simple terms, the abbreviated ‘on’ means “sound.” The character for ‘on’ can also be pronounced “oto” – such as when it’s used in the compound word ‘ashioto’ (足音), which combines ‘ashi’ (“foot”) and ‘oto’ (“sound”) to mean “the sound of footsteps.”
Note that the footsteps in the illustration above — all seventeen of them — are this character for “syllable” and “sound” depicted in classical script: 音…音…音…
It’s been blizzarding hard here, and I’ve been trudging through the snow myself.
Season’s best to everyone. Peace and love and all that good stuff.
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