Winter haiku

.
Snow flakes flutter -
only the huddled seagulls
for company

The Sound of Water (III): Waterfalls and Gorges 1. Sandankyo

When a river gains enough power, it wages a battle against rocks and mountains, thus creating waterfalls and gorges. The teeth of water are soft, but they cut deep into the rocks, and their battle songs are sharp and loud. Japanese gorges are small in scale compared with the Grand Canyon or Yosemite Valley, but nonetheless they are superb in their beauty. Besides, no other country in the world has so many gorges, and each of them has a different physical shape and structure.
Sandankyo is a granite gorge in the north of Hiroshima prefecture. Granite is hard, so it puts up brave resistance against water. You enter this gorge via a suspension bridge hanging over a foaming river, which raises not only a frightening noise but also a wind that rocks you from below. This wind is most welcome in summer and makes you realize that you are entering a very different world from that of your daily life. A sharp ascent soon begins and every time you stop to breathe, you enjoy a different view. At one point, the river runs through a channel that looks like a narrow gutter, angry because it is confined. In spring thaw, this is where the river shouts as loudly as a full-blown jet engine before it plunges into a deep pool. A short walk from here takes you to a granite precipice where two small waterfalls come down side by side, making very soft music. That is probably why these waterfalls are called the ‘Two Sisters’. Thirty minutes’ walk on a relatively easy slope takes you to another cascade called ‘Akadaki’. This name derives from the unusual colour of its rocks – subdued red. One time, I was so thirsty that I had a sip from this waterfall. The clear water was very tasty, but I detected some mineral, which I could not identify.
Another thirty minutes’ walk takes you to a most scenic spot called ‘Kurobuchi’ — a huge dark pool, surrounded by walls of granite. If you want to walk further up the gorge, you will have to climb up one of these walls and then down to the river on the other side. But there is a boat service for those who do not fancy this. If you tug a rope at your end, a boatman will emerge from a hut at the other and row you up the river. The pool is so deep and dark that you cannot see the bottom. It must be the lair of giant fishes, or a hideout, perhaps, for a kappa or a dragon. This is the only spot in the whole gorge where silence prevails. I can never forget the gentle tapping of the oars when the boatman rowed me up the river.
An hour’s walk from here takes you to a point where two branches of the river meet. There used to be an inn at this point, and once when I stayed there, I could not sleep at all because the noise of the river kept me awake all night. If you walk up one of the branch rivers, you will soon come to ‘Nidandaki’, a waterfall that used to leap down in two steps. Now it has only one step for a typhoon destroyed its upper level. Again, you have to use a boat to reach this spot, but this time, you must ascend the river by pulling yourself along on a fixed rope. Just before you get to the waterfall, you pass through a crevice in the granite with a narrow opening at the top. This spot is called ‘Sarutobi’ for the opening above is so narrow that monkeys can easily jump across. The dramatic change of light as you leave this crevice and come into sight of the waterfall is something I can never forget. If you go up the other branch of the river, you will eventually arrive at the waterfall that gave the whole gorge its name, since this waterfall leaps down in ‘sandan’, three steps. The first step is a single leap of water, but the second step consists of two small, short cascades. The final step is a waterfall of amazing width and height. You can hear different things in its sound, as complex and varied as an orchestra. Alas, they built a dam above this waterfall, and ever since then, it has sounded as if it were weeping, and its rocks are now covered with ugly moss. The deep pool I mentioned earlier has been affected, too. When I last saw it, its colour was no longer so black. I suppose that the river must have lost its power and the pool now filled with stones. And this is not the only loss: the train service to the gorge was abolished about ten years ago. The bus may be faster, but we no longer have the luxury of enjoying river scenes from windows in a train.

The waterfall says,
‘Hop, step and jump’, leaping down
From the granite rock.

From a dark crevice
To the sun-lit waterfall —
My eyes blinded out.

This reddish cascade,
Does it gush out from the womb
Of the heated earth?

The smell of brook trout
Cooking on the charcoal fire,
Too hard to resist.

On the old platform,
I wait for the local train
That never arrives.

Genjuan (formerly Kikakuza) International Haibun Contest: LAST MINUTE!

The deadline (January 31st) for entries in this year’s Genjuan (formerly Kikakuza) International Haibun Contest 2012 is approaching fast! This is still Japan’s only international haibun opportunity. Please submit up to three pieces, as per guidelines on the dedicated page (link under ‘Pages’ at top right). Free entry. Good luck!

LAST MINUTE! (See Comments below)

First ice

.

This, the shrine wood

Where icicles chime :

A New Year rumour begins.

 

……….. (Atago Jinja, Mt. Atago, 4.1.12)

2011 in review (report from WordPress)

WordPress.com prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 18,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Lunar eclipse

(Kitasaga, 10.12.11)

Aroma

(Ogi Pass, Ohara, 4.12.11)

please click the photo to read the haiku more easily

The Sound of Water (II): Brooks and Water Mills

.. Several streams of spring water come together, running down a steep mountainside, soon forming a brook, which entertains us with its beautiful cantata as it courses between mossy rocks. Its soprano is like the singing of a dreaming girl, while its bass is like the wailing of a lover. The passing wind also adds a voice, sometimes resembling the soft whispering of a mother while her baby is asleep, and at other times, sounding harsh like a father’s scolding of a mischievous child. Bird songs also provide accompaniment from time to time. The vivace of spring warblers announces the arrival of warm weather. Cuckoos put us to sleep in summer with their monotonous andante. Shrikes warn us with their autumn staccato to prepare for frost and snow. Crows and owls frighten us in winter with their fortissimo. For me, brooks are the source of endless musical pleasures.
.. Here I am reminded of Wordsworth’s description of a ‘rill’ that runs by his birthplace:
…. Oh, many a time have I, a five-years’ child,
…. A naked boy, in one delightful rill,
…. A little mill-race severed from his stream,
…. Made one long bathing of a summer’s day —
.. When I visited Cockermouth, I was impressed by his birthplace, a sturdy stone building, probably the largest in the whole town, but I did not think the rill was deep enough for swimming, nor could I spot the mill. Probably this mill had gone long before and the rill had lost much of its water.
.. I also found ‘a playmate’ in a brook when I was evacuated from Tokyo to a small country village in Hiroshima. I was a middle-school boy, and spent most of my summer days fishing in the brook running by my house. The water was so clear that I was able to see every stone and pebble at the bottom. I could also see fish swimming against the stream, but I soon learned they were not easily caught. In a brook like this, you should hide yourself behind a tree or a rock and cast your line in the foaming part of the stream. If you do this, before the bait sinks to the bottom, you will have a fish hooked on your line. However, I had to spend more than a year to learn this trick. Another pleasure I found in the brook was the fireflies that came out in early summer. I saw them flying in their hundreds above the brook, blinking their lights in unison. They would also sometimes form balls of light on grass leaves. However, it was very sad to see a few latecomers flying away into bamboo thickets at the end of the season. They were like ghosts returning to their graves.
.. As Wordsworth mentions, brooks are often dotted with water mills. Unlike English mills, which are made of stone, mills along Japanese brooks are wooden shacks, and instead of damming the brooks, water is led to the mills via wooden or bamboo pipes. The upper side of these pipes is open, so that you can see the water gleaming as it passes though them. It always amazes me how silently the water can run through the pipes. The mills are equipped either with waterwheels, or with four arms, each with a kind of bucket at the end. While the latter contraptions are more primitive, musically they make more interesting sounds. As the pipe water drops, waterwheels turn with a continuous noise like the rustling of a brush against rough cloth, but the rotating arms provide an intermittent sound as each bucket suddenly dumps its load. In either case, the mills are equipped with wooden hammers that pound wheat or rice. As the hammers rise they squeak, and as they come down, they surprise us with their heavy pounding noise. This is repeated night and day, but the rhythmical sound of such old-fashioned mills never tires our ears.

…. Singing to herself,
…. A girl crosses a log bridge,
…. Leading to a mill.

…. Four flat stepping-stones
…. Split a brook into five streams,
…. Forming a quintet.

…. There was once a boy
…. Who loved to fish in a brook —
…. Swift as a ninja.

…. Dammed by a brocade
…. Of golden and scarlet leaves,
…. The brook stays a while.

…. The brook hibernates,
…. Its stream hardly audible,
…. Laid in snow and ice.

Formal Renku Performance

A number of Hailstone Haiku Circle poets went to Kitano Tenmangu Shrine on October 29th to watch a performance of traditional renku and then a shirabyoshi dancer (Yuriko Inoue) give her own dramatic version of some of the stanzas.  The event was part of the autumn Kokumin Bunkasai being held in Kyoto this year. The sosho (editor) was Seiji Kobayashi and the shuhitsu (scribe), Tadakatsu Wada. In the audience were Raffael de Gruttola, John McAteer, Martin Barrow, amongst others. The last two links (no. 35 & 36) were:

ほのぼのと　明るさ闇(やみ)の　花篝（はなかがり） Dimly perceived / light & shadow / from the night cherry-blossom braziers  (by sosho)

笙（しょう）横笛の　音色（ねいろ）のどけし  The notes of a flute and a bamboo mouth-organ / in tranquil harmony  (by shuhitsu)

Three mid-November haiku

Today is a quintessentially autumn day in Japan – not so much thanks to the unseasonably warm weather – but because it’s shichi-go-san: the old rite of passage that is a highlight of autumn for children (albeit postponed to the weekend), when they dress up in hakama and kimono and visit the shrine.

Being a landmark mid-autumn date, what better time than to pen a few haiku?

Physical coldness and longer hours of darkness subtly change what our bodies sense, how people behave with each other, and, of course, change how most living things look. These three haiku address each of these things in turn as they’re happening at our place.

… Kitchen window
… Ajar to night’s
… Tart darkness

… … Nights
… … Of no cicadas now,
… … And saved conversations

……  …… Figs aheavy
….. . …… Apples at last, and chalkiness
……  …… On the vine leaves

If the last one sounds implausibly pastoral, it’s referring to our plant-packed balcony.

*

Click on the picture to read the poem

From the Icebox inbox – 23

star window mirror star                                           Dana Garrett

ripple of light -
in the silence I hear the rose
unfold its petals                                                       Janak Sapkota

autumn leaves -
the slow striptease
of the red maple                                                      Michael Henry Lee

In the black cat’s
changing eye
September moon

.. 黒ねこの
.. 変る目の色
.. 9月の月                                                                  lawrence jiko