On Olive Island

Mark and I were in Shodoshima for a few days just before Stephen went. The hotel we stayed in stands very close to a number of soy-sauce factories. We rented bicycles at the hotel and pedaled off to the harbor. The next day we set off again, visiting three soy-sauce factories, a Dutch pancake café, a sake brewery, and a small factory where thin somen noodles are made by hand. It was a lovely sunny day.

Here and there, you will find tiny, artisanal somen shops in Shodoshima. One such shop, called “Nakabu-an,” allowed us to try our hand at making somen as we toured the facility.

Airing somen

In the spring breeze –

Window-blind shadows

Having made a batch of somen, we bought a few of the house products, including “Olive somen” (pale green noodles flavored with Shodoshima olive paste).

Over toward the port at Sakade, we saw two large hotels, both of them totally abandoned, open to the weather. One was named “Shodoshima Royal Hotel” and obviously had once featured a fine Japanese garden, private beach, and a harbor-side swimming pool. To our amazement, doors and windows alike were wide open. Anyone might step inside.

The hotel was a tumbledown affair, partly looted, but a fancy painting remained on the lobby wall, looking down on sofas and armchairs — everything in place, just as the management had left it, maybe six months ago, maybe a year. (The policeman who pulled up to check us out couldn’t say how long.) At the entrance to the hotel, we found five packages of somen with a curious label: “Arigato.” Someone had left them on the stoop, with no indication why. Who or what was being thanked?

A curtain sways

In a forsaken hotel –

Pink azaleas

A soft breeze blew through the greenery, and we imagined the glory of times past. A favorite haiku of Basho’s came to my mind:

The summer grasses –

Of brave soldiers’ dreams

The aftermath

(夏草や　兵どもが　夢の跡)

A bus from the hotel took us up Kankakei Mountain the morning after we arrived on the island. The mountains there are carpeted in variegated green — ranks of trees, staggered in their distance, slope after slope. We reached the mountaintop quickly enough, and it was not yet crowded. Below lay the sea, at the end of a long swath of new-leafed trees veiled in morning mist.

Surveying the sea

From the mountaintop –

Green gradations

IV

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a cold spring morningー

the crows

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花筏 （はないかだ）Helwingia

The tiny ｆlowers of this plant bloom from the central part of the leaf surface. It looks as if the flowers are carried on a green raft, so it is called (花 hana = flower) + (筏 ikada = raft) or helwingia. I had only known it from the pages of an illustrated book; but one day recently, I was strolling in a park near my house and chanced upon this flower. In this season, a lot of colorful flowers bloom in profusion, so who even notices the helwingia ? But one small insect approaches it …

a poor talker, though

blessed with a few good friends -

the secret helwingia

Flown petal

(April 9) I had wanted to join the Yoshino event and had a plan to visit the Kansai area around that time, but my schedule didn’t allow. Living in Shikoku, I often drive through deep mountainsides between Matsuyama and Imabari. On one such day, when I saw cherry blossoms in full bloom here and there in the mountains, I yearned for the Yoshino haike.

Deep in Shikoku

I drive amidst the blossoms

Warping toward Yoshino

(April 13) Once in Kansai, I travelled to Kyoto one evening after work, hoping to glance at the cherry blossoms. It was raining, occasionally downpouring, and didn’t stop till night. But Entokuin, where Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s wife stayed for the final part of her life, is a breathtakingly beautiful space, and it was made all the more so by the rain. This garden features a dry pond. On that day, it had real water in it, though, because of the heavy rain. A guide there said this was most uncommon.

Garden of Nene -

Her imagined pond filled

With spring night rain

The guide continued, “This tree in front of us was totally naked until a few days ago and I had to explain to people that it was a maple. But, see, now it’s all light green with shoots!”

An invisible tree -

Fresh leaves came into bud

In two nights

(April 22) Back in Shikoku, I tried to write for the Icebox, but an urgent job rushed in. I had to translate thirty pages of a yakiniku menu, and my brain became utterly filled with Korean barbecue terms.

Spring messenger bird,

Smell of grilled meat wafts through

The cherry blossom-viewing

(May 5) Finally I got some time to relax during Golden Week, when intentionally I didn’t go anywhere. That was when I found the Yoshino report, Walking on Petals and Cloud.

Just roam on the net:

How easily I can join

The pleasant gathering

Walking on Petals and Cloud

花あれば西行の日とおもふべし ..（Genyoshi Kadokawa）

Grey dawn -
warblers song resonating
as cherry petals scatter .. (Mari Kawaguchi)

A quiet morning after rain. Nine Hailstones rolled out of the local bus at Nakasenbon to find the storms had blown pink.

trailside stone table
forgotten in Yoshino mist
adorned with petals .. (John McAteer)

Even the bush-warbler
Sounds bedraggled -
Silver-beaded trees. .. (Tito)

Beside the site of Katte Shrine, where Yoshitsune’s mistress, Shizuka, had once been forced to dance, we were served spring herb kamameshi. Then the haike began in earnest: uphill to the Kamisenbon woods, still in flower.

From green-lit Yoshino
a myriad coloured trees -
how vast the mountainside .. (Akira Kibi)

Mikumari Jinja, where the water deity resides, was looking at its very best, with the venerable courtyard shidare-zakura in full bloom.

felt with my eyes closed
the mercy of
a weeping cherry-tree .. (Reiko Hayahara)

A steep slog to another shrine, Kimpu Jinja, favoured by the mountain ascetics entering the sacred precinct of the Omine Range. To one side, in a dark grove, the place where Yoshitsune had hid from his pursuers.

Deserted tower -
it brings to mind
that ancient warrior,
his back to the wall .. (Akito Mori)

The party separated in the Gyoja-do; only four of us continuing on uphill through cloud-wrapped forest. The rest returned home. Over a col, and we emerged into the steep secrecy of Okusenbon, the mist now clearing. Utter silence; a tiny mud-walled, bark-roofed hut, where the poet-priest Saigyo had spent three years of his life.

吉野山桜が枝に雪散りて　花おそげなる年にもあるかな .. (Saigyo)

Cupping springwater
Deep in Mt. Yoshino -
Blossom-in-mist .. (Yoshiharu Kondo)

Drinking deep draughts from the Kokeshimizu spring, filling our water-bottles … Now envigorated, we scampered back over the col, and down to the road, but found we’d just missed the last bus! Our early evening hike back down through the gently-scattering cherries of Kamisenbon, lights beginning to twinkle around the great Zao-do temple far below: this was epiphanous for all of us.

Thank you, o daughter of the blossoming cherry. Will you come out? Will you come out?

a bath chimney
trails its woodsmoke …
spring village eve .. (Keiko Yurugi)

III

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a spring day we had hoped forー

ricefields & mountains

mountains & ricefields

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綴 Neck-plates

Lectured to 90 foreign students yesterday on the subject of haiku. One example poem used:

伏勢の綴にとまる胡蝶かな fushizei no shikoro ni tomaru kochou kana

Perched on the neck-plates

Of the warrior in ambush -

A butterfly! ……… (蕪村 Buson)

We agreed this haiku has great tension and a wonderful image contrast. I wonder what Japanese feel about mentioning the word ‘ambush’ in the translation? Is it implicit in the word 伏勢? Does it improve the haiku?

Things spring

Went to Niagara Falls and Washington, DC last week with 18 Japanese, as their translator and America-interpreter: “What is that building over there?”, “Why doesn’t this place have chopsticks?”, and more. Pleasure first at the Falls, then work in the capital. In Canada, I saw no sakura, and the Niagara River down-falls was frozen into huge blocks of ice. Cold indeed. However, in Washington, it was mid-National Cherry Blossom Festival, and them pink things were everywhere. Fabulous. A lot of rain, but none of it in the downpour mode, thank goodness. I couldn’t find the time to write, so on the flight back (13 hours, not one movie worth watching, so it was United’s channel 9 all the way) I penned these, then reworked them at home.

Lincoln and I and rain;

he’s gone, I anon,

sakura forever

Indeed, the Lincoln Monument is fantastic, a must see.

pink views in raintime

the Mall, the art, the power

all bow to sakura

The Tidal Basin is the place to see ten million petals in one glance, but the view from the Mall is equally amazing.

Here is a haiku of the sort which can be read in any line order you please:

in the pink

a light rain

my heart sings

my eyes shine

springtime sakura.

This haiku could take place anywhere in the world where there’s a cherry tree:

petals whorl ’round me

wind caressed, rain kissed,

look up, pink turning to green

It marks the end of the pink season. Returning to Kyoto, I am just in time to see its version of the season, and found this on my lips:

old capital’s, new capital’s

sakura, awesome

all the same

April

In the Hira Mountains, beech trees will soon come into leaf, high up above our steps.

At the mountain foot, a lot of edible wild plants - white, yellow, green, brown…

trail

on the unmelted snow -

morning sunrays

I

red or yellow arguing over the first tulip

spring blues

the cherry blossom party rescheduled. the trees aren’t cooperatingーthey haven’t come to a consensus. the city has hung lanterns in the supposedly good locations; but for now, the decorations look better than what is expected of the scenery.

morning rainー

wild ducks standing

in the shallow river

Haibun-in-progress

WHEELS INTO WINGS

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First breath of spring. Cycling down the Katsura River; wisps of green willows coming out. I’m winding through a stretch of illegal allotments when, descending from above towards me, it zo-o-o-o-oms over my head: a motor paraglider! Banks twice sharply … and drops down into an empty ground. I turn my bicycle around and race back.

A crowd of five – one, a dog – has gathered there. We watch him switch off the fan motor on his back, unclip and then lay out the red and white sail. 35 kilograms for the motor pack, and not much extra for the parachute and strings: this is what I’m told. His name – he dropped into my life – Mr. Fukiage, meaning ‘Blown Aloft’. I receive a card from a smiley face with greyish hair and give him mine. He immediately seems to expect of me discipleship. He’ll call me before the next paraglide rally, so I can try it out. I thank him and cycle back upstream, imagining I am flying along above myself looking down.

Outside the homeless person’s hut

both cat and crow asleep -

spring dust

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~≈~

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A fortnight later, at my computer, editing photos of a fly-tipping site: the phone rings. Mr. Blown-Aloft says he should be at the river ground at 3:30-ish. The spokes of my bicycle wheels glint in the sun of a cherry-blossom day. I’m almost there, when suddenly, as an angel with long, long wings slightly bent, he swoops out from behind a tree-top, and rises fast over my head to 100 feet. Did he see me wave? I cycle on. When I get to the ground, he’s already on his landing approach, specially for me.

Straps are tugged and adjusted to better fit my larger frame. And now I have all the strings in my hands, coded into clusters of red and yellow and blue. Through tugs of the inflating sail I can become my own marionette! But what of the wind? Mr. Blown-Aloft has planted his own pole-top windsock on a grassy bank at the edge of the ground. “Watch it!”, he says. It begins to swim. But B-A tells me too much and all at once – and, time and again the nylon fills, tugging me upwards, only for one tip of my wing to inexplicably wilt, upset the balance, causing the parachute to rear up on its end, before collapsing to the ground in a limp tangle, which my teacher kindly realigns.

Then, once – just once – the sail fills evenly, and with a tug on the blue ropes, I hold it straight. What young eagles on their cliff-side eyrie must feel when they stand with their downy wings open testing an updraft, I now feel leaning back with all my strings tautened by the wind. It would only be a hop to travel 50 yards or more. One hand on my harness, Mr. Blown-Aloft holds me back.

Cycling over the bridge

… the lights turn green:

… … it sped on ahead,

the first swallow!