Masaoka Shiki

Masaoka Shiki (正岡 子規; Japanese pronunciation: [ma.saꜜ.o.ka | ɕi̥.kʲiꜜ, -sa.o.ka ɕi̥.kʲiꜜ],^[2] October 14, 1867 – September 19, 1902), pen-name of Masaoka Noboru (正岡 升),^[3] was a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku poetry,^[4] credited with writing nearly 20,000 stanzas during his short life.^[5] He also wrote on reform of tanka poetry.^[6]

Some consider Shiki to be one of the four great haiku masters, the others being Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa.^[7][8]

Shiki, or rather Tsunenori (常規) as he was originally named,^[9] was born in Matsuyama City in Iyo Province (present day Ehime Prefecture) to a samurai class family of modest means.^[1] As a child, he was called Tokoronosuke (處之助); in adolescence, his name was changed to Noboru (升).

His father, Tsunenao (正岡常尚),^[10][11] was an alcoholic who died when Shiki was five years of age.^[1] His mother, Yae,^[12] was a daughter of Ōhara Kanzan, a Confucian scholar.^[1] Kanzan was the first of Shiki's extra-school tutors; at the age of 7 the boy began reading Mencius under his tutelage.^[13] Shiki later confessed to being a less-than-diligent student.^[13]

At age 15 Shiki became something of a political radical, attaching himself to the then-waning Freedom and People's Rights Movement and getting himself banned from public speaking by the principal of Matsuyama Middle School, which he was attending.^[14] Around this time he developed an interest in moving to Tokyo and did so in 1883.^[15]

The young Shiki first attended his hometown Matsuyama Middle School, where Kusama Tokiyoshi, a leader of the discredited Freedom and People's Rights Movement, had recently served as principal.^[14] In 1883, a maternal uncle arranged for him to come to Tokyo.^[15] Shiki was first enrolled in Kyōritsu Middle School and later matriculated into University Preparatory School.^[16] (Daigaku Yobimon) affiliated with Imperial University (Teikoku Daigaku).^[17] While studying here, the teenage Shiki enjoyed playing baseball^[18] and befriended fellow student Natsume Sōseki, who would go on to become a famous novelist.^[19]

He entered Tokyo Imperial University in 1890.^[20] But by 1892 Shiki, by his own account too engrossed in haiku writing, failed his final examinations, left the Hongō dormitory that had been provided to him by a scholarship, and dropped out of college.^[20] Others say tuberculosis, an illness that dogged his later life, was the reason he left school.^[21]

While Shiki is best known as a haiku poet,^[22] he wrote other genres of poetry,^[23] prose criticism of poetry,^[24] autobiographical prose,^[24] and was a short prose essayist.^[12] (His earliest surviving work is a school essay, Yōken Setsu ("On Western Dogs"), where he praises the varied utility of western dogs as opposed to Japanese ones, which "only help in hunting and scare away burglars."^[25])

Contemporary to Shiki was the idea that traditional Japanese poetic short forms, such as the haiku and tanka, were waning due to their incongruity in the modern Meiji period.^[16] Shiki, at times, expressed similar sentiments.^[26] There were no great living practitioners although these forms of poetry retained some popularity.^[27]

Despite an atmosphere of decline, only a year or so after his 1883 arrival in Tokyo, Shiki began writing haiku.^[20] In 1892, the same year he dropped out of university, Shiki published a serialized work advocating haiku reform, Dassai Shooku Haiwa or "Talks on Haiku from the Otter's Den".^[22] A month after completion of this work, in November 1892, he was offered a position as haiku editor in the paper that had published it, Nippon, and maintained a close relationship with this journal throughout his life.^[22] In 1895 another serial was published in the same paper, "A Text on Haikai for Beginners", Haikai Taiyō.^[22] These were followed by other serials: Meiji Nijūkunen no Haikukai or "The Haiku World of 1896" where he praised works by disciples^[28] Takahama Kyoshi and Kawahigashi Hekigotō,^[29] Haijin Buson or "The Haiku Poet Buson" (1896–1897^[29]) expressing Shiki's idea of this 18th-century poet whom he identifies with his school of haiku,^[6] and Utayomi ni Atauru Sho or "Letters to a Tanka Poet" (1898) where he urged reform of the tanka poetry form.^[6]

The above work, on tanka, is an example of Shiki's expanded focus during the last few years of his life. He died four years after taking up tanka as a topic.^[30] Bedsore and morphine-addled, little more than a year before his death Shiki began writing sickbed diaries.^[31] These three are Bokujū Itteki or "A Drop of Ink" (1901), Gyōga Manroku or "Stray Notes While Lying on My Back" (1901–1902), and Byōshō Rokushaku or "A Sixfoot Sickbed" (1902).^[6]

Shiki suffered from tuberculosis (TB) much of his life. In 1888^[32] or 1889^[33] he began coughing up blood^[16] and soon adopted the pen-name "Shiki" from the Japanese hototogisu—the Japanese name for lesser cuckoos.^[33] The Japanese word hototogisu can be written with various combinations of Chinese characters, including 子規, which can alternatively be read as either "hototogisu" or "shiki". It is a Japanese conceit that this bird coughs blood as it sings,^[33] hence the pen-name "Shiki" (as a symptom of TB is coughing blood).

Suffering from the early symptoms of TB, Shiki sought work as a war correspondent in the First Sino-Japanese War^[33] and, while eventually obtaining his goal, he arrived in China after the April 17, 1895 signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki.^[34] Instead of reporting on the war, he spent an unpleasant time harassed by Japanese soldiers^[35] in Dalian, Luangtao, and the Lüshunkou District, meeting on May 10, 1895^[36] the famous novelist Mori Ōgai, who was at the time an army doctor.^[34]

Living in filthy conditions in China apparently worsened his TB.^[34] Shiki continued to cough blood throughout his return voyage to Japan and was hospitalized in Kobe.^[34] After being discharged, he returned to his home town of Matsuyama city and convalesced in the home of the famed novelist Natsume Sōseki.^[34] During this time he took on disciples and promulgated a style of haiku that emphasized gaining inspiration from personal experiences of nature.^[34] Still in Matsuyama in 1897, a member of this group, Yanigihara Kyokudō, established a haiku magazine, Hototogisu,^[6] an allusion to Shiki's pen name.^[33] Operation of this magazine was quickly moved to Tokyo. Takahama Kyoshi, another disciple,^[28] assumed control and the magazine's scope was extended to include prose work.^[12]

Shiki came to Tokyo,^[37] and his group of disciples there were known as the "Nippon school" after the paper where he had been haiku editor and that now published the group's work.^[29]

Although bedridden by 1897,^[6] Shiki's disease worsened further around 1901.^[12] He developed Pott's disease and began using morphine as a painkiller.^[12] By 1902 he may have been relying heavily on the drug.^[38] During this time Shiki wrote three autobiographical works.^[6] He died of tuberculosis in 1902 at age 34.^[33]

Shiki may be credited with salvaging traditional short-form Japanese poetry and carving out a niche for it in the modern Meiji period.^[39] While he advocated reform of haiku, this reform was based on the idea that haiku was a legitimate literary genre.^[40] He argued that haiku should be judged by the same yardstick that is used when measuring the value of other forms of literature — something that was contrary to views held by prior poets.^[41] Shiki firmly placed haiku in the category of literature, and this was unique.

Some modern haiku deviate from the traditional 5–7–5 sound pattern and dispensing with the kigo ("season word"); Shiki's haiku reform advocated neither break with tradition.^[7]

His particular style rejected "the puns or fantasies often relied on by the old school" in favor of "realistic observation of nature".^[42] Shiki, like other Meiji period writers, borrowed a dedication to realism from Western literature. This is evident in his approach to both haiku^[40] and tanka.^[43]

Shiki played baseball as a teenager and was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002.^[18] A group of 1898 tanka by him mention the sport.^[44]

• Masaoka Shiki International Haiku Awards
• Shiki Memorial Museum
• Samukawa Sokotsu

• Beichman, Janine (2002), Masaoka Shiki: his life and works (revised ed.), Cheng & Tsui, ISBN 0-88727-364-5
• Masaoka, Shiki, Songs from a Bamboo Village: Selected Tanka from Take no Sato Uta, translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda, Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Co. © 1998 ISBN 0-8048-2085-6 pbk [488 pp. 298 tanka]
• Masako, Hirai, ed. Now, To Be! Shiki’s Haiku Moments for Us Today / Ima, ikiru! Shiki no sekai. U-Time Publishing, 2003, ISBN 4-86010-040-9
• Shiki, Masaoka (1997). Masaoka Shiki: selected poems. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-11090-1.

• (in Japanese) e-texts of Shiki's works (Japanese only) at Aozora bunko
• Selected Poems (haiku and tanka) of Masaoka Shiki, Translated by Janine Beichman at University of Virginia Library Japanese Text Initiative poem translations from 'Masaoka Shiki' by Janine Beichman
• Ehime University site on Masaoka Shiki with photos, poetry
• fan site with bio and poems
• National Diet Library bio and photos
• Works by or about Masaoka Shiki at the Internet Archive
• Works by Masaoka Shiki at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)