Dewdrops – Brief poems by Kobayashi Issa

Kobayashi Issa (小林 一茶, 1763 – 1828) was a  Japanese poet and lay Buddhist priest known for his haiku poems and journals. He was born in 1763 with the name Kobayashi Yatarô to a farmer and his wife in the village of Kashiwabara, a village of approximately one hundred houses in the highlands of the province of Shinano, close  to the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics. He would have been expected to follow in his father’s footsteps, raising buckwheat, rice, and other crops on the nearly two acres of family farmland, but a different destiny unfolded for him, following the death of his mother. His grandmother, Kana, reared him with deep affection until, when he was eight years of age, his father remarried. Although his stepmother, Hatsu, treated him well for two years, upon the birth of her first child, his step-brother Senroku, she relegated Issa to a role as a subordinate and began to abuse him, often physically. He has described in his memoirs how he was expected to look after this brother, often finding himself soaked in the child’s urine, and how he was punished when the baby was unhappy. Issa’s local schoolmaster, noticing the boy’s unhappiness, encouraged him to write haiku: With haiku you can show what you are feeling inside. His grandmother died when he was 14 and, soon after, he left his small village and went to the city of Edo, the present day Tokyo. Little is known of his life there,  other than that he began to study haiku and donned monk’s robes.

In 1790 he was elected to a position at an academy of poetics, the Katsushika school, but, as his innovative instincts clashed with the more traditional curriculum already in place at the school, in 1792, he resigned, proclaiming himself Haikaiji Issa in a declaration of poetic independence. His literary signature literally translates as Haikai Temple One-Tea. As he explained, In as much as life is empty as a bubble which vanishes instantly, I will henceforth call myself Issa, or One Tea. Thus he compared his life to the bubbles rising in a cup of tea – an appropriate image in Japanese cultural life.

His father died of typhoid fever in 1801 and, in his will, divided his estate equally between Issa and his half-brother. When the poet’s stepmother, Satsu, and his half-brother,  Senroku, contested the will, Issa was obliged to leave his home town once again, despite the fact that (according to Issa) his dying father’s request was for him to come home permanently. He spent the next thirteen years living in Edo while he attempted to convince the local authorities to carry out his father’s wishes.  His frustrations are reflected in a poem he wrote when he was in his forties

古郷やよるも障るも茨の花
furu sato ya   yoru mo sawaru mo   bara no hana 

the closer I get
to my village, the more pain …
wild roses

After sorting out the will, Issa managed to secure rights to half of the property his father left. He returned to his native village at the age of 49 and soon took a wife, a young woman called Kiku. After a brief period of happiness, difficulties returned. The couple’s first-born child died shortly after his birth. A daughter died less than two-and-a-half years later, inspiring Issa to write the haiku for which he is best known

露の世は露の世ながらさりながら
Tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sari nagara

This dewdrop world —
Is a dewdrop world,
And yet, and yet . . .

In May, 1823, Issa’s wife, Kiku, died when he was sixty-one. He remarried almost immediately. His wife, thirty-eight-year-old Yuki, was the daughter of a local samuri. The marriage lasted less than a year and the couple were divorced soon after that marriage. Perhaps for purposes of continuing his family, Issa married again in 1825, his bride this time a young farmer’s daughter named Yao.  His wife was pregnant when their house burned down in a fire that destroyed most of the village and the couple had to move into a renovated grain barn on the property. Issa had a stroke and died in the winter of 1828, and his only surviving child, Yata, was born five months his death. The building in which he last lived, a windowless clay-walled storage shed, has survived, and was designated a National Historic Site in 1933. 

Photo: Tim L. Lanthier (Getty Images)

Issa’s Haiku

Issa was very prolific. He composed over 20,000 haiku on a variety of subjects. R. H. Blyth notes that Issa wrote dozens of haiku featuring small creatures: 54 haiku on the snail, 15 on the toad, nearly 200 on frogs, about 230 on the firefly, more than 100 on fleas, nearly 90 on the cicada, and about 70 on various other insects. There are almost one thousand verses on such creatures.  When you key in the word “dew” on David G. Lanoue’s Issa site, which contains 11,750 originals and translations, you come up with 304 poems. Two of these are included below. The most famous, the most frequently translated, is featured in the first selection of translations below.

“a world of dew”

In 1817 Issa wrote a haiku on the one-year anniversary of the death of his first child, a boy named Sentarô. It has a one-word headnote: “Grieving.”

露の世は得心ながらさりながら
tsuyu no yo wa tokushin nagara sari nagara

it’s a dewdrop world
surely it is…
yes… but…

(translated by David G. Lanoue)

Two years later, in 1819, Issa revised his haiku to write about the death from smallpox of another child, a one-year-old daughter named Sato. 

露の世は露の世ながらさりながら
tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sari nagara

The world of dew
is the world of dew.
……And yet, and yet —

(translated by Robert Hass)

In one text Issa prefaces this brief poem with the note, “On losing a beloved child.” This haiku, written after the funeral, on the occasion of burying his child’s ashes, originally appeared at the end of the following prose passage from his book A Year of My Life (1819).  Here he is writing about Sato, his one-year-old daughter, who had contracted smallpox. 

After two or three days, however, her blisters dried up and the scabs began to fall away — like a hard crust of dirt that has been softened by melting snow.  In our joy we made what we call a ‘priest in a straw robe.’  We poured hot wine ceremoniously over his body, and packed him and the god of smallpox off together.  Yet our hopes proved to be vain.  She grew weaker and weaker and finally, on the twenty-first of June, as the morning glories were just closing their flowers, she closed her eyes forever.
Her mother embraced the cold body and cried bitterly.  For myself, I knew well it was no use to cry, that water once flown past the bridge does not return, and blossoms that are scattered are gone beyond recall.  Yet try as I would, I could not, simply could not, cut the binding cord of human love.

                                        The world of dew

                                   is the world of dew.

                                        And yet, and yet —

(prose translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa; haiku translated by Robert Hass)

The word tsuyu (‘world of dew’) is a distinctly Buddhist concept. In Japanese literary tradition, drops of dew are used symbolically to represent human life and its transience, in reference to the Buddhist allegory between the fleeting nature of dewdrops and human life. Art Krumsee, commenting on the poem, writes What gets lost, I think, is the utter beauty and perfection of the dewdrop metaphor. If you really look at a dewdrop closely, it is profoundly beautiful. Life, too, including the life of Issa’s daughter is profoundly beautiful. What’s more, given the spherical, mirror-like quality of a dewdrop, this small thing reflects all of life. Buddhist purists focus on overcoming grasping in an impermanent world, but Buddha did not ask followers other than monastics to live a life without love and relationships. Loving someone means suffering when they are gone. Issa perfectly captures here the contradiction within which Buddhists outside of the monastery live. Rather than running from that contradiction, Issa embraces it. (Quoted by David G. Lanoue in his comment on the poem in his Haiku Guy collection of Issa’s poems.)

The final word of the poem is nagara. R. H. Blythe notes that Issa was very fond of using nagara which Blythe translates as “nevertheless”, although, like Robert Hass, he translates its use in this poem as “And yet – and yet -“. (See below).

Over time this brief poem has attained almost the same iconic status as Basho’s celebrated poem about a frog. It has been extensively translated and I include a variety of such translations below. My own favourite remains that of Robert Hass.

Brief Poems by Kobayashi Issa

“a world of dew”

露の世は露の世ながらさりながら
Tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sari nagara

The world of dew
is the world of dew
……and yet, and yet–

Robert Hass

***

This world of dew
is only a world of dew—
and yet

Sam Hamill 

***

this world of dew
is only a world of dew—
and yet….and yet….

Makoto Ueda

***

This dewdrop world —
It may be a dewdrop,
And yet — and yet —

R. H. Blyth

***

the world of dew
is the world of dew,
and yet . . .
and yet . .

Nobuyuki Yuasa

***

The world of dew
Is a world of dew, and yet
And yet. . .

Donald Keene

***

The world of dew is a world of dew and yet and yet

Hiroaki Sato

***

This dewdrop world—
Is a dewdrop world,
And yet, and yet . . .

Lewis Mackenzie

***

Dew evaporates
and all our world is dew…
so dear, so fresh, so fleeting

Peter Beilenson

***

this world
is a dewdrop world
yes… but…

David G. Lanoue

***

This Dewdrop World …
a dewdrop world it is, and still,
although it is …

Harold Henderson

***

This dewdrop world-
yet for dew drops
still, a dewdrop world

Leon Lewis

***

Granted this dewdrop world is but
A dewdrop worlds, – this granted, yet

Basil Hall Chamberlain

***

This dewdrop world,
is a dewdrop world,
and yet

Timothy L. Jackowski

***

World like a dewdrop-
Though it’s only a dewdrop,
Even so, even so-

Glenn Shaw

***

it’s a dewdrop world,
nothing but a dewdrop world,
this is true, and yet…

Jan Walls

***

The world of dew
is a world of dew,
And yet.

Jane Hirshfield

***

This world of dew
is a dew-drop world indeed;
and yet, and yet …

Michael R. Burch

***

This dewdrop world
is dew, adieu.
Renew… Adieu …

Conor Kelly

OTHER POEMS

露の世の露の中にてけんくわ哉
tsuyu no yo no tsuyu no naka nite kenka kana

amid dewdrops
of this dewdrop world
a quarrel

David G. Lanoue

***

in every dewdrop
in this dewdrop world there is
raucous squabbling

Jan Walls

***

a world of dew
and within every dewdrop
a world of struggle

Sam Hamill

***

a world of dew –
but even dewdrops
disagree

Billy Mills

***

かたつぶりそろそろ登れ富士の山
katatsuburi   soro-soro nobore   fuji no yama

O snail
Climb Mount Fuji,
But slowly, slowly!

R. H. Blyth

***

little snail
inch by inch, climb
Mount Fuji!

David G. Lanoue

***

Snail, carefully, slowly, climb Mount Fuji

Hiroaki Sato

***

Climb Mount Fuji,
O snail,
……but slowly, slowly.

Robert Hass

***

tiny snail
in your own snail way
climb Mt Fuji

Billy Mills

***

隅の蜘案じな煤はとらぬぞよ
sumi no kumo anjina susu wa toranu zo yo

corner spider
rest easy, my soot-broom
is idle

David G. Lanoue

***

Don’t worry, spiders,
I keep house
……casually.

Robert Hass

***

Spider,
do not worry,
I keep house casually.

Jane Hirshfield

***

目出度さもちう位也おらが春
medetasa mo chû kurai nari oraga haru

my “Happy New Year!”
about average…
my spring

David G. Lanoue

***

New Year’s Day—
everything is in blossom
……I feel about average.

Robert Hass

***

New Year greeting-time:
I feel about average
welcoming my spring

Sam Hamill

***

The auspiciousness
is just about medium—
my spring

Stephen Addiss, Fumiko Yamamoto and Akira Yamamoto

***

人先に鷺の音する氷哉
hito saki ni sagi no oto suru kôri kana

before people do
herons raise a clamor
“Ice!”

David G. Lanoue

***

heron sees
the lake ice over
before we do

Billy Mills

***

痩蛙まけるな一茶是に有り
yasegaeru makeru na issa kore ni ari

scrawny frog, hang tough!
Issa
is here

David G. Lanoue

***

skinny frog
don’t give up the fight—
Issa is here

Makoto Ueda

***

Lean frog,
don’t give up the fight!
Issa is here!

Harold Henderson

***

Skinny frog,
……hang on …
Issa to the rescue!

Michael R. Burch

***

蝿一つ打てはなむあみだ仏哉
hae hitotsu utte wa namu amida butsu kana

while swatting a fly
“All praise to Amida
Buddha!”

David G. Lanoue

***

All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
……killing mosquitoes.

Robert Hass

***

Each time
I swat a fly, I chant
“Namu Amida Busto”

Stephen Addiss, Fumiko Yamamoto and Akira Yamamoto

***

All the while I’m praying to Buddha
I’m continually killing mosquitoes.

Michael R. Burch

***

古郷やよるも障るも茨の花
furusato ya yoru mo sawa[ru] mo bara no hana

the closer I get
to my village, the more pain…
wild roses

David G. Lanoue and Shinji Ogawa

***

At my home everything
I touch is a bramble.

Asataro Miyamori

***

Everything I touch
with tenderness alas
pricks like a bramble.

Peter Beilenson

***

The place where I was born:
all I come to-all I touch-
blossoms of the thorn.

Harold Henderson

***

My old village calls-
each time I come near,
thorns in the blossom.

Leon Lewis

***

my hometown-
all I approach, all I touch,
flowers of the thorn

Makoto Ueda

***

My native village
on approach and to the touch
a bramble rose.

Glenn Shaw

LINKS

The Wikipedia page on Issa

The Haikupedia page on Issa

David G. Lanoue’s website presents over 11,000 of Issa’s haiku in a searchable archive

Kobayashi Issa – Selected Haiku

Haiku by Kobayashi Issa

Some poems by Issa discussed on the First Known When Lost blog

Kobayashi Issa: Modern English Translations of the Japanese Haiku Master

That Lovable Old Issa by Earle Joshua Stone

An Essay on Issa by Leon Lewis

Issa’s Untidy Hut from a Poetry Blog

About a Poem: Pico Iyer on a haiku by Kobayashi Issa

Issa: My Life Through the Pen of a Haiku Master

Issa’s Dew: From the Hermit’s Thatch Blog

Kobayashi Issa and the ‘And yet…’ of Human Existence

Gabriel Rosenstock on Issa