Masaoka Shiki

Shiki, or rather Tsunenori (常規) as he was originally named,[8] 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),[9][10] was an alcoholic who died when Shiki was five years of age.[1] His mother, Yae,[11] 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.[12] Shiki later confessed to being a less-than-diligent student.[12]

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.[13] Around this time he developed an interest in moving to Tokyo and did so in 1883.[14]

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.[13] In 1883, a maternal uncle arranged for him to come to Tokyo.[14] Shiki was first enrolled in Kyōritsu Middle School and later matriculated into University Preparatory School.[15] (Daigaku Yobimon) affiliated with Imperial University (Teikoku Daigaku).[16] While studying here, the teenage Shiki enjoyed playing baseball[17] and befriended fellow student Natsume Sōseki, who would go on to become a famous novelist.[18]

He entered Tokyo Imperial University in 1890.[19] 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.[19] Others say tuberculosis, an illness that dogged his later life, was the reason he left school.[20]

While Shiki is best known as a haiku poet,[21] he wrote other genres of poetry,[22] prose criticism of poetry,[23] autobiographical prose,[23] and was a short prose essayist.[11] (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."[24])

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.[15] Shiki, at times, expressed similar sentiments.[25] There were no great living practitioners although these forms of poetry retained some popularity.[26]

Despite an atmosphere of decline, only a year or so after his 1883 arrival in Tokyo, Shiki began writing haiku.[19] 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".[21] 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.[21] In 1895 another serial was published in the same paper, "A Text on Haikai for Beginners", Haikai Taiyō.[21] These were followed by other serials: Meiji Nijūkunen no Haikukai or "The Haiku World of 1896" where he praised works by disciples[27] Takahama Kyoshi and Kawahigashi Hekigotō,[28] Haijin Buson or "The Haiku Poet Buson" (1896–1897[28]) expressing Shiki's idea of this 18th-century poet whom he identifies with his school of haiku,[5] and Utayomi ni Atauru Sho or "Letters to a Tanka Poet" (1898) where he urged reform of the tanka poetry form.[5]

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.[29] Bedsore and morphine-addled, little more than a year before his death Shiki began writing sickbed diaries.[30] 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).[5]

Shiki suffered from tuberculosis (TB) much of his life. In 1888[31] or 1889[32] he began coughing up blood[15] and soon adopted the pen-name "Shiki" from the Japanese hototogisu—the Japanese name for lesser cuckoos.[32] 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,[32] which explains why the name "Shiki" was adopted.

Suffering from the early symptoms of TB, Shiki sought work as a war correspondent in the First Sino-Japanese War[32] and, while eventually obtaining his goal, he arrived in China after the April 17, 1895 signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki.[33] Instead of reporting on the war, he spent an unpleasant time harassed by Japanese soldiers[34] in Dalian, Luangtao, and the Lüshunkou District, meeting on May 10, 1895[35] the famous novelist Mori Ōgai, who was at the time an army doctor.[33]

Living in filthy conditions in China apparently worsened his TB.[33] Shiki continued to cough blood throughout his return voyage to Japan and was hospitalized in Kobe.[33] After being discharged, he returned to his home town of Matsuyama city and convalesced in the home of the famed novelist Natsume Sōseki.[33] During this time he took on disciples and promulgated a style of haiku that emphasized gaining inspiration from personal experiences of nature.[33] Still in Matsuyama in 1897, a member of this group, Yanigihara Kyokudō, established a haiku magazine, Hototogisu,[5] an allusion to Shiki's pen name.[32] Operation of this magazine was quickly moved to Tokyo. Takahama Kyoshi, another disciple,[27] assumed control and the magazine's scope was extended to include prose work.[11]

Shiki came to Tokyo,[36] 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.[28]

Although bedridden by 1897,[5] Shiki's disease worsened further around 1901.[11] He developed Pott's disease and began using morphine as a painkiller.[11] By 1902 he may have been relying heavily on the drug.[37] During this time Shiki wrote three autobiographical works.[5] He died of tuberculosis in 1902 at age 34.[32]

A monument containing a haiku by Shiki, in front of Matsuyama Station

Shiki may be credited with salvaging traditional short-form Japanese poetry and carving out a niche for it in the modern Meiji period.[38] While he advocated reform of haiku, this reform was based on the idea that haiku was a legitimate literary genre.[39] 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.[40] 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.[6]

His particular style rejected "the puns or fantasies often relied on by the old school" in favor of "realistic observation of nature".[41] Shiki, like other Meiji period writers, borrowed a dedication to realism from Western literature. This is evident in his approach to both haiku[39] and tanka.[42]

• 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.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Masaoka Shiki.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Masaoka Shiki.

• (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 Internet Archive
• Works by Masaoka Shiki at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)