YUGEN–A SPIRITUAL FEELING TOO DEEP FOR WORDS

There are numerous Japanese words that cannot be translated directly into English. Undeniably my favorite of these words is yugen [幽玄], or more correctly yuugen, though most people who write about it in English write, yugen.

The book, ‘They Have a Word For It,’ defines it as, “An awareness of the universe that triggers feelings too deep and mysterious for words.” They quote Alan Watts by explaining it as, “To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill, to wander on and on in a huge forest without thought of return, to stand upon a shore and gaze after a boat that disappears beyond distant islands, to contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds.”

I don’t know if that is actually Alan Watts’ original words—he may have been quoting someone else, as those are fairly typical descriptions of the feeling of yugen. In fact, I have read that very description in other places.

The Chinese characters for Yugen are Yuu [幽] (a mountain with the radical for thread on each side of the center line), meaning: 1.) to confine to a room, 2.) faint, dim, indistinct, hazy, weak (this is the same yuu used for yuurei (spirit, ghost, apparition) and yuukai (land of the dead); and gen [玄] (a thread with a lid radical over it–which is actually its own radical), meaning dark, mysterious.

I think it is interesting that ‘thread’ is used in both characters—-hinting towards the threads of reality that weave the physical universe into being. There was, for example, an ancient Indo-European concept that reality was a web of threads–and fate, in particular, was conceived as manifesting through threads. The Old-English word, wyrd, referred both to fate, and one of the names of the three Norns, the three old ladies who weaved our fate. Inherent in the concept of wyrd is the fact that our actions create a web of reality in a cause and effect manner. Wyrd, of course, is the root of the modern English word, weird.

String Theory is the modern science version of this very old concept. But reality woven from threads appears elsewhere in Modern science as well. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity tells us that light, from our sub-light-speed perspective, is composed of zero-time zero-space particles, meaning that it does not exist in time or space. The implication is that a photon exists only for an instant, but that instant covers all time and space. It also means that when we perceive (i.e. see) a photon, it must simultaneously exist, outside of time, in both the present, hitting the retina of our eye, and also at its distant point of origin, no matter how many light years away that is. We personally are trapped by time, and can only physically experience the moment of now (which is then irretrievably lost forever as we experience the next moment of now). But since we understand time in our sub-light-speed reality, we see that photon as having traveled over many light years into the present, from our distant past many light years away. But to that zero-time zero-space light particle, its whole existence is all an infinitely small instant in which it is here and there, and all points in between at the same time—-it is a wave of energy, or, as suggested by the Chinese characters for yugen, a thread.

One theory that has been published in recent years, reworked Newton’s law of Motion in such a way as to suggest that mass is actually an illusion created by light trapped by inertia (which they have also reworked inertia to be the latent light energy that fills the universe, or, the Zero-Point Field). In other words, all that is, is simply light energy! And, as I said, as a zero-time zero-space particle, it is essentially nothing more than a thread stretching from the beginning of time, to the end of time. Now—–how does consciousness fit into that? (…Perhaps it is a reality transcendent of light, and therefore shapes light into the illusion of mass, which creates the physical universe—-a very yugen concept to contemplate while staring at a Japanese garden…)

Granted, I have never seen the word yugen discussed in terms of a thread, but there is usually an archetypal symbolism that connects the Chinese characters to the words they refer to. Undoubtedly, I am sure there is something inherent within the concept.

In any event, Yugen is that feeling you get when you perceive that sense of almost being able to touch that profound reality that underlies existence.

It is an extension of the feeling of aware (pronounced Ah-wah-ray)—another Japanese word that is not directly translatable. The same book translates aware as, ” the feelings engendered by ephemeral beauty. They provide the example of experiencing the beauty of a cherry blossom slowly falling to the ground—a very Japanese experience because the cherry trees blossom only once a year, and it is a beauty they look forward to, but it only lasts a short time—as the blossoms fall to the ground—a final expression of their beauty, it comes with the knowledge that such beauty is gone for this year. It is therefore understood as a bittersweet beauty referring to the temporal nature of life—the mortality we are all subject too. Life is only fleeting, but in those fleeting moments there is a beauty that exists simply because it is fleeting. (And that is what Heidegger meant when he claimed that we find the significance of being in its finality).

Yugen is, of course, much more profound than aware. As temporal as aware is, yugen implies that beyond this temporal existence there is something more.

One experience I found to be Yugen—was sitting and watching a gold-fish—in a gold-fish bowl—the gentle ways that it moves its fins, even when the fish does not move. It is a gentle, silent wave of movement as the fins bend back and forth between the movement the fish makes and the pressure of the surrounding water.

I hope that many of my own haiku, express a sense of yugen. At least, for me, many of them do. But today, rather than sharing one of my own haiku, I will share one of the Japanese classics. Here is a haiku by the popular haiku poet, Issa, that is so full of yugen, it spills over:

 

Yuzen to shite
yama o miru
kawazu kana

 

Composedly he sits
contemplating the mountains–
the worthy frog!

 

That translation is by Lewis Mackenzie—who takes some liberty with it—but justifiably so.

SPIRITS AND GHOSTS OF THE WINTER

A person’s spirit in Japan is sometimes seen as a small ball of flame floating around. A ghost could appear in this way, or it could be a floating figure without feet, or a full figured apparition, just like anywhere else. There is always the famous ghost story that seems to be popular in Japan and many other countries of a ricksha driver, or a taxi driver picking up a beautiful woman with a depressed demeanor, who then wants to be driven to an address near a graveyard. As they pass the graveyard she disappears. There are people who swear they know someone who this really happened to.

But the little glowing flame floating around is one of the spirit motifs, and it is based on something people actually see: the kitsunebi (fox flame) or onibi (monster flame) are two of the names of this phenomena. In haiku it is a winter seasonal word. I don’t know if they are more common in the winter or that it is because winter has a natural association with death. I suppose we could relate this to glowing swamp gas perhaps? One theory of its origin, according to a Japanese book I have is that these glowing floating apparitions may be the result of decomposing horse bones or other animal bones, that were gnawed on by a fox. (I’m not sure why a fox has a causal effect, if any).

But they are spooky nonetheless. The English equivalent of kitsunebi, or onibi is will-o’- the-wisp, or St. Elmo’s Fire.

 

夜の森深し
雲に月
狐火也

 

yo no mori fukashi
kumo ni tsuki
kitsunebi ya

 

Deep in the night forest
the moon in the clouds
ah! spirit fire!

 

Ghosts, monsters, and will-o-the-wisps, make nice creepy entertainment, and the Japanese have plenty of them, but I was never one to believe in such things. That is, until I lived in the Philippines for a while… But that’s another story for another time.

 

狐火也
間違い道に
古盆地

 

kitsunebi ya
machigai michi ni
furu bonchi

 

The spirit fire!
on a wrong road
an old graveyard

 

These are all from 2006. Here is another one that can be disconcerting if you were to ever experience it.

 

夜の森
水の音
みみづく鳴き也

 

yoru no mori
mizu no oto
Mimitzuku naki ya

 

The night time forest
sound of water
a horned owl cries!

 

The owl has a beautiful call, but it is a bit creepy–especially when you don’t expect it. Actually, anytime you walk through a thicket of bamboo at night, you are likely to startle a bird that was resting there–unseen until you stumbled upon it, and it suddenly flies up and away with a flurry of wings and loud alarming squawks. It is very startling as it shatters the silence, even when you know it is likely to happen and try to expect it.

On a different note, the Japanese have a custom similar to the voodoo doll. You had to be pretty upset with someone to do this—because it was dangerous. Perhaps a common reason this would happen would be a broken heart—it seems that women are more likely to resort to black magic than men in Japan (besides, traditionally Japanese men generally try to maintain an air of cold-hearted indifference when it comes to romance)—though, obviously men could get angry enough to do such things too.

This is called a noroi ningyou—noroi is a curse and ningyou is a doll. You generally needed something from the person, as I recall, it was usually hair, but perhaps fingernail clippings or something like that could be used. You dressed like a ghost or the Japanese dead, all in white—then at midnight, with a triangle-shaped cloth worn over your forehead like a crown, you would make the doll out of straw and whatever you had off the body of your victim, putting all your evil intention of pain and harm into it. Then you would take off deep into a forest where no one would find it, and nail the doll onto a tree–typically one nail through the heart. By some traditions, you would wear a crown with candles on your head—formed from the kettle stand from a ro stove, placed upside down on your head, and candles placed on the legs. It was risky however, because if it backfired, the pain you intended for your victim could come back to you, but multiplied many times from what you had intended.

This is one I composed this year:

 

夜森の月に
古呪い
人形也

 

yomori no tsuki ni
furu noroi
ningyou ya

 

The moonlit night forest
Ah!
an old curse-doll!

 

The moon by itself was a fall word, which is to say that this is a fall haiku.

THE DISTANT TEMPLE BELL

Do you remember the Chinese poem, The Temple Bell, by Yuan Mei (1716 – 1798) that I posted a while back (See, THE BELL IN THE LONELY TEMPLE, CLOUD HIDDEN)? Here it is again:

 

Ancient Temple, monks all gone
the Buddha’s image fallen

 

The single bell
hangs high in evening’s glow

 

Sad, so full of music…
Ah, just one little tap!
But no one dares.

 

Here is another haiku along those same lines from Oct 2008:

 

冬の山
風に吹かれる
寺の鐘

 

fuyu no yama
kaze ni fukareru
tera no kane

 

The wintery mountain
blown by the wind
temple bell.

 

What image did that first bring to mind for you? A cold winter wind blowing on a mountain temple, while monks, bracing against the elements, ring the bell? Or was it a cold winter wind that rings the bell, in an old mountain temple, long abandoned like the one in the Chinese poem? The fact that the second line, blown by the wind, could refer to either the winter mountain, or the temple bell, is a good example of one of the aspects that gives haiku such subjectivity.

Here’s another haiku, this one from November 2006

 

雪の町
夜の静まりに
寺の鐘

 

yuki no machi
yo no shizumari ni
tera no kane

 

Snowy village
in the silence of the night
a temple bell

 

Yes, I love those temple bells. People who have never heard a Buddhist temple bell echo through the mountains, or across the fields, or even through the streets of a small village—don’t know what they are missing…

This one from November, 2002 relates to my favorite Chinese poem about being cloud hidden (also in that same previous post):

 

雲の中
山の庵に
初雪也

 

kumo no naka
yama no iori ni
hatsu yuki ya

 

Within the clouds
in the mountain hermitage.
The first snow!

 

Though most of us have never actually lived in a mountain hermitage, cloud hidden, I hope you have at least experienced a snowfall from the warmth of a mountain cabin—such stillness!

Here is one from December, 1999:

 

黒屋根に
重い雪雲
火の番也

 

kuro yane ni
Omoi yuki gumo
hi no ban ya

 

Black roofs and
heavy snow clouds.
The fire lookouts!

 

In Japan in the winter, the men of the local community take turns going out into the cold night and walking as a small group watching for fires, and warning the people of the neighborhood to be careful with their stoves and candles and all. Fire is a big danger in Japan, especially in the winter. Probably at least once a week, if not more, you’ll hear of a tragic death in a fire. There are a lot of wooden houses, and when a fire starts, those houses burn quickly. The fire lookouts (or whatever you want to call them), walk around the neighborhood alerting people with two sticks that are banged together making a large ‘tok’ sound. This is followed by a call to be careful—goyou—but it is called out in a fairly slow rhythm in a chant-like, eerie sounding voice by the whole group in unison: (tok!) “goyohhhhhhh…” (tok!) “goyohhhhhhh…” (tok!) “goyohhhhhhh…”

It especially sounds eerie if you don’t know what they are saying or why. In years past they would stay out till late into the night, and watched for burglars and other night problems. They are probably a cry back to ancient times when the little farming villages needed lookouts for wild animals and enemies come to steal grain. Today they don’t stay out too late, and mainly do this in the winter.

Japanese roofs are all tiled in large beautiful black tiles. You can imagine the contrast between those black tiled roofs and the heavy snow clouds above them in the winter sky.

MISTY MOUNTAINS

山道の月
薄消えて
冬霞

 

yama michi no tsuki
usukiete
fuyugasumi

 

The moon over the mountain road
gradually fades away
winter mist

 

michi could be road, or path, or trail. usukiete, is again kieru to disappear. Usu comes from the adjective to be thin.

 

烏の
声が誘う
霞の山也

 

karasu no
koe ga sasou
kasumi no yama ya

 

The crows voice
beckons
misty mountain!

 

人なし道
炭臭い
冬夜の町

 

Hito nashi michi
sumikusai
fuyu yo no machi

 

The empty streets
smell of charcoal
winter night in the village

 

In the winter–especially in the mountain and countryside villages you can still smell the charcoal that is used to heat the stoves and fireplaces. This is not the smell of charcoal briquettes that we use for barbequing. It is real charcoal, and has a good smell to it.

LOVE, INTIMACY, AND A DISTANT ISLAND VILLAGE

Here are some that you can take in an erotic sense, or a romantic one. These are from November 2006:

 

裸愛人
炉火あかし
反映し

 

Hadake aijin
robi akashi
hanei shi

 

Naked lover
reflecting
the red flame of the fire pit.

 

As you may recall from my earlier post—an irori is the fire pit that is in the center of old Japanese farm houses. A Ro is smaller and was just used for heating up water. The Ro is not necessarily a ‘fire pit’ but could be a hibachi-like pot for heating up water with charcoal and what not. It is still used today in tea ceremony. Robi is the flame and refers usually to the ro, but I think it can also imply the irori, but there is also the term ro akari which seems to be more appropriate for the larger irori. Ro is the same character in both terms. Akashi comes from aka—red—so it implies a glowing red. On the other hand, akarui does simply mean to be bright, or in this case, to glow…

 

愛人の胸
炉明かりに
表れる

 

Aijin no mune
Roakari ni
Arawareru

 

Lover’s chest
appears
in the glow of the firepit

 

Arawareru means to appear or to come into view. In this case, the lover could be either sex, depending on who the first person is (i.e. from whose perspective the haiku is subjectively experienced as). But to be more specific, I could say:

 

愛人の乳
炉明かりに
表れる

 

Aijin no chichi
roakari ni
arawareru

 

The lover’s breasts
in the light of the firepit
come into view

 

Chi also means milk, so chichi is very clearly, not a male’s breast. On the other hand, one might complain that this term for a ‘boob’ is a little too, how would I say—Motherly? But the biological goal of sex is motherhood. In any event, chichi could be used sexually as well.

 

冬霞哉
小屋の窓
炉火あかし

 

Fuyugasumi kana
koya no mado
robi akashi

 

Ah. The winter mist!
the window of the small shack
glows red from the ro

 

雪の町
夜の静まりに
寺の鐘

 

Yuki no machi
yo no shizumari ni
tera no kane

 

The snowy village
in the quiet of the night
a temple bell.

 

That last one might be too descriptive for the taste of a Japanese haiku expert. But it floods my senses with memories and feelings—staying in small villages in the Japanese countryside. One example is from a time I went to the small island of Miyajima just outside of Hiroshima. That is famous for the torii gate that stands out in the sea in front of Miyakojima jinja (Miyakojima Shrine)—if I recall the name correctly. This was made famous from a cover of National Geographic years ago. It was around New Years, and small towns have a bad habit of closing up fast. A friend of mine and I were trying to find a restaurant, but the cold streets were empty, and the shops had closed their shutters. As dusk fell we walked the empty streets, still snowy in places. We were hungry, but there was something very calming and special about those streets and the old wooden buildings and houses with their tiled roofs, in between pine trees and shrines. It was a small island and was therefore pretty much a mountain jutting out of the Bay. We knew everyone was inside these wooden dwellings, warm and relaxed—visiting with family (it was New Years after all). I was perfectly content to walk up and down that village in silence, and of course, sooner or later, there was the metallic, ‘gonnnnnnnnnng’ of the temple bell.

Eventually we did find a small convenience store. As night fell and it got dark we cooked some gyoza (dumplings) and a few other things in the kitchen of the hostel we stayed at. We were the only ones there as I recall. After eating, I just had to go back out into the cold and wander the streets some more. That was such a special place…

 

山深し
森にかくるる
冬の月

 

Yama fukashi
mori ni kakururu
fuyu no tsuki

 

deep in the mountain(s)
it tries to hide in the forest
the winter moon

 

That, of course, can be another spiritual one based on the archetypal motif of the moon, as I have written about in a few of my last posts.

THE SUN, THE MOON, DEEP INTO THE CENTER OF THE FOREST

About a year ago I found a book on Chinese poetry. I don’t buy too many books on Chinese poetry because, of the ones that are out there, many of them leave out the original Chinese. And Chinese is very open to interpretation especially in translating poetry into English. If I buy a book on Chinese poetry, I want to see the original Chinese with it—so I can better understand the Chinese poem. Fortunately this book had that.

Anyway, within the book there was a poem that I found to be similar to the last one in my previous post. Chinese poetry reflects a lot of Buddhist sentiment as well, but it is also heavily influenced by the animistic beliefs of Taoism. This poem is by Wang Wei who lived about 700 A.D. This is my own translation,

 

The empty mountain, no one can be seen
but voices are heard
The sun’s reflection reaches deep into the forest
and shines upon the green moss.

 

I left out the word human, or person or people in the second verse, which appears in the original Chinese. Afterall, disembodied voices echoing from an empty mountain, may not necessarily be people—they could after all be gods, spirits, fairies, ghosts…

The last one of my own haiku in my previous post:

 

奥へ，奥へと
冬森に
月光が。。。

 

Oku eh, oku eh to
Fuyu mori ni
gekko ga…

 

Deeper, deeper
into the winter forest–
the moonlight…

 

In my animistic world, if it is moving to the center, it is moving to that universal center, the axis mundi: the World Tree, or World Cave, or perhaps the shaman’s fire (of Mongolian or Ural Altaic Shamanic traditions) or even just the center of the forest, which is sacred in the animistic traditions of Bali, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other corners of South East Asia. The Sun, of course, is always sacred, just like the moon.

Here is another of mine referencing the moon from 2009:

 

道分からずに
雪の月も
淋しい

 

Michi wakarazu ni
yuki no tsuki mo
sabishii

 

Lost, and
even the snowy moon
is lonely

 

The word, ‘lost,’ does not refer to the moon, but to an individual, either in the first person, second person, or however you experience it. The Japanese, michi wakarazu, literally means to not understand the path, road, or way. But nature, from our perspective, often reflects our own sentiments. When we are happy, we see a happy moon, even if we do not always consciously catch it as such. But an angry person may look at that same moon and see an angry one.

MORE ON THE PATHOS OF A PROSTITUTE

Here is another one from that time—an idea for a haiku, because it doesn’t have a seasonal word and is one consonant too many:

 

老いの娼婦也
血を吐くと
遠寺の鐘

 

Oi no shoufu ya
chi o haku to
enji no kane

 

The aged prostitute!
coughs up blood
a distant temple bell.

 

For those of you who do not speak Japanese, ‘to’ means ‘and’ which means we could place an ‘and’ before the distant temple bell. Coughing up blood is never a good sign. In years past, it was usually a sign of advancing tuberculosis. The festering disease was killing the poor soul on a daily basis, as it dissolved the lungs into a dead mush. You knew the end was coming with mucus-filled coughing fits that became more and more bloody, over time you found it more and more difficult to breathe, eventually gasping for air that your lungs, filled with necrotized holes, could barely latch onto to feed into your increasingly oxygen-starved blood stream. In especially advanced cases, you didn’t cough up blood tainted mucus, you actually coughed up copious amounts of blood…

One of my attempts to make this into an actual haiku:

 

老いの娼婦也
血を吐くと
狐鳴き

 

Oi no shoufu ya
chi o haku to
kitsune naki

 

The aged prostitute!
coughs up blood
a fox cries out

 

The fox is a winter word, placing this back into the winter. The fox, of course is the Japanese trickster, and at a deeper level, it is a motif filled with sexual content. The fox would bewitch unsuspecting men–especially if they were wandering home through forests or the countryside. They would find themselves coming upon a beautiful woman or young girl, who would then seduce him. He would have a night of great sex, only to wake up, the following morning (if he still has enough energy to wake up), near death, to see the fox trotting off in its true animal form. The fox had taken all his yang (which, like for the Chinese, meant semen). They believed that if a man lost all his yang, he would die. (In fact, the secret to eternal life in China—the secret of all those immortals (what the Japanese called Sennin, and in Mandarin was called, Hsienjin) was for the man to accumulate yin, without releasing much yang. In other words, the man would have to bring women to orgasm, without releasing his own seed. If he successfully accumulated yin and retained his yang, it would cause his skull to grow as all this sexual yin and yang accumulates there. There was a time in China, when all the women of the household–wives, concubines, maids, daughters, were available to the master to help him achieve eternal life. Think about that the next time you see a Chinese statue with a high forehead. On the plus side, at least they placed a lot of focus on making their women satisfied, unlike Western man and his repressed sexuality of the Victorian Age, that left room for plenty of prostitutes, but it was all about satisfaction of the male. For the women, especially the wives, who were used for making children, it was simply her, ‘cross to bear’).

The prostitute was like the fox in many ways. Maybe her partners didn’t die, but the money left their hands–and there are plenty of Japanese stories of men who became obsessed with prostitutes. One story, made into the movie, ‘In the Realm of the Senses,’ was based on a true story that happened in Japan before World War II. The prostitute was as obsessed with her lover as he was with her. As their obsession grew, he ignored his own family, she her customers—they hardly left the room he rented at a Ryoukan (a Japanese Inn). But it eventually led to his death at her hands. Western man had the same motif as the fox—the succubus.

But the fox, like any trickster, provides a service and is important to the Japanese. The often very elaborate Fushimi Inari Shinto Shrines are to the fox god—a god of rice, abundance, and fertility (See my previous post, THE BELL IN THE LONELY TEMPLE, CLOUD HIDDEN). So again there are various levels of experiencing this haiku.

If you have ever heard a fox cry out, it is nothing like a wolf. It is a troubled call–it can include a whine, but it is a shrill, unsettling, troubled call–at least to our human sensibilities.

 

 

CELTIC FIDDLE AND THE ANCIENT JAPANESE SHAMANESS

I ran across this video of Lindsey Stirling playing Celtic fiddle over dubstep. I loved it, and immediately knew I had some haiku for this video

 

 

I’ve always loved experimenting with eclectic music and bringing it together. The Moody Blues did an incredible job of bringing classical music into the Rock realm. Rick Wakeman added synthesizers to the classical music-rock. The Beatles and others introduced the sitar and Indian music into Rock. I’ve played around with classical themes embellished with synthesizer…

 

But Lindsey’s Celtic Fiddle played over synthesizers playing dubstep is amazing. Lindsey Stirling is hot as hell, her music is great——–her dance moves are erotic…. This was filmed here in Colorado (I was thinking Iceland or somewhere in the Scandinavian regions)—-but, yeah—–I dig this.

 

 

 

 

 

Celtic music has always given me a feeling of the spirituality that lies underneath—playing back to the old Celtic and Pictish indigenous traditional ways.

 

This video immediately made me think back to an old Tanka I composed—experimenting with that traditional style of Japanese poetry. (This is an old style, based on haiku, but using 31 syllables rather than 17). I liked the idea but did not care for the poem at first because I thought it was too descriptive—-but it was an early experiment, and it has grown on me. This poem is about Miko, the Japanese shamaness of long ago–Japanese maidens who called down the Shinto Gods—it could be one, it could be a group:

 

冬霞
谷ぶところの
古神社
巫女神下ろしに
みみずく鳴る

 

Fuyugasumi

tani butokoro no

furujinja,

Miko kami oroshi ni

mimizuku naru

 

Winter haze

in a steep deep valley

the old shrine,

As the Miko calls down the gods

cry of the Horned Owl.

 

Here is another one:

 

冬霞
闇のかたゆく
山姫也

 

Fuyugasumi

yami no katayuku

Yamahime ya

 

A winter haze

heading into the darkness…

Ah! A Mountain Goddess

 

A Yamahime was a Shinto Goddess of the mountain. There was also the Yamatsumi, the God of the mountain. Shinto is animistic, and believes everything is alive. But older, more majestic things especially have gods living within them. In the mountains you could sometimes find little statues of the mountain god and/or goddess, placed in a special place in the forest—-the gods within that mountain. Then again, one might encounter the gods themselves…

 

 

Another Miko one—

 

山雪也
知らぬ神社に
巫女の歌

 

Yama yuki ya

shiranu jinja ni

Miko no uta

 

The mountain snow!

in an unkown shrine

the Miko‘s song

 

The Miko‘s song, heard from some hidden shrine in the midst of the mountain snow, would be one of calling the gods to come down. If it is accompanied, it would certainly be with a drum, possibly bells and a whining high pitched wind instrument. It is fast paced but with restrained tones. Celtic music too, has a certain restrained tonal quality about it—-as if the hidden sacredness underlying all of reality, is at that particular moment, straining to pierce through the veil between the spiritual, and the physical—but for all except the few most deeply in tune, the veil strains, but remains closed, leaving only the slight hint of what lays within.

 

 

OK—here’s another one I just happened to find—I wrote it in December 2009:

 

山森に
古神社
雪の宿なり

 

Yamamori ni

furujinja

yuki no yado nari

 

In the mountain forest

the old shrine

becomes shelter from the snow

 

Haiku is supposed to be experienced subjectively, and there are many experiences you could derive from this, but picture this, you are hiking through a mountain forest when a snow storm hits. You duck in to an old forgotten shrine, which protects you from the snow, but who knows what old spirits, what old gods, are lurking inside, and safe from the snow you are now in their world…

 

That reminds me of an old Japanese saying—-“you’ll never be cursed by the god you don’t touch.” (触らぬ神にたたりなし, Sawaranu kami ni, tatari nashi).

 

But I think this haiku really fits her video—-she’s playfully wandering through these ice castles (conjuring up spirits?)—but there is a little hesitation at times, maybe slight moments of fear——what is out there she seems to wonder…

RED CLAMS AND SACRED SEX

I will write some more on the subject of the last post—himehajime. (As I explained in my previous post, Happy First Time, it means to have sex for the first time—no not first time ever—but the first time of the year). Here are a couple I found that I wrote back in 2000:

 

満月の
雪雲に
姫初め哉

 

Mantsuki no
yukigumo ni
himehajime kana

 

The full moon
in the snow clouds
Ah! Himehajime.

 

There is probably a more poetic way of translating that one—because it refers to the snow clouds of the full moon, or the full moon’s snow clouds—a subtlety I perhaps did not do justice to in English. (Not that the haiku is necessarily that good, but…). This could be a joke, but also a love poem.

 

雪降り也
炉火の光に
姫初め

 

Yuki furi ya
robi no hikari ni
himehajime

 

Falling snow.
by the light of the robi
himehajime

 

Robi is the hearth in the center of the old farmhouses. It is the fireplace where they would cook, boil water, and in the winter or on cold nights, keep the house warm.

 

ganjistsu ya
hiru demo denai
himehajime

 

元日也
昼でも出ない
姫初め

 

New Year’s Day!
don’t even step out at noon
himehajime

 

This one is a little descriptive, and probably does not make good haiku–maybe it tells rather than hints (maybe not—I don’t know…)—-but as senryu–sarcastic haiku—-I guess it might be fine.

And here is another bath house prostitute one I found from 2002—gotta love the bathhouse prostitutes—-such pathos of the human experience:

 

湯上がる湯女は
温い哉
姫初め

 

yuagaru yuna wa
nukui kana
himehajime

 

the bathhouse prostitute, fresh from the hot water
ah! so warm
himehajime

 

yuagaru is literally to arise from the hot water. I played around with this one a bit—maybe nukui kana is better at the beginning?

I came up with another one that is similar depending on how you interpret it—

 

湯上がるの
赤貝也
秋風すずし

 

yuagaru no
akagai ya
akikaze suzushi

 

fresh from the hot water
the red clam!
Cool autumn wind

 

Akagai, literally red clam, is actually a mussel—and if you want to know why mussel relates to a bathouse prostitute or sex, order mussel the next time you go to a sushi bar, look at it, and tell me what it reminds you of. If prepared properly it tends to be a pretty anatomically accurate depiction of the vulva. The Japanese know that so yes it is a euphemism. Yuagaru could be ‘rising out of the hot water;’ ‘pulled out of the hot water;’ ‘coming out of the hot water…’ That is what is so cool about haiku is that it is so open to your own multiple subjective interpretations/aesthetic-experiences of it.

Speaking of the pathos of the bathouse prostitute, here is another one from late 2002—which may also be a new years, or winter theme:

 

餅食い湯女も
母の事
思い出し

 

mochi kui yuna mo
haha no koto
omoidashi

 

eating a mochi,
the bathouse prostitute
remembers her mother

 

This one actually needs work—but I just wrote it as an idea—I was thinking about the cooked rice cakes one snacks on in the winter, especially at celebrations and with family. Mochi (rice cake) by itself could mean any kind of rice cake made with sticky rice, and I don’t think it is a seasonal word—meaning this one does not have one—but I could be wrong—I’d have to check. (Maybe mochi was a winter seasonal word that I pulled out of a Saijiki, I forget). If it is then the haiku would be fine as is. Regardless, you can imagine the sad loneliness of a girl in such a situation around the holidays as she remembers and misses her own family.

 

森を目に
反映し
姫初め

 

Mori o me ni
hanei shi
himehajime

 

Forest reflecting
in the eyes
himehajime

 

尊き田
月の光に
姫初め

 

Toutoki ta
tsuki no hikari ni
himehajime

 

In the sacred field
in the light of the moon
himehajime

 

In ancient times, and even today, in many old agricultural communities around the world, people would have sex in the fields to make them fertile. Much of the sacred aspect of sex is that it is deeply tied to fertility.

HAPPY FIRST TIME

In my first post in this blog, I mentioned that this blog originally started on another website as a joke. On New Years Day of 2013, I posted a thread for Japanese speakers, and those learning Japanese that simply said, ‘Happy Himehajime!’

There are numerous manga cartoons that make jokes of himehajime, but I don’t know if anybody ever wishes anyone a Happy Himehajime. You see—in Japan, everything done for the first time of the year is special—in fact it has a sacred quality about it. For example, Hatsuyu refers to the first time you boil water in the year. Hime means princess, and hajime means first, or beginning—so it is literally, First Princess. But it actually means to have sex for the first time of the year, so you could say, First Sex, First Congress, First Lovemaking, etc.

Here is the second post I did on that thread:
 
Over the years, I have composed numerous haiku about himehajime. I will have to find those—However my first haiku of the year (Hatsuku-or–hakku), coincidentally is on the same subject, and goes:

 

朝早い
はたらく湯女
姫初め 也

 

Asa hayai
hataraku yuna
himehajime ya.

 

Early in the morning
the working bath house prostitute
—himehajime!

 

On the surface, this is Senryu, or satirical haiku. But deeper down, it has numerous other layers of meaning which touch upon a sad and often ignored pathos of life. The bath-house prostitute in old Japan was, among prostitutes, nothing like the courtesans or geisha, but rather a low ranking prostitute. My impression is that she did not even have the status, nor possibly even the skill of today’s Soapland women, the skillful prostitutes at what used to be known as Turkish Baths (Turkey took offense and forced Japan to change the name from Toruko—which meant Turkish Bath, but which also means Turkey).

So here you have a sacred act, or at least special act, being performed in the vulgar, by a girl who provides this service, easily multiple times a day. I also wrote:

 

元日に
はたらく湯女
姫初め也

 

Ganjitsu ni
hataraku yuna
himehajime ya

 

On the first day of the year
the working bath house prostitute
himehajime!

 

But this is too blatant perhaps? Early in the morning, in light of himehajime, already implies January First. This is the most important and special day of the year in Japan. It is a time for family, relaxing, eating good food… But a bath is also very important–and for the poor who cannot afford their own bath, the bath house must stay open. So even on this special sacred day, this sacred act was performed by the vulgar. One must wonder, if that particular copulation is special for either participant. Perhaps through the day and weeks, she would provide the himehajime to many lonely men. But what about her own family? Her own ability to share this once a year moment with a lover who makes her whole? And was that first customer that was her himehajime, even worthy of such an honor? Alas, she most likely had no choice in the matter—–reflecting that typical Japanese fatalism that defines the plot of so many Japanese stories…

 

Here is one from a few years ago:

 

雪降り、降りに
ばば、とじじ
姫初め

 

Yuki furi furi ni
baba to jiji
himehajime

 

As the snow falling, falling
the old lady, and the old man
himehajime