All language subtitles for “Poetry, Class, and Politics_ Making Haiku into “Literature” in Meiji Japan

I want to introduce Rob Tuck.

Rob is Assistant Professor of Modern
Japanese Literature and Culture at

State University as of this year, just
starting in.

Rob had previously been at the
University of Montana, which, as many

has its own long history in Japanese
studies.

Rob got his PhD at Columbia in 2012, a
place that's

dear to my own heart. And at Columbia,
he

studied modern poetry, and especially
the poetry of the Meiji

period, which is wonderful and at the
same time rare.

Modern poetry generally is really
neglected, so we...

think are going to owe a lot to Rob for
bringing modern poetry back onto the

agenda. But particularly the poetry of
the Meiji period is

difficult, unusual, sometimes seems
disconnected from

before or after.

So it's something really especially
important to devote attention to.

That work has just recently resulted in
this great book, Idly Scribbling

Rhymers, Poetry, Print, and Community in
19th Century Japan, which is recently

out from Columbia. It's a book that is
structured around the career of the poet

and critic.

Masaoka Shiki, who among other things is
responsible for

turning the Edo period practice of
haikai into what we now know as haiku.

This book argues that, as we will hear

more about today, that poetry really

should be understood as having a central
place in the creation of modern

Japanese nationality. And in literature,
perhaps, is more important than prose,

which usually gets all of the attention,
and I'm guilty of that myself. And a

couple of reasons.

One is that poetry circles in Japan have
a lot of... participants.

I mean, even now, right?

There are a lot of so -called amateur
poets who are not really amateur in the

sense of not being very good at it.

They just have other ways to make their
living.

And this was also true in the Meiji
period. Also in the Meiji period, poets

poetry critics had an important part in
debates about, in a sense, the

nationality of Japanese literature and

in that respect, the creation of ideas
about a nation.

And also Rob would argue that poetry,
through its emotional quality, can have

much more significant impact on people's
sense of belonging than serialized

novels, for example. And he talks about
all of it under the rubric of poetic

sociality, which is a really interesting
idea that we will...

hear a lot from.

Rob is actually embarked on another
project already, which is the

Nihongaishi. It's an important work of
19th century sort of restorationist

historiography by Daisanyo.

But I think we're really honored to have
him here today to talk about his recent

book. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, well, good afternoon,
everyone. As introduced, I am Robert

Arizona State University.

It is a great pleasure and an honor to
be invited here to talk a little bit

about my research. I'd like to thank,
obviously, Chris Hill, but also Barbara

Kinzer, Yuri Fukuzawa, everyone at the
CJS for making this possible here today.

Now, as Chris just mentioned, My talk
here today is adapted in part from

my recent book, Idly Scribbling Rhymers,
Poetry, Print, and Community in 19th

Century Japan.

I think I'm contractually obligated to
point out it is available from Columbia

University Press with a very reasonable
price of $65.

Now, again, as Chris pointed out, the
book is centered primarily on the work

life of

He was a haiku poet and literary critic
who,

actually a contemporary, born at the
same time as Natsume Soseki, but died at

the relatively young age of 35.

He's often credited as being essentially
the founder, sometimes even the term

father is used, of the genre that we
think of as the modern haiku. And his

writing and work is going to be my
focus.

here today.

In the book, I actually look at three
different major genres of traditional

Japanese poetry.

Kanshi, which is poetry written
essentially in literary Chinese. We call

Sinitic poetry.

Waka, which is obviously, I think, one
of the oldest, if not the oldest,

traditional verse form in Japanese.

And Haikai, the pre -modern collection
of practices, including linked verse,

hoku, senryu,

point scoring haikai, which later became
known as haiku.

Now, most studies of literature and the
nation in the Meiji period have taken

the position that literature serves as a
focal point for increasingly cohesive

ideas of community.

In my book, I actually take kind of the
opposite position.

I argue that there are some significant
fault lines in the idea of a national

poetic community that we need to pay
closer attention to. And these fault

are of gender, social class, and
political affiliation. And it's actually

last two themes of social class and
political affiliation that we're going

explore in the talk today.

talk, I think, could perhaps be
described as something of a revisionist

of haiku reform, of how haiku became
understood as literature. We're going to

exploring the range of discourses and
ideas that accompanied the

from pre -modern haikai into the modern
haiku during a quite specific

and limited period, the Meiji 20s,
roughly the period 1890 to

1900 or so. And what we'll see is a
range of ideas about how haikai can

bungaku. This is the Japanese word
basically for literature.

And when I say that this is a
revisionist talk, I want to say that

specific assumptions about what haiku is
and what haikai was that I think I want

to mention right at the start, which I'm
going to challenge here today.

The first of these, very simply, is that
both haikai and haiku take as their

primary focus the seasons and the
natural world, that they are primarily,

exclusively, about these topics.

This is something that has been...

I think, taken as read. Sometimes it's
been the basis for criticism of haiku.

1946, in a very famous polemic against
haiku as it was practiced in Japan at

time, the critic Kuwabara Takeo wrote
that one cannot expect much from haiku

when the process of writing it inspires
a child to notice for the first time

that there is a moon in the sky. In
other words, his critique here is that

natural world is a fairly boring realm
from which to draw one's material.

Now, the flip side of this assumption
that haiku's domain is almost

the natural world is that the function
of commentary on social, political,

cultural matters, in essence human
affairs, is basically not done in haiku.

if you do do it, that it's done through
haiku, I suppose you would call it a sub

-genre of sengyu, a sort of a comic and
satirical counterpart to haiku, which is

nevertheless formally distinct from it.

So that's the first assumption that I
want to challenge today, basically that

haiku, as we understand it, is
fundamentally apolitical.

The second assumption is basically that
both haikai and haiku are popular

literature, and by that I mean that they
are a literary genre that is by and for

the common people, however we may define
that.

This certainly holds true for pre
-modern haikai, which was written by

tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds
of thousands of people in Japan during

the Edo period.

And a number of scholars have noted this
and commented on this.

Eiko Ikegami, for instance, in her 2005
study, Bonds of Civility, suggests that,

among other things, haikai networks,
precisely because of their social

eclecticism, that anybody could join
them, commoners, samurai, nobles,

actually formed one part of the origins
of modern Japanese civil society.

And I think much the same assumption
also holds true for the modern haiku. I

mean, Chris noted accurately that, to
the present day, It's practiced by, I

think it's fair to say, millions of
people in Japan, certainly around the

of the world as well. One of Shiki's
most famous disciples, Takahama Kiyoshi,

actually is known to have observed with
a fair amount of pride that one in every

100 Japanese people writes haiku. In
other words, it's a very commonly

genre.

I should note, just from my own
experience, I think haiku's reputation

simplicity and accessibility means that
it's, in some cases, actually the only

form of metered poetry that is taught in
English language school curriculums as

well, something that is in some ways
somewhat sad for English language

but it's nevertheless a fact here.

So what I'm going to do today is to show
that when we look at Meiji haiku, Much

of what we think we know about haiku is
wrong, to put it simply.

The process of making haiku into
literature in Meiji, Japan, entailed a

of operations of erasure and exclusion,
of drawing very clear boundaries between

what was literature and what was not.
And not only that, but also drawing

boundaries between who should be writing
literature and who should not be. And

precisely because of this, when we look
at the Meiji period, I think it's

necessary to rethink how haiku may or
may not have been understood as a

potential national poetry, as a co
-creative, writes the word in Japanese

meaning national poetry.

So allow me to start then with the
question of haiku as a form of

political commentary. As I noted
earlier, It's generally understood that

basically doesn't do political
commentary. If you do sapphire...

Comedy, sexual, scatological things,
they are usually done via the medium of

senryu. This is a verse form that
follows haiku's 575 format,

but which differs in a number of
important formal respects. It does not

seasonal words, words that evoke the
four seasons. It doesn't use cutting

such as kana, ya, keri, and so forth.

I'm sorry, that actually should be the
other way around. Senryu uses vernacular

rather than classical language, and it's
also usually anonymous.

I should point out that the extent to
which haiku is even capable of

the function of political commentary,
really up to the 21st century, is still

very unsettled issue in Japan. In 2002,
the prominent Japanese

haiku journal, entitled simply Haiku,
did a survey of 50 of Japan's

most prominent haiku poets, asking them
a very simple question.

haiku, should poets compose topical and
political haiku? And this, by way of

context, obviously was a year after 9
-11 in the US and was also, I think,

years after the 1995 Hanshin earthquake
and the Tokyo subway thawing gas attack.

The results actually were interesting.

Somewhat surprisingly, only four out of
50 said absolutely not, they should not

be composing it. 23 said yes, they
should.

who, almost half the sample, actually
answered, right?

Among those, actually, were some people
who objected to the word should. The

idea of beki -ra in Japanese, basically
saying that, well, there's no such thing

as should in haiku. You can compose on
whatever you want.

The 23 people who answered, yes, yes,
you should, argued, among other things,

that yes, although haiku is commonly
understood as being focused on the

world,

In haiku, the human and the natural are
not really fully divisible, and haiku

cannot be fully severed from the human
context in which it is produced.

But one interesting thing here was that
virtually all of the 23 who responded

that one should compose topical haiku
were unanimous on the point that

commentary for haiku carried a certain
degree of danger. It was very easy when

writing political haiku to produce bad
haiku.

that political sloganeering or
mudslinging didn't add much to the genre

fact was actually likely to make it
unliterary, to basically degrade its

as literature.

But what was not mentioned in this 2002
debate was that haiku on...

Political and topical matters were
actually exceedingly common a little

years earlier in the Meiji newspaper
world, and they were so common that

was actually a specific name for them,
jiji haiku, current affairs or topical

haiku. And Shiki himself, again, who is
regarded as basically the father of the

modern haiku, actually wrote and
published a substantial number of jiji

Let me give you one example.

an example that feels eerily relevant.
This is from June of 1894 when the

Japanese parliament, the Diet, was
actually dissolved by imperial order

it could not agree on a budget for the
year. This feels eerily familiar at the

moment.

The summer grass, the Diet gate out in
front, there's no one there.

The idea being that the Diet building
here, because it's been dissolved, is

eerily empty.

And if you're at all familiar with the
haikai tradition, the first line here

probably rings a bell or two because
it's exactly the same first line as a

famous hoku by the legendary poet Matsuo
Bato, Natsukusaya.

all that's left of ancient warrior
dreams.

And Basho composed this by way of
context on seeing the ruins of the

of the powerful northern Fujiwara clan
in northern Japan. So the resonance here

is somewhat like Ozymandias, the idea
that there is a...

ruin or a monument to an arrogant and
overbearing civilization that ultimately

meets its end. The implication, of
course, here is that for all their heirs

graces, the parliamentarians in the Diet
are probably on the road to destruction

as well.

We'll look at just a few more examples
of topical haiku in a moment, but at

point I want to make what I realize may
be a somewhat extraordinary claim, which

is that In terms of what was being read
and consumed in the newspaper sphere, in

the public sphere in 1890s Japan, it's
possible that topical haiku may actually

have been the dominant mode of the genre
during the 1890s, not what we would

think of as conventional nature -focused
literary haiku. And I want to highlight

this claim here because I think it is
very...

very much going against what we think of
as being haiku's main purpose here.

Just as a couple of pieces of evidence
here, topical haiku were exceptionally

widespread in virtually all Meiji
newspapers.

The Tokyo Mainichi Shinbun ran a haiku
contest in October of 1895.

It advised readers who might want to
send in their verses.

Either topical verses or just plain
verses are fine.

Tadanoku, for those of you who can read
Japanese, has almost the subtext that...

copical haiku were the default and that
haranoku are just kind of almost boring,

plain verses here.

The same newspaper kept on doing this.
In 1895, for instance, sorry, in

of the same year, the same newspaper
advised its readers on what to compose.

wrote that copical compositions need not
necessarily be limited to political

questions. Matters in society or
societal matters are also interesting.

Saying, obviously, go ahead, compose on
matter. of politics here.

I also want to point out that the two
most widely read newspapers in Japan

-1895, and that date is significant
because it's the end of the Sino

War, which led to a big boost in
newspaper circulation overall, the

and the Osaka Asahi Shinbun. I mention
these because these were the first two

newspapers in Japan to break the 100
,000 copies a day mark. These were by

the most widely read newspapers.

throughout the 1890s carried topical
haiku, but they did not carry what we

think of as conventional literary haiku,
and neither of them actually did so

until the turn of the century, until
after 1900 or so.

So as I mentioned, Matawakashiki wrote a
substantial number of these politically

focused haiku, and

Part of the reason for this was that the
newspaper at which he worked, at which

he began his career, which was called
Nippon, or very simply Japan, was

extremely interested in politics and was
particularly antagonistic towards the

major government, towards the government
of the time.

On top of that, the 1890s, which...

was the time when Shiki was just getting
started at that newspaper, were also

extremely turbulent politically.

There was a newly established
parliamentary system that was really

working out the kinks in its operations.
There were frequent...

what we would think of now as government
shutdowns. There was budgetary

deadlock. The Diet, the Japanese
Parliament, was frequently dissolved by

imperial order in order to reconvene and
try to solve the matter that was put

before it.

Shiki had a lot of fun with this. On one
occasion, when the Diet was dissolved,

he wrote, bitter winter winds for 10
days or so,

giving it a rest. The idea being that...

where in English you might talk about
politicians producing hot air. In this

case, he's likening them to producing
cold winter winds here. And all of the

haiku we're about to see here, as you
can see, are set in the winter season.

Around about the same time, the Speaker
of the House, whose name was Hoshi Toru,

and Hoshi, if you speak Japanese, you'll
know, actually means, or can be

understood as star, was facing a no
-confidence motion.

And again, Shiki wrote,

The speaker of the house, a fallen star.

Okay. A freezing night, a single large

star comes falling to Earth. The idea
being that this guy called Star has

suffered something of a fall here.

Other verses from around about the same
time go beyond simply domestic politics

to also address international affairs.

The unequal treaties that Japan had
signed with the Western powers in the

had, among other things, initially
restricted

the movements and place of residence of
foreigners in Japan.

By 1890 or so, as a matter of, as a
practical matter, these restrictions

generally being ignored and Westerners
were moving freely within Japan.

Nationalistic newspapers such as Nippon
were very vocal in arguing that these

treaty restrictions should be strictly
enforced so as to give Japan some

leverage in negotiations with the West.

Shiki's commentary on this,

First, no fall.

Boots shall not pass through the gate.
Boots being, obviously, stereotypically

Westerner's footwear as opposed to Geta
or more traditional Japanese footwear

here. Now, if you know anything about
the history of the Meiji government,

you'll know they were not particularly
fond of criticism. On a number of

occasions, Nippon was actually subject
to legal sanctions for publishing

material that displeased the Meiji
government. The precise mechanism was

actually what's called a suspend
publication order, which basically meant

that you could not publish for a set
period of days as a punishment for

something that displeased the
government. Again, Shiki and his

responded to this through haiku.

The passing spring, ah, the sadness of a
man who has no

voice.

Similar sort of thing happened a little
bit later, a couple of months after

this. An extra edition of the newspaper
was actually banned as well.

There are some men who would even tell
the cuckoo that it should not sing.

As you may be aware, Shiki's pen name
actually means the cuckoo. So I think

reasonable to conclude that this was his
work right here.

Now, there's an obvious objection at
this point, which is that these verses,

we've heard a few chuckles from coming
from around the room, they're mildly

humorous, can perhaps be viewed really
as sennyu, despite my classification of

them as being haiku. And this is, in
fact, an argument that a number of

scholars have made, that yes, formally
these may be haiku, but properly they

should be classed as sennyu. But I want
to stress that the...

The purpose of writing these for the men
who wrote them, and they were almost

exclusively men, was often as serious
social and political commentary by men

believed they had to contribute to an
ongoing public discussion. And I should

add, were also fully aware of what the
distinction between haiku and senju was,

and chose very deliberately to write in
haiku.

These were not necessarily intended
always to be funny or scatological in

way that fen you often are. One example
of verse that's very serious in purpose.

actually comes from 1897, a series of
verses published in Nippon commenting on

the ongoing ecological disaster that was
the Ashio copper mine in northern

Japan. Some of you may know about this,
but basically toxic runoff from the

copper mine caused decades of
environmental devastation in the Ashio

100 miles or so north of Tokyo. This
became a real cause for labor of the day

the late 19th century in Japan.

One of these verses here,

On a mound of toxins, a wild fox

lies dead, the spring moon. The point,
obviously, spring is supposed to be a

time for growth, for renewal, for
burgeoning wildlife.

Instead, what we have here is poison and
death. The wildlife has either died or

has fled here.

A second verse from the same sequence of
ten.

Spring waters take on the stink of
copper. Fish

do not live therein. Now, there's
actually a biting pun in the second line

with dōshū, which literally means... the
smell of copper, which is obviously on

its face a description of the pollution
resulting from the mine at Ashio.

But dōshu, the smell of copper, can also
mean greed or avarice. So ultimately

what this is is a critique both of what
the writer perceives of as the greed of

the mine owner, Furukawa Ichibe, but
also I think implicitly a critique of

Meiji government's growth at all costs.

industrial policy.

So this, I think, is definitely intended
as serious political commentary here.

And I want to reiterate that simply
categorizing jiji haiku as

another form of senryu is, to my mind,
extremely reductive. The people who were

writing them, as I said, were fully
aware of the difference between senryu

haiku and considered topical haiku to be
an entirely legitimate use of the

genre. Now, at this point, one question
obviously arises. If topical haiku were

so widespread and even perhaps
mainstream, what exactly happened next?

this use of the genre not subsequently
continue?

There's kind of an instructive example
here.

In 1901, the Yomiuri Shinbon, which
then, as now, is one of Japan's most

read newspapers, put out a call to its
readers.

to submit what it called Jiji Mondai
Haiku, right? Current Affairs Haiku.

This was taken a few days ago on the
Yomiuri Shimbun website. It still

verse on topical matters from its
readers, only now...

it refers to them, if you can read this
in Japanese, you'll know, as jiji senyu.

In other words, the idea of the correct
verse form for public commentary on

political matters has clearly shifted
here in the intervening 118 years now, I

suppose.

Part of the answer as to why this...

political function for haiku didn't
really continue that much is that

Shiki's own reform movement, known as
the Nippon Group for the newspaper

which they gathered, deliberately
excluded it from their vision of what

was. They argued, as we'll see in just a
second, that if haiku was going to be

literature, it was necessary for the
political to be completely removed.

In 1897, in the inaugural issue of the
haiku journal Hototogitsu, meaning

the kuku, which was extremely
influential and is actually still

today, one of Shiki's disciples, Naito
Mesetsu, explicitly addressed this. I

think it's on the second page of the
inaugural issue. This is clearly

to be something that attention is drawn
towards.

If this, and by this he means the use of
haiku for political commentary,

If this is as far as haiku is going to
go, then how is it different from senju?

No, actually, senju would be rather
better than haiku for this purpose.

And Meisetsu actually went on to argue
in this particular piece much the same

thing that the critics from 2002 had
done. He argued that if you are

on political matters, the risk is there
that you will lapse.

into vulgarity, right? And vulgarity is
a bad thing. Rather than run that risk,

it's safer, essentially, he argues, to
focus simply on the four seasons and the

natural world.

Shiki himself weighed into this debate
just a couple of months after Meisetsu

himself, also in 1897.

In this case, he was actually reviewing
a collection of kanji, of kinetic

poetry, by his fellow poet at the New
Nippon, a person called Kokubu Seigai,

was very famous in the Meiji literary
world for writing Kanshi almost on a

basis, attacking the Meiji government,
attacking what he saw as corruption and

malfeasance here.

That same year, Seigai actually
published a collection of all of his

pages and pages of Kanshi attacking the
Meiji government.

Shiki's review was, on the whole,
positive, but he closed it by arguing

The materials that Seigai's poetry
addresses are almost all vulgar, coarse,

unclean, and ugly. This is extremely
unliterary. Again, if you can read

Japanese, you'll notice hibungakuteki.
This is not literature.

Therefore, for the most part, Forest of
Criticism, which was the name of

Seigai's poetry collection,

is not literature.

And we should not judge it by the
standards of literature.

Again, here.

In other words, Shiki was...

performing something of a pivot here,
having actually established himself to

some degree by writing politically
focused verse, he was now doing a 180.

He was actually arguing that the vision
of haiku that he was now laying out

found that topical and political
commentary was simply incompatible with

understood as literate. So this term
hibunga kuteki is a major one in his

rhetoric that I'm going to return to
again and again.

And Shiki himself had very clear and
perhaps somewhat arbitrary ideas of what

was literature and what was not. And he
used this as frankly kind of an

argumentative cudgel. One famous example
of this comes from 1895.

This is almost always quoted in
discussions of Shiki's work in English.

The hoku is literature.

Link verse is not literature.

Something is literature, something is
not literature.

This is often claimed to be basically
the death knell for linked verse

in... in modern Japan.

And we see this rhetorical strategy
again and again and again in Shiki's

writings. He uses this somewhat
Procrustean definition in all kinds of

contexts. So if one of his definitions
of bungaku was that it could not contain

any political content, another use of
his not literature division,

actually comes in debate over the idea
that haikai was what's called commoner

literature, heimin bungaku, essentially
the literature of the common people. And

this was an idea that started to be
debated.

from the early 1890s onwards. And not
coincidentally, this is the period

about which the idea of kokubungaku, of
Japan's national literature, is also

beginning to emerge as an academic
discourse in Japan here.

Now, as far as I can tell, the first
time that the term Heimin Bungaku was

applied to haiku actually was August of
1890 in the Yomiuri Shinbun

newspaper. A poet by the name of Maeda
Ringai argued essentially that

haikai should be Japan's national
poetry. It should be its kokuhi. The

that he gave for this were really
twofold. Firstly, as he wrote that

commoner poetry, a universal poetry, a
Japanese poetry, a uniquely oriental

poetry. And he went on to add, everyone
among the people of our land, even at

the lowest levels of society, possesses
a certain amount of artistic spirit. In

other words, everyone in Japan can...

Everyone in Japan should be writing
haiku. It should become our national

here. And it doesn't matter what level
of society you may be at, you are still

capable of composing it here. In other
words, the boundaries of haiku's

poetic community, if we can use that
term, and the national community as a

are pretty much exactly the same here.

This idea of haikai as being commoner
literature was actually debated on and

over the next couple of years. Some
commentators claimed that it was a good

thing. Others claimed that it was a bad
thing. But there was no real

disagreement with the basic idea that
haikai was indeed commoner literature

until Shiki made his intervention
towards the end of 1892.

And this perhaps is somewhat surprising
given that Shiki has this reputation as

the founder. of the modern haiku, which,
so we think we know, is a very broad

-based and popular literary genre.

But Shiki was actually extremely
critical of the idea that haikai could

should be commoner literature.

He wrote, and I'll read this very
quickly here, for the twin reasons that

easy to compose and use as vernacular
language, haikai of late has acquired

nickname of commoner literature.

This is a new entry in the Meiji
dictionary, to be sure, but nobody seems

to say for certain whether this is meant
as praise or mockery. In fact, many

people's judgment is that it can only be
meant as a slur. In other words,

commoner literature is actually a really
bad thing.

He goes on.

True literature, shin no bungaku, is
sublime and elegant, this core shore UV

Japanese, and does not necessarily gain
the approval of large numbers of people.

And this is because, if anything, in
many respects, komona and literature are

almost completely incompatible here. So
true literature, in Shiki's view, cannot

be popular and broad -based. He says...
explicitly, almost in so many words,

commoner literature is a contradiction
in terms. We're back again here to

literature, not literature again, right?
There's very clear division between the

two here. Now, I should point out that
Masaoka Shiki in 2000's parlance was

something of a troll. He often made very
provocative statements in the print

media, which he didn't necessarily
adhere to later on in his career.

However,

this point that haikai could not be
commoner literature was something that

was actually very consistent on
throughout the whole of his career.

A couple of years later, responding to a
different critic's argument that haikai

was kokumin bungaku, in other words, the
literature of the people of the nation,

he wrote much the same thing. I'm sorry,
I missed this, but commoner

literature... is not part of literature.

It is bungaku igai. It is outside of
literature. This was another term that

used quite frequently.

But with regard to kokumin bungaku, He
says much the same thing.

Literature large numbers of citizens can
appreciate, for the most part, will be

literature of the very lowest rank,
entirely unworthy of the term. If by

literature of the nation's people they
mean something extra literary, again,

bungaku igai here, then that's fine, but
if not, then I simply can't understand

what they mean by the term. I wonder if
it means the same thing as commoner

literature here. So, once again,

we're back to this idea that a
literature everybody can be involved in

literature. Basically, it's a
contradiction in terms. But almost by

for haiku to become literature, it has
to become an elite genre here.

Now, this does, of course, raise the
question, well, who precisely then

should... be writing haiku if so -called
commoners had to be excluded in the

process of it becoming literature?

Well, the simplest answer is that
literature, bungaku, in Shiki's view,

be written by men of letters, bungaku
-sha. And this is a term that crops up

repeatedly in Shiki's writings and a
number of others active in haiku reform

around about the same time.

Shiki doesn't really offer a clear
definition for who he thinks a bungaku

actually should be.

But from the way that he uses the term,
and certainly from the demographics of

the haiku reform movement, it seems
pretty clear that this idea

of a bungaku -sha had a great deal to do
with social class and particularly with

educational background.

It heavily favored those who had
attended one of the elite higher schools

Japan and particularly those who had
graduated from Tokyo Imperial

Shiki himself actually was a dropout of
that institution, but that never seems

to have stopped him.

Now, the idea that the bungaku -sha,
those who had the proper academic

credentials to define what literature
was, was actually pretty widespread

the major haiku reform groups active in
Tokyo at this time.

Now, Shiki's Nippon group is almost
always the center of narratives of haiku

history, but there were at least two
other groups that were engaged in the

project of trying to make haiku into a
modern literary genre.

One of these was known as the Teikoku
Bungaku group. This was a a group that

affiliated with the really academic
journal, Keikoku Gungaku, Imperial

Literature, which was published by and
run almost exclusively by...

graduates of Tokyo Imperial University.

So almost by definition, they had the
appropriate academic credentials here.

there's another group active at the same
time who I think have largely been

written out of narratives of haiku
history, and that is the Shu Seikai, the

Autumn Wind Society.

This was a...

actually regarded in Tokyo during the
mid -1890s as the premier haiku reform

group, not Shiki's Nippon group. Part of
the reason for that...

was that one of its leading lights was
the very famous prose fiction author

Ozaki Koyo. He actually was a haiku poet
as well. And many of the members of his

prose writers group, the Ken Yusha, the
Friends of the Inkstone, were also

members of the Shuseikai. The other
major member was perhaps less well

-known figure in literary studies, a
lawyer, a criminal lawyer called Kakuta

Chikure, who was, I think, a very well
-connected politician. figure in Tokyo.

He's also, I think, a Tokyo City
assemblyman. But he also composed haiku,

basically, in his spare time here.

Now, the Fuseikai, the Autumn Wind
Society, was somewhat more eclectic than

Shiki's group, but they too still
emphasize social class and educational

background in the vision of haiku that
they were promoting.

In 1897, for instance, one of the
group's members, Mori Muko, notes that

people have criticized Masaoka Shiki for
introducing the language of academic

literary criticism to analyze haikai,
even though, as he says, haikai is

something that... even the illiterate
workman class can grasp.

He goes on, reformers must develop a
sophisticated critical vocabulary, and

this he means things like time, space,
etc., etc., for haiku so that what he

calls educated society, kyoiku aru
shakai, can understand it. And he

this is really important in order for us
to have the middle and upper classes

learn about the way of haiku. This is
chuto ijo.

nor shakai here.

So in other words, at least Morimuko, as
part of the Fuseikai, understood the

mission of haiku reform to be about
introducing haiku to what we might term

better elements of society, the middle
class and upwards.

And I really do want to emphasize that
this rhetoric of class distinctions was

mainstay of all of the haiku reform
groups.

Masaoka Shiki, again, writing in 1896,
is quite clear on this. Even if a new

style haiku should gain more widespread
popularity, those ill -educated barbers,

fishmongers, grocers, store clerks, and
young apprentices will never come within

its bounds. We have some pretty clear
rhetoric here.

today say that haiku is plebian, it's
heimin teki, but the new faction will

never allow itself to become plebian in
the same way as the old school.

And I want to highlight the word old
school here, in Japanese the kyūha,

this was a group of haikai masters who
in many cases had actually been active

from before the Meiji Restoration.

And it's useful here because the Kyuha,
the old school, provides concrete

reality to the commoners, right? This
is, I think, who Shiki meant in many

by the commoners of commoner literature.

And if you read almost any English
language account of haiku history,

that the old school, the Kyuha masters,
are basically the bad guys.

Donald Keen's work, for instance, pretty
much says that they were terrible.

Janine Beischmann, Shiki, I think,
rather uncritically reproduces this idea

here. The standard view of the Kyuha,
the old school here, is that as

poets they were...

mercenary, incompetent, unserious. They
produced largely worthless, abstruse

verse that was little more than riddles.
In other words, the old school would

never have been capable of producing
anything that could be termed a modern

literary genre.

And it's worth saying that in modern
Japanese language scholarship as well,

is... widely accepted. There's, to my
knowledge, only a handful of Japanese

language studies that actually take the
so -called old school masters remotely

seriously. So the modern history of
haiku, I think, in many ways is a

history. It is written from the point of
view of Shiki and the Reform Group. But

just by way of bringing our talk today
towards a conclusion, I think there's

room in, or there's value in not taking
this this assumption or this idea of the

kyuha as being useless entirely at face
value, to actually have a look at what

they thought about everything that was
going on during the 1890s. And when we

this, this really, I think, completes
the picture that I have been trying to

paint here of haiku reform as
inextricably connected to questions of

class, because they fully understood
this idea of a new movement in haiku as

being connected with those. exact
issues.

Now, I should point out that even after
Shiki's rise to prominence, old school

masters and their disciples remained
numerically far greater. There were far

more of them than Shiki and his groups.

And they were actually still very
active. The old school masters remained

active even after Shiki had really begun
to lay into them.

Their rhetoric as to what haiku was, was
really in sharp contrast to

that of Shiki.

I think a year after Shiki had written
his broadside here about, again, shop

clerks and fishmongers, two old school
masters, Ashinan Setsujin and Kikapido

Eiki, advertised a collection of their
works with the rhetoric that haikai was

genre that was held in common by society
as a whole, and a genre in in which, as

they put it, the voices of town and
country, high and low, forever chant

together. In other words, it doesn't
matter who you are. You can write haiku.

It's a genre that creates essentially
unity here.

A month or two after that, the literary
journal Bungei Kurabu had another haiku

competition where readers could send in
their verses.

This was supervised by an old school
master who wrote very simply, Haikai is

commoner literature of our country. So
the old school were actually using the

term heiminbungaku in a largely positive
sense. They thought this basically was

a good thing here.

Other writings from around about the
same time by old school masters really

reinforce this overall point here.

One of the most prominent old school
masters throughout really the whole of

Meiji period was Mimori Mikio.

And writing in 1898 in the journal
Bungei Kurabu that we just saw,

He actually launched an attack on what
he called scholars, the gakuta, who he

thought were confusing people who were
new to haikai. They were basically

disrupting everything. He wrote, In
today's scholarly world, there is a

to use one's own theories in order to
tear down the past. And I want to

highlight the gaksha chakai here. He has
a very clear idea as to who exactly is

meant by this.

There are many, he writes, who for all
their studies are not well versed in the

great way of haikai. In other words,
these highfalutin academics with all

fancy theories, they don't actually know
anything about haikai.

In this same piece, Mimori Mikio
actually goes on to single out a member

Teikoku Bungaku group called Sasa
Seisetsu and write somewhat acidly

of Sasa Seisetsu's criticism.

We must lament that one who holds a
degree in literature should be so

points of grammar and have no
understanding of the deeper meaning.

of haiku here. In other words, Sasa
Seisetsu would basically take an issue

Mimori Mikio's use of classical Japanese
grammar.

Mimori Mikio basically fired back by
saying that the grammar was not

it was about the overall meaning here.

So I think the battle lines seem
relatively clear here. The reform

least from the point of view of the old
school, are a bunch of over -educated

elitists who, for all of their fancy
theories and their academic credentials,

really don't actually know anything much
about Haikai. And this is a point

that's actually...

reinforced by another piece from 1900 by
an Osaka -based master called

Ote Kinsho, who the piece in question
was called Pointless Discussions

on Haikai, Haikai Mizukakeron.

Mizukakeron in Japanese means a
discussion that's a complete waste of

And what he does is he frames this as a
conversation on a veranda, a Japanese

-style veranda, in the summer between
two people.

the old -school master self -proclaimed
elegance, and the reformer who is

identified as commoner with a lit
degree, the Heimin Bungakushi. As you

expect, this...

doesn't go particularly well. This
rapidly degenerates into an exchange of

insults here, and I'll just quickly
summarize this.

This is the master self -proclaimed
elegance who is talking here first.

Look, listen here. When it comes down to
it, your so -called new school is just

a handful of beginners, and it's a bit
much for them to go around attacking

Haikai at large.

The commoner with a lit degree replies,
that's enough out of you. That's not at

all true.

What's not true about it? You go and
become Haikai critics on the spot even

though the fact of the matter is you've
composed barely 50 verses in your life

and start talking about commoner
literature and Haikai is kinetic poetry

syllables and all sorts of serious stuff
like that and you can you can see a

measure of contempt coming through here
even though it's fairly humorous that

basically you have young, over -educated
men who are basically assuming that

their academic credentials give them the
ability to understand haikai, even

though they have little or no practical
experience in it.

Now, I should note that in most
respects, the old school comprehensively

the argument as to what haiku was going
to be in the Meiji period. But in terms

of their valorization, their positive
assessment of haiku as heimin bungaku,

they actually prevailed.

After Shiki's death in 1902,

And particularly after the Russo
-Japanese War of 1904 to 5, we actually

to see something of a 180 in critical
discourse on Heimin Bungaku.

Writing in 1905, the literary historian
Iwaki Juntaro actually

argues that haikai, precisely because it
was, Heimin Bungaku, had actually been

responsible for Japan's victory in the
Sino -Japanese War, sorry, the Russo

-Japanese War, in part because he argued
that it had created a coherent sense of

national identity.

It was a genre that everybody could
compose.

He even went so far as to argue that
haikai had been responsible for

that awful word bushido, the way of the
warrior among the Japanese populace, and

that this had been responsible for
Japan's victory. victory.

And then perhaps a rather more striking
example, in 1912, with the accession of

the Taisho emperor to the throne, none
other than Kakuta Chikure, the lawyer we

saw as a major part of the Shuseikai,
who had seen his mission as promoting

haiku to the middle and upper classes,
actually presented the Taisho emperor

with a book on haikai, or haiku, by
which he claimed, and these were his

his majesty may learn about the subtle
charms of commoner literature.

In other words, he decided now it was
actually a positive thing. And I think

this was a sort of view that strongly
influenced the prevailing idea of haiku

broad -based and popular that we have to
this day.

So to wrap it up then, I think I've
shown that the process of making haiku

literature

during Meiji was a fair bit more
complicated than perhaps has previously

realized, and that in the background
there were multiple discourses of

of both competing people and also
competing visions of haiku and haikai as

genre. The exclusion of the political,
despite very widespread popularity of

haiku as topical commentary, and also
the exclusion of what Shiki repeatedly

referred to as the ill -educated, the
refashioning of haiku as a largely

elite genre.

And I think if I want to make...

one sort of final take -home point, it
would be that Meiji Haiku, in addition

providing us with a fascinating and
often richly entertaining body of

understudied texts, also offers us an
opportunity to see that what we may

commonly think of as trans -temporal
elements of haiku, not as being

natural to the genre, something inherent
to haikai and to haiku, but as

something that was certainly contested
and in many cases was also quite

deliberately created.

Thank you.

So we have time for some questions, and
I think Rob is going to field his own

questions. So please go ahead.

Actually, if I just start off with one.

You had talked about these two processes
of the exclusion of politics and the

antagonism toward the idea of Hamin
Bungaku, and I'm just curious that by

time in the 1890s, Hamin...

was more and more associated with
socialism and the Hamin Shinbun.

I'm wondering if those two processes
would in some way come together, not

as antagonism toward Hamin Bungaku, but
toward... Yeah, it's also associated

with the freedom and popular rights
movement, right? I mean, the Hamin

One of the... I didn't cite this here
today, but the...

Some of the critics who are actually
writing on haiku as Heimin Bungaku are

approaching it specifically from a
freedom and popular rights movement,

idea of Heimin Shugi.

What's interesting is that their
perspective is that, yes, haiku was, or

was, Heimin Bungaku, but that this was
actually a bad thing, that haikai was

fundamentally a docile form of
literature. It was what...

brainwashed commoners during the Edo
period consoled themselves with. It

any kind of energy for freedom and for
popular rights here. With regards to the

connection to socialism, I'm not aware
of that connection being made

explicitly. I don't think Shiki wrote
about it in those terms.

Soseki, though, actually did.

He was one of those people who

I think after Shiki's death, kind of
took up the idea of Haikai as being

Bungaku in a relatively positive sense.

I would not want to be quoted on this,
but I think in his writings, he actually

says that his Heimin Shugi is quite
thoroughgoing.

And in some respects, he is actually
quite sympathetic to socialism.

I've got a translation of one of
Karatani Korjin's pieces on Soseki and

coming out very soon, I hope, which
actually makes this exact point, that

Soseki's, what he called, commonerism
was actually really quite thoroughgoing.

In terms of socialism, I mean, Nippon as
a newspaper was...

It's difficult to characterize its
political views. It's often referred to

nationalistic, but it was not
necessarily nationalistic in the sense

chauvinistic.

Kuga Katsunan, the editor of Nippon, is
on record as having expressed a lot of

interest in byodo shugi, in
egalitarianism. He didn't necessarily

might think of as classic Meiji
nationalism. I think he had a much more

-based idea of popular...

popularism, I think you might refer to
it.

So, yeah, I don't think, I'm not aware
of there ever being an explicit

connection being drawn with socialism as
such, but certainly the broader

resonances of the term Heiminbungaku are
very definitely a play in this overall

discussion. Yes.

Okay. Yeah.

This is one of those short answer
questions, I'm afraid.

Thank you for this lecture because it's
answered a lot of questions that have

formed in my mind over the years about
Japanese poetry.

But I'm going back to the survey that
you mentioned earlier and the answers.

And I was struck by the fact that there
were four people who said, no, you can't

go beyond nature.

And I was wondering, is there a
geographical analysis of that? Were

the people that were farthest away from
the epicenter of the event?

or this is from a cultural historian
point of view.

Yeah, that's a very good question. I
would have to go back and check. I don't

know whether this was marked
geographically or not.

I mean, I will say, just very briefly on
geography, it's worth noting

that Shiki and his group very clearly
understood themselves as geographic

outsiders. They were from Matsuyama.

down in Shikoku for the most part, and
they saw themselves as kind of moving in

on the territory of the Tokyoites.

So there was certainly, I think, a
geographic distinction there.

I'm afraid I would have to go back and
check. I don't remember offhand from the

survey in question, but it's certainly
possible.

Yeah.

What kind of links do you see between
those two?

That is a discovery of landscape, which
of course is an ethnic national

landscape.

What's going on there?

That's an excellent question.

The potential connections to Sassé here
are ones that I didn't explore because

it wasn't the main focus of my book, but
I certainly came across a lot of stuff

that I think can constitute an answer to
your question. Yeah, you're absolutely

right. The anecdote was that Shiki
basically said, look, go out. Go and see

you find. Just write about what you see.
Write about what is in front of you.

Put on your sedge hat and go out for a
walk in the country.

Now, in terms of Shate itself, as being
very strongly focused on

objective description, and usually,
though not always, objective description

nature, it seems almost as if this is
kind of an anecdote to a potentially

undesirable degree of politicization in
haiku at the time. It, I think,

resonates quite well with Naito
Meisetsu's idea that it's simply too

to be looking at things that may be
vulgar. The natural world carries no

dangers here.

I should note...

Tsuki himself wrote the topical haiku
that we've looked at mostly under

I don't think he really liked doing it
particularly, but he was told by his

at Nippon that he had to do it. This was
something that was done in the

newspapers of the time.

But it was actually the connection here
is through Nippon that Tsuki

first, I think, was introduced to the
idea of shate because one of his...

closest colleagues was Nakamura Fusetsu,
this western style painter who pretty

much came up with the or at least
inspired in Shiki the idea and there is

direct point of connection here because
Nakamura Fusetsu was actually working

hand in glove with Shiki at precisely
the point that Shiki was writing those

poems on censorship that I showed
earlier.

And Fusetsu actually produced several
pictures that were political commentary

and of themselves. The word Hakko for
circulation is a homonym

in Japanese for radiance. And Nakamura
Fusetsu actually, as a form of his own

kind of personal

commentary on this, drew a picture of an
ugly woman trying to blow out a

shielded gas lamp with the caps and
extinguishing radiance. And so that was

own sort of commentary.

But Shiki himself actually told his
editor, look, stop having him do this.

He's an artist. We don't want him doing
political stuff.

And it was very shortly after that that
most of Fusetsu's subsequent drawings

were landscape, nothing else.

And I think that was certainly one point
of contact, one of the things that may

have given Shiki the idea here. So,
yeah, it's all in the mix, if you see

mean. I mean, my sense of chassé is that
in part it was conceived of as a way of

directing the focus very strongly onto
the natural world. I think it would be a

little bit overstating the case to say
that it was simply a reaction to the

popularity of political haiku, but I
would argue that was certainly one of

factors in there.

I just want to know, are you aware of
other countries going through a debate

like this over a national poetry?

It doesn't seem like the United States
has ever had that, but even in

Asia at that time.

Right, yeah. So there's a couple of
factors going on here. I mean, one is

that...

An observation that I think holds true
for the U .S. and for, at least for the

English -speaking world. I can't speak
authoritatively outside of that. But

newspaper poetry, which to my mind is
the kind of poetry that is most likely

be engaged with political matters, is...

pretty common in the English -speaking
world, I think at least to the beginning

of the 20th century, although it's not
that widely studied because the focus,

I think Chris alluded to right at the
very beginning, is almost always on the

serialized novel, right? I mean, we
think of Charles Dickens, we think of

kinds of writers, that's the primary
focus when we think about the connection

between print media and literature, and
also I would argue we have to throw

politics into the mix.

I wouldn't be surprised if you did see
satirical ditties and poetry of that

kind, certainly in English -speaking
media.

I don't know for certain, but I wouldn't
be at all surprised.

Now, the area where I can answer this
most authoritatively is in terms of

Chinese poetry or kanji in Japan.

Now, I mean, at least in the Chinese
perspective, it's my understanding, and

there's any sinologists here, they can
perhaps correct me on this, that during

the period that we were discussing, the
1890s, there were very few, if any,

periodic regularly published newspapers
in China at the time. That's my

understanding. Perhaps you can correct
me on this if I'm... Okay.

Okay.

Okay, so not entirely accurate then. But
yeah, okay, thank you. I stand

corrected. But the thing about, I mean,
kinetic poetry, about Kanshi, it

actually has a very, very long history
of engaging with political issues. I

mean, in fact, it's almost understood
that it's one of the duties of the

Kanshi poet to be speaking out on
matters of concern to the nation. And,

I mean, I...

would not be at all surprised to find
that you would see poetry on those

matters in the Chinese media. You
definitely did with Kanshi in Japan

the whole of the 19th century.

The poet whose work Shiki was
criticizing as non -literary was a prime

of that. And in fact, there was an
ongoing debate with the editor of the

newspaper in which...

Kokubu Seigai was publishing, making
very similar arguments. This guy is a

talented poet. He's wasting his time
writing this political junk. It's not

literature. It's political diatribe set
to a rhyme scheme.

This is the work of some sort of rustic
bumbler.

incredibly talented poet, but he's
spending all his time writing this

stuff. And that was not because, I
think, Kuga Katsunan, the editor of

necessarily disagreed with him. I mean,
I think as far as I can tell, he was

entirely in sympathy with Seigai's
political views. It was really very much

an artistic point of view, that
basically...

In much the same way as commoner and
literature were incompatible, political

commentary and poetry were, in some
sense, also incompatible. So there's an

ongoing debate here, and I wouldn't wish
to give the impression that, you know,

although, as I have argued...

Jijimondai, topical haikai, are
extremely common, I wouldn't want to

impression that that was uncontested.
There was certainly an ongoing debate at

the time as to whether that was
appropriate.

So, yes, I would be astonished if there
weren't parallel examples in certainly

the English language press.

I mean, given the focus on political
issues throughout the whole of the 19th

century, I would be astonished if there
isn't some kind of political poetry

there.

Yeah. Okay.

One last question. Thank you for the
talk.

I was curious about how those people saw
Tanka.

You didn't mention Tanka in any of the
debates you cited.

I was wondering what they were talking
about.

That's an excellent question.

It's one that has a fairly clear answer.

The thing about tanka, or waka as it's
initially understood in the Meiji

is that it has a much closer
relationship to the Meiji government

haiku or kanji does. There is an
official office in the Meiji government

the outadokoro, which is basically
charged with using waka

pretty much as a means of national
subject formation, of kokumin kese, the

establishment, for instance, of the
utakai hajime. I think this is Meiji

1873 or 4. Basically, the New Year's
practice of the emperor composing

a waka verse and having his citizens
also respond dates from around about

time. And it actually happens that a
number of the poets who are affiliated

this Outa Dokoro published in Nippon.
They're actually publishing in the same

newspaper, partly because Kuga Katsunan,
the editor, believes that waka is

important. It's really important to
encourage its growth and it's important

to the nation.

They're actually...

The Ōta -dokuro poets are publishing in
Nippon almost right up to the day when

Mataoka Shiki publishes his very famous
1898 Utayomi ni Atorusho.

These letters to a tanka poet or a waka
poet in which he really lays into the

Ōta -dokuro. He points out their
incompetence, their fundamental

poets. But there is actually a very
direct parallel here, because if you

few months before Shiki begins the
serialization of this series of comments

waka, you actually see political waka as
well.

And it's Ochiai Naobumi and

Yosano Tekan, who are the ones who are
actually doing this. There's a very

similar verse to the verse about first
snowfall. Boot

shall not pass through the gate.

I won't embarrass myself by trying to
recall the Japanese off the top of my

head, but it's basically, the imagery
is, they plan to plant the

demon rose, right? They plan to plant
the demon rose here in the shade of our

sakura tree. And the headline, or the
title, is naichi zakyō, mixed residence.

Basically, the idea that...

foreigners might be allowed to reside
without any restrictions in Japan.

And I think it's Yosano Tekkan writes of
waka commenting on that using the image

of rose, a demon rose being planted in
the shade of the sakura tree. It's a

similar sort of thing. So it does
happen. There are definitely examples of

being used as a form of explicit
political commentary. And that, in some

is even more surprising because that, I
think, is...

definitely not understood as being a
part of the genre. I mean, we may

on the way in which Heian waka might
seem as if they allude to certain

in Heian court intrigue, but...

To have waka being used as a direct way
of criticizing the government is

extremely unusual.

So, yes, there are some very direct
parallels. I say the main difference

from the very close association between
the state government and waka, which is

not necessarily there with Kanshi and
haiku. So, yes, there is a connection.

So, thank you, and thank you for your
questions. Please join me in thanking

again for his talk.

Thank you.