Mountain Tasting: Zen Haiku by Santoka Taneda

There is a notion of the spiritual life especially prevalent in Christian circles that our shortcomings are something we should seek to eliminate. As in so many other aspects of our life these days, we "wage war" on the many things that make us less than ideal specimens. Obesity, drinking, sexual hangups, shiftlessness, and a hundred other vices are seen as antithetical to the spiritual life. One of the things that Santoka has helped me to understand is how narrow a view of the life of the spirit this kind of thinking is. Santoka was by most people's standards a shiftless drunk. He was poor, unemployed (in fact he lived as a beggar) and content to remain so. His family and marital life were pretty much a disaster. That he was also one of Japan's greatest haiku poets is, according to the narrow, eliminate-the-vice, make-something-of-your-life mentality, an achievement in spite of his failings. I see his poetry as a measure of his success in living with his vices, and at least in part of deriving from them some of the depth and simplicity that makes his work so appealing. As psychologist Thomas Moore tells us, the things we seem to fail in may in fact be our path to greater spiritual depth, not necessarily by overcoming them, but in learning from them about a spiritual reality that is direct and earthy and real. It is a spirituality of not arriving, or, what amounts to the same thing, of arriving with every step. There is no destination, only the journey. Although there were other poor, itinerant haiku poets, none, not even the great Issa, is as earthy as Santoka, "earthy" not in a vulgar sense, though he and Issa too could be delightfully and sometimes not-so-pleasantly vulgar, but in that he lives very close to the physical reality of life largely unmediated by social security, health insurance, family, friends, and a "real" job. Santoka finds a very sympathetic interpreter in John Stevens, whose translation and brief biographical summary are the best introduction you'll find to this great poet. Burton Watson's For All My Walking: Free-Verse Haiku of Taneda Santoka is also worth reading, especially for the translation of Santoka's diary excerpts, but the haiku selection is (deliberately, because he didn't want to duplicate Stevens) not as rich. Stevens gives us the cream. Of course, there are also many of Santoka's haiku in Reginald Blyth's still unsurpassed anthology of haiku (Haiku, in four volumes), and Blyth's translations are unfailingly insightful. But in Stevens we have more, and we have it all together. If you're interested in other books on haiku, I've posted a bibliography of my personal recommendations (in PDF format) at http://www.redrockyellowstone.com. Once there, go to The Art of Haiku and click the link entitled "Read more about haiku..."

Santoka was a royal pain in the posterior for his long-suffering wife. No doubt he reeked from days on the road and a daily diet of sake and pickles and not much else. His manners, too, were less than couth. Not much about his personal life comes through the sometimes barely permeable wall between Japanese and English, and perhaps that's good for Santoka's English readers. The Japanese are a bit more tolerant of this kind of behavior, especially when one has a real literary genius to contend with. It's a fact: telling simplicity, and an incredible ear for saying (in the originals) just enough to make the magic happen. I've wrestled with translating this man's work and English doesn't even begin to begin to convey what Santoka does with the layers of meaning in the Chinese characters (Kanji) as well as the very sound of the Japanese itself. Take, for instance, that famous poem that sounds a bit like a commercial for a clothing company (Blue Mountain is a clothing chain in Japan that sells cheap suits to salary men)--that goes something like: "Push apart/ enter/ push apart/ enter/ blue mountain"? Well, it mimics, among other things, the sound of a work gang in the original. No kidding--that repetitive drum-beat in miniature. You can't get that into English, folks. No translation into English--not even these--can help you "get" Santoka's rightness as well as his breath-taking simplicity. The most one gets is an approximation here, a pointing. The original Japanese is where the real Santoka shows his stuff and no translation, however deft, is going to give him to you. I lived in Kyushu for eight years and am familiar with Kumamoto and those blue mountains that you can't look away from. On the train going to work in the morning and coming home in the evening I'd watch them and think "Santoka walked there." This is a good book of translations, and one sturdy enough for those who want to take it along on their own forays into "walking Zen," though only a fool would elect to follow Santoka's path. Those blue mountains are steep and dangerous and you have to be sturdy and single-minded as a mule to climb them.

Kaneda Santoka, Mountain Tasting (Weatherhill, 1980)Kaneda Santoka, itinerant Zen monk, storied drunkard, and haiku poet, never achieved the fame in the West as did more traditional haiku poets like Basho and Soseki. Some few admirers of his work have been silently pulling strings offstage to change that, and while it hasn't happened yet, things slowly progress.Santoka was on the cusp of the nontraditional haiku movement when he began writing, and was drawn to the idea of haiku that didn't use seasonal imagery, nor stick to the exact seventeen-line syllable used for traditional haiku in Japan. In the hands of a good enough poet, nontraditional Japanese haiku remain haiku; short, image-laden pieces that beg reflection from the reader while offering a quick view through the eyes of the poet. And Santoka was assuredly a good enough poet.This selection of just over three hundred haiku from his works was, to my knowledge, the first collection of his work published in English (a complete works has been published in Japan, along with a few biographies). Santoka's haiku are deceptively simple, but open farther upon meditation (which is why the books' subtitle calls them "Zen haiku," presumably):Going deeperand still deeperthe green mountains.orThe green grass!I return, barefoot.A wonderful little book, well worth reading. Especially recommended for aspiring haiku poets who write in English, as Santoka's haiku translate very well and are also excellent examples of nontraditional haiku in English. *** ½

Beware! The haiku of Santoka is nuanced and subtle - deceptively simple:The green grass!I return barefoot.Upon my first reading I had the overwhelming impulse to race through the book which I gave into. But then, I found myself reaching for it and savouring one or two of these wonderful translations. For those writers of haiku, trying to imitate Santoka's style is quite an exercise. How to approach:Even the sound of the raindropsHas grown older.orThe moonlightpiercesmy empty stomachThese haiku will resonate long after you put the book down.

MOUNTAIN TASTING : ZEN HAIKU BY SANTOKA TANEDA. Translated by John Stevens. 126 pp. New York and Tokyo : Weatherhill, 1980 and Reprinted.Santoka's life may seem tragic. Son of a womanizing father who lost the family property through an unwise business venture; a mother who committed suicide by throwing herself into a well when he was eight; himself a university dropout; failed jobs; alcoholism; a failed marriage; a series of nervous breakdowns; a suicide attempt which failed when the train was just able to stop in time. How could such a man have become one of Japan's best-loved poets? And what, we wonder, could we ourselves possibly have to learn from him? The answer to this last, in a word, is everything.Santoka was pulled from the tracks and taken to a nearby Zen temple. The head priest, Gian Mochizuki Osho, a shrewd and kindly man, simply took him in without any reprimands or questions, and offered to let him stay as long as he liked. Santoka had always been interested in Buddhism, and after one year of Zen meditation, chanting sutras, and working around the temple, at the age of forty-two he was ordained a Zen priest. The Zen he was ultimately to practice, however, though traditional, was unusual. It was the Zen of solitary walking. The open road was to become his home and his monastery.John Stevens has provided a truly interesting and moving account of Santoka's life and work which will fill you in on the details. Suffice to say here that Santoka's first walking pilgrimage through Japan, begging as he went from village to village, began in April 1926 and was to last for four years. During this trip to Shikoku, he visited the 88 shrines and temples associated with the Buddhist saint Kukai (774-835) to pray for the troubled spirit of his departed mother. There is a wonderful photograph of Santoka on page 30, which shows him setting out on a similar pilgrimage in 1933. With his straw sandals, white cotton pants, long robe, monk's staff, and large woven straw hat, he looks an odd, if not laughable, figure. Few would suspect they were looking at a person of incredible courage, someone who had undertaken the most fearsome and difficult task of all, the full acceptance and savoring of the moment, despite what it may bring.All told, Santoka is said to have walked more than twenty-eight thousand miles, starting out each morning penniless and with no food, and not knowing where he would stay or even if he would find lodging for the night. These were very hard miles, miles which brought sun and rain, generosity and hostility, food and hunger, smiles and scowls, health and illness, thirst and pure water, loneliness and moments of companionship, grief and intense happiness, but moments always lived with the thought that everything should be welcomed, whether good or bad, just as he himself was not judged but welcomed and taken in by the kindly Gian.The record of his various thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and of the myriad sigh