For the Weekly Prompt, Broken, I thought we'd take a look at a haiku from Santōka.
ぼろ売って酒買うてさみしくもあるか
boro utte sake kōte samishiku mo aru ka
if I sell my rags
and buy saké
will I still be lonely?
—Santōka
(trans. David LaSpina[1])
When he was 11, his mother killed herself by jumping into the family well. The exact reason why isn't know, but it is supposed it was due to her husband's womanizing, which she complained about in her diary at length. All of Santōka's problems in life sprang from this single event, which affected him tremendously. In his diary, he confessed that the sight of his mother's corpse being raised from the well scarred him greatly. Not long after, the family business failed and his father fled into hiding, his brother killed himself, and his grandmother who raised him also died.
He moved from failure to failure, finally attempting to kill himself at age 42 by standing in front of a train. He survived and was taken to a Sōtō Zen temple, where he eventually became a priest. He enjoyed the Buddhist life, but his inner demons soon led to him moving on.
From that point on, he wandered all over the country, from one end to the other. Always disgusted with himself, he would walk somewhere, compose haiku, beg for money to rent a room and buy sake, get drunk and berate himself in his diary.
The haiku above may remind us of Hōsai and his famous message of loneliness (which I posted about here):
咳をしても一人
seki o shite mo hitori
even coughing
I am alone
—Hōsai
He would never entirely beat his demons. Finally in 1938 he settled down in his hermitage near Matsuyama city, one time home of famous haiku poet Shiki. He started gathering his haiku together to publish another book. He died in his sleep, drunk as usual, two years later at the age of 57.
❦
| David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. |
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That is, me! If you like this translation, feel free to use it. Just credit me. Also link here if you can. ↩