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A Haiku by Matsuo Bashō
Continuing our series of posts of poems that feature oaks: a haiku by the legendary Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694).
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Original Japanese:
樫の木の花にかまはぬ姿かな
Romanized text:
kashi no ki no / hana ni kamawanu / sugata kana
(click here to hear a pronunciation of the text courtesy of Google)
Literal translation:
oak of tree of / flower to care not / a pose
Translations in English:
The oak tree:
not interested
in cherry blossoms.
the oak tree
pays no attention to flowers
a pose
An oak tree -
Aloof from flowers
Its figure looks.
Takafumi Saito & William R. Nelson
The oak’s nobility -
indifferent to flowers -
or so it appears
the dignified stature
of the oak, indifferent
to the blossoms
the Kashi oak
seems not to care about
the cherry blossoms . . .
This haiku was composed in the spring of 1685, as a greeting verse for Mitsui Shūfū (1646–1717), a rich kimono merchant and haikai poet from Kyoto. It was included in Bashō's book Narrow Road to the Interior, a travel diary that combines short prose passages with haiku. This haiku is preceded by this text:
In the capital, I visited a renowned patron of poets, Mitsui Shūfū, in his mountain estate, and in a plum grove wrote:
(Tr. Sam Hamill)
According to Jane Reichhold, "Bashō compares his host to Quercus glauca, a hardy evergreen species of oak that grows in the mountains, implying that he is a manly man in contrast to the showiness of flowers." However, the word kashi (樫) refers to any evergreen Japanese oak. Species of evergreen oak are named by combining kashi with another word, e.g. akakashi (赤樫, "red oak") = Q. acuta; ichiigashi (一位樫, "first oak, noble oak") = Q. gilva; shiragashi (白樫, "white oak") = Q. myrsinifolia; arakashi (赤樫, "rough oak") = Q. glauca. But it is possible, of course, that Bashō referred specifically to Q. glauca.
