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my hometown
I feel like talking
to apricot and willow

furusato ya | ume ni yanagi ni | hanashi ari

Shirao

The hometown in this haiku is the small but attractive castle town of Ueda, located between Karuizawa and Nagano. The town was propelled to fame in the late 16th c. when a much smaller army of defenders under Sanada Yukimura twice repelled the superior forces of national unificator Tokugawa Ieyasu. Nowadays, the most interesting part of Ueda is Bessho, an ancient spa, wich besides the healing waters boasts several great temples. Anrakuji and Daihoji both have “national treasure”-status pagodas.

[Statue of Sanada Yukimura, station plaza Ueno (Nagano)]

The haiku poet Kaya Shirao (1738-91) was not actually born in Ueda, but in the Edo mansion of the ruling clan of Ueda. He spent his life as a celebrated haiku master in Edo, trying to revive the style of Basho. But he often visited Ueda and also had many pupils in this area. In fact, his relation to Ueda was deepened because his brother and sister moved there, the latter in marriage. Shirao’s first Ueda visit took place in 1767 and that is when he wrote the present haiku.

slightly cloudy
all the time - in the mountains
hototogisu

hinagumori | kanarazu yo yama | hototogisu

Shirao

Another haiku by Shirao. This one was written in 1774 at Usui Pass, east of Ueda, presumably when Shirao was traveling beteen Edo and Ueda. The “hototogisu” is often translated as “cuckoo”, but that is not correct. For one thing, it does have more positive connotations than its European relatives. The bird has relatively large wings and a long tail, a gray back and a white belly with black stripes. The only bad habit it has in common with the Western cuckoo is that it, too, is a parasitic breeder. But the Japanese ‘cuckoo’ has a gentle call and is one of the best loved Oriental song birds. As it arrives around May in Japan, it is considered the harbinger of warmer weather.

[Ueda Castle]

From the time of the first poetry collection, the Manyoshu (8th century), this small bird has inspired many poets. In haiku, it figures as a season word for ‘early summer.’ As the call of the hototogisu is rather sad, it was also interpreted as expressing the melancholy longing of the soul of a dead person. And as it was believed to sing until it coughed out blood, the modern haiku poet Masaoka Shiki who suffered from tuberculosis took hototogisu in the Chinese pronunciation shiki as his pen name…

my heart yearning
where candles are lit
blossoms fall

hito koishi | hitoboshi koro wo | sakura chiru

Shirao

This haiku is generally considered as Shirao’s masterpiece. It has been translated by Blyth (Haiku-Spring, p. 623); here is a German webpage about the poem. Shirao conceived the idea for this poem in 1772 when cherry-blossom viewing at Mt. Yoshino near Nara. Shirao strove to revive the style of Basho, which in his day had already gone out of fashion.

[Ueda Park]

The first haiku stone stands in Ueda City at the spot where the house of Shirao’s brother Yoshishige was located (1-7 Chuo-Nishi); the second one stands in Ueda Castle Park and the third one at the entrance to the park. The second stone was set up in 1919 by a haiku scholar, and is surprisingly completey written in Chinese characters; the other two date from 1990 when the city commemorated the 200th anniversary of the death of Shirao.
Ueda is easily reached by 90 min Shinkansen from Tokyo. The Castle Park is a 15-min walk from the station.

Information about Shirao and his haiku stones in Ueda was thankfully gleaned from the Kaya Shirao Homepage by “The Preservation Party in Memory of Shirao Kaya,” where you will find more information about the poet, as well as translations of his other haiku. The above translations are my own.