Cluster Seventeen:
Issa in Nagareyama

Nagareyama is a town on the River Edo in Chiba Prefecture, which in the Edo-period became a production center of mirin, soy sauce and miso. These products were shipped over the river to Edo and the merchants and early industrialists of Nagareyama flourished. Such a rich middle class was also interested in culture - and there poetry was the haiku. It is not surprising that Issa (1763-1827) found a warm welcome in Nagareyama, which he visited at least 50 times between 1803 and 1817. He usually lodged with Akimoto Soju (1757-1812), a mirin producer (possibly even the inventor of this product), who not only supported Issa financially, but also became a good friend of the poet. Present-day Nagareyama is a large bedtown for Tokyo, but close to the banks of the Edo River, in the old Komyoin Temple and a Issa-Soju museum of more recent origin, I still find memories of Issa.

The small museum dedicated to Issa and Soju was opened in 1995 and consists of the restored Akimoto residence, which doubles as exposition hall, and two traditional structures set in a nice garden, the Soju Pavilion and Issa Hut. The most interesting part of the exposition is on the first floor, where Soju's mirin production is highlighted. Nagareyama was a rice trading base and also feautured sake breweries, making it a suitable place for mirin production. Mirin is made by mixing sweet glutinous rice on which rice mold has developed with shochu liquor. It is used exclusively for cooking.

The kuhi stands in the garden and has been made from natural stone from the Kurohime mountains near Issa's hometown. The haiku dates from 1804 and was written after Nagareyama had been hit by a flood. The waters washed everything in their path away, but when they receded, to his great surprise, Issa found that a little creature had survived the onslaught: a single grasshopper, sitting in the moonlight...

The Akagi Shrine stands on a small hill (15 meters high and 350 in circumference) that is said to be the origin of the very name "Nagareyama," or "Drifting Mountain." A long time ago, there was a terrible flood in this area. When the waters finally subsided, the present small hill had been created, brought along by the flood. The hill is called Akagi-yama, after the shrine; the origin of the flood was in Gunma, and not accidentally, the original Akagi Shrine stands in that prefecture, close to Mt. Akagi. Probably, the deity of the Akagi Shrine was a water-controlling, agricultural deity. The shrine is small, and stands on top of a long staircase. When I visit, at the end of the day, the grounds are already dark and deserted. Except a pair of interesting lion-dogs (koma inu) dating from 1791, there is not much to see upstairs. The shrine gate is more interesting, because it is dominated by a huge shimenawa rope. This rope is changed every year on the third Saturday of October during the shrine festival.

The kuhi stands to the right, at the bottom of the stairs and the haiku expresses Issa's longing for Kashiwabara, his hometown. "Echigo-bushi" are folksongs from Niigata, and as Kashiwabara lies close to the border of Nagano and Niigata, they point to songs from Issa's hometown. It was customary that farmers from that area in winter came to Edo or other towns in order to earn extra income as sake brewers (traditionally, sake is brewed in winter, because the cold helps control the brewing process) - the long winters in Japan's snow country made this extra income necessary, as the fields could only be worked a relatively short period of the year. As Soju also had a sake brewery, Issa could hear these songs when he lodged with his friend in Nagareyama.

Komyoin is a Shingon temple standing immediately next to the Akagi Shrine and in fact originally linked to it. Just inside the gate, to the left, stands the kuhi with the present (part of a) renku, written by Issa and Soju in 1804. At the side of the hall stands another kuhi with a haiku by Soju alone (see below). To the right of the gate is a large graveyard, where also Soju has been laid to rest. While searching for it, the priest happens to come by, and he kindly points it out.

This is a difficult renku, the more so because it has been lifted from a longer sequence. I interpret the first part by Soju as meaning that a farmer has been plucking beans and leaves the empty stalks to the moon when he retires for the evening. In the second part by Issa the scene shifts to a poor farmhouse, perhaps the house of the farmer of the first part, and shows it to us as a cold place without fire in the hearth.

Renga or Linked Verse was a popular literary pastime and written by several participants under the guidance of a master, such as Issa. In every link, the perspective shifts, and although neighboring passages such as for example A and B are linked with respect to content, the same is true for B and C and in the light of C, the meaning of B also shifts. In short, it is also something of an intellectual puzzle, to which various rules regarding the seasons, the moon etc., were added.

Soju was also a haiku poet himself, as we have seen in the previous renku fragment. Here is a nice and simple haiku by him: after sweeping his garden, the poet is about to take an afternoon nap, when, suddenly, he hears a cuckoo calling...

I close by citing another haiku of Issa, which has been engraved on a stone standing in front of the Nagareyama City Hall (close to Nagareyama Station, the next station from Heiwadai). It again brings on a frog, although the mountain is probably Kurohime in Issa's hometown rather than the "Drifting Mountain" of Nagareyama:

serenely
watching the mountain
the frog!

yuzen to shite | yama wo miru | kaeru kana