Cluster Two:
The Frog in the Pond

While my first haiku cluster consisted of boards instead of stones, now I visit an impressive stone, but no cluster. Or it must be an imaginary one. After all, on the stone I go to see the most famous haiku of all times has been inscribed - the one of the frog jumping into the old pond. Basho's frog haiku is so famous that it has almost become banal. It is the haiku of haiku. Even the greatest haiku haters have heard the 'plop' of this jumping frog. It has attracted so many translators that a book has appeared carrying more than 100 different translations. So there we have our cluster! There is no dearth of haiku stones, either, three of them alone in the vicinity of the Basho Museum (including the one I visit, in the Kiyosumi Gardens) and many more in various locations in Japan. There seems to exist some confusion about where this haiku was written. Basho's birthplace, Iga-Ueno, and a temple in Shiga Prefecture are both contenders, but there could be as many all over Japan as there are old ponds.

For me, however, there is no doubt about the location. It must have been near Basho's hut on the left bank of the Sumida River. There is clear evidence for it, as we will see below. Moreover, Basho was given the Sumida cottage by his disciple-cum-patron Sugiyama Sanpu, a fish dealer who owned stock ponds in the same area. So Basho's cottage was surrounded by ponds where fish were reared for Edo's hungry markets, and there must have been whole armies of frogs, too.

Those fish ponds of course do not exist anymore, but there is a large pond in the Kiyosumi Gardens not far from the Basho Museum. Not surprisingly, one of the three frog-and-pond haiku stones stands right in this garden. In the expectation that this pond will help me to evoke the proper atmosphere I proceed to the Kiyosumi Gardens.

The Kiyosumi Garden is relatively modern as Japanese gardens go. Although the site is formed by a daimyo estate with an older garden (but not old enough to incorporate anything from Basho's time), it was laid out in 1885 by Iwasaki Yataro, the founder of the Mitsubishi conglomerate. The garden is centered on a large pond (in the past fed by the Sumida River), which contains a few islands and a pavilion built for the visit of a high-ranking foreign guest in 1907. One could call it the Meiji period equivalent of the Edo daimyo gardens. In 1932 the garden was donated to the City of Tokyo.

Characteristics of the garden are the big artificial hill ('Fujimiyama') and the stone steps ('isowatari') along part of the pond's shore. These provide strollers with an expansive view of the water. The garden has been planted lavishly with black pines, azaleas, hydrangeas and irises. But Kiyosumi's most striking feature are in the many natural stones of various colors and shapes that the Iwasaki family collected from all over Japan - there are 55 large stones in all. This, too, is a 'daimyo custom:' rare stones were expensive and difficult to move, so it was a sign of sure power to fill a whole garden with them. The stones bring me to the haiku stone, which requires some searching, as it unfortunately does not stand at the pond (ready to jump, as it were) but in a grassy part at the back of the garden.

Basho wrote the frog haiku in 1686. The circumstances under which this took place were recorded by his disciple Kagami Shiko (1665-1731), in Kuzu no Matsubara ('Pine Forest of Kuzu,' 1692), a book written to elucidate Basho's idea of haikai. This seems to be a reliable indication that the haiku was indeed written while Basho lived in his hut on the River Sumida bank, although it was not Shiko himself who was present, but Kikaku, another disciple.

Pine and Pond

Basho was sitting in his riverside hut. It was spring. A soft drizzle fell and the smell of blossoms was in the air. Mountain roses were blooming at the edge of a pond in the garden. Enomoto Kikaku (1661-1707) kept Basho company, but master and disciple were both sitting quietly. Suddenly a frog jumped into the old pond, breaking the stillness with a watery plop. In Basho's mind, two phrases formed, the last part of a hokku:

a frog jumps in
sound of water

Kikaku suggested yamabuki ya, 'mountain roses' for the first five syllables. In traditional poetry, this plant was associated with frogs. Basho pondered for a while and then decided to use instead a phrase uncommon in poetry: 'the old pond,' furu ike ya. This was a nice literary twist which added 'newness' and 'lightness' to the poem. It was also the utmost of simplicity.

Basho's frog was an experimental one. It was the first silent frog in Japanese poetry, which so far had been regaled with quaking choruses. Instead of this night music, Basho's frog exits with a soft plop, after which rings of water expand and die out. It is a bit lonely, just like Basho.

By the way, the frog can also be plural, as the Japanese language normally does not make numerical distinctions. But to have a whole army of frogs jump into the pond seems just too noisy. It does not fit the atmosphere of the poem, which is one of yugen, of stillness, symbolized in the pond that after all is an ancient one. This is something almost all translators agree on.

The mizo no oto or 'sound of water' is another matter. Many translators cannot resist the temptation to enliven this phrase by translating it as 'Plop,' 'Splash,' or even 'Kdang.' That is strictly speaking not correct, for Basho himself could also have used an onomatopoeic word. The Japanese language is very rich in them, more so than English, but Basho purposefully selected 'sound of water,' perhaps to emphasize the progression from stillness (no sound) to movement (sound) to stillness again. Zen-master and graphic artist Sengai (1751-1837) wrote a parody of the frog haiku (yes, already in Edo-times it was so popular that it invited parodies!) in which he creates a comic effect by using the onomatopoeic pon to, resulting in a very different poem:

old pond
something plop
jumped in

furuike ya | naniyara pon to | tobikonda

The Inari Shrine

The frog has even haunted the 20th century. In 1917, after a big tsunami, in the grounds of what is now a small Inari shrine close to the Basho Museum in Fukagawa, a strange black object was found. Now in the possession of that museum, it appeared to be a stone frog, and - I do not know on what grounds - it was assumed to be an object that had originally belonged to Basho. At the same time it was seen as proof that the old pond had once been in the grounds of the said shrine. Basho's frog has petrified over the ages, it has become a rather ugly curiosity, now resting in a glass case in the museum.

But the real frog lives on in the world's most famous haiku and continues to entice us with its silent leap in that mysterious pond.