Cluster Twenty:
My Hometown - Santoka and Hofu (1)

In front of Hofu Station stands a life-size statue of Santoka (1882-1940), the modern Basho, in the garb of wandering priest, wearing a straw hat, carrying a large walking stick and begging bowl. A Buddhist rosary is strung around his wrist.

This is no fiction: photographs of the poet indeed show him in these accouterments. Santoka belonged to the small group of haiku poets who were also begging priests: Basho and Issa in the Edo period, and Hosai and Santoka in the twentieth century. Santoka the wanderer is best summed up in:

even going deeper
and still deeper
green mountains

wake itte mo wake itte mo aoi yama

Modern Hofu has capitalized on the fact that Santoka was born there: besides the statue in front of Hofu station, the city boasts more than 30 haiku stones with verses by Santoka. The local tourist office publishes a free pamphlet that lists them all. We will visit the most important ones. Hofu is a pleasant, laid-back town with more than haiku stones: there is a famous Tenmangu shrine, on a hill overlooking the town, the house and garden of the Mori, ex-daimyo of the area, which now doubles as a museum, and a few atmospheric temples, Kokubunji and Amidaji.

Santoka was born as Taneda Shoichi in a family of small landowners in 1882 in what is now Hofu City. He went to Waseda University in Tokyo but dropped out of his studies due to a nervous breakdown. Back home, he married and set up a sake brewery with his father in a town not far from Hofu. Both ventures went sour: the business by bankruptcy in 1916 and the marriage ended in divorce (at the demand of his father-in-law, who found him a good-for-nothing) in 1920. Santoka, who already for some time had been interested in Zen Buddhism, started living in a temple and took the tonsure.

Santoka had begun to write haiku in 1911 and this became the only occupation in which he found a stable interest. His haiku were written in the free form - they were haiku without the fixed 5-7-5 pattern, without the traditional season words and in a language very close to actual spoken Japanese. In 1926 he began the life of a wandering priest and traveled all over Japan for many years. Later, tired of the endless wandering, he set up a hermitage in Ogori, not far from Hofu. Later he moved to Yuda in Yamaguchi City, and finally set up another hermitage, Isso-an, in Matsuyama on Shikoku Island. He died there in October 1940 at the age of 59.

This haiku, expressing love for his hometown, was written in 1933. At that time, Santoka was not actually visiting Hofu, but on his wanderings he happened to pass a stream in the wider area, of which the water also flowed past the house where he was born. By drinking it and bathing in it he established a sentimental link with his birthplace. The kuhi dates from 1985 and the handwriting was copied from samples by Santoka himself.

Santoka reputedly was fond of manju. He wrote several haiku about these sweet cakes and seems to have liked the variety with yuzu taste (bitter orange) best. Good reason for the owner of the Shibazaki Daifukudo, a manju shop located not far from the place where Santoka was born in Hofu to start selling 'Santoka Manju.' This was in 1982 and the shop has commemorated the event by setting up a haiku stone of its own - about manju, of course.

The haiku selected by the sweet shop was scribbled by Santoka in his diary on April 9, 1934. At that time, Santoka had ended his sheer endless wandering around the whole of Japan and found some peace in a hermitage, Gochu-an, in Ogori. He had fallen ill there, and was visited by his son Ken, who thoughtfully brought the delicacy his father liked so much with him from Hofu.

Santoka wrote this haiku in September 1932, after he had settled in the above-mentioned Gochu-an hermitage in Ogori close to Hofu. The soles of his naked feet, stamping in puddles, recall a dream of youth. Santoka's endless travels were a search for a real home, a real 'native place,' that he never seems to have found. When he came back to Hofu after many years absence, clad in the garb of a mendicant priest, children chased him away shouting: "Beggar, beggar!" The large haiku stone was already set up in 1954 by a Hofu doctor who was also haiku writer. It stands in the small Kainomori Park, close to the place where Santoka was born.

The haiku monument containing this verse stands in front of the Shanpia Hotel, one of Hofu's best known hotels. It is one of the many examples of a haiku stone set up by a commercial establishment or a company. We have already seen the stone inside the manju shop. Other examples are:

In front of the Kyowa Hakko factory, where liquors are distilled:

moon and sake
my body full of delight

In the grounds of the Hofu Mazda factory:

good-for-nothing weeds are flowering
native place

At a waystation along the Sanyo Expressway near the Saba River:

the sound also sweet
I cross the stream