Cluster Twenty-one:
Haiku Stones in Hofu:

Santoka (2)

We continue our Santoka course in Hofu with a visit to the site of his parental home and, finally, the small temple of Gokokuji where Santoka's grave stands. This temple too seems very enthusiastic about the poet, as its grounds are plastered over with haiku stones carrying his works...

Besides haiku, Santoka had a great passion for sake and wandering - these two are the enduring themes in his haiku. Although he had left Hofu at an early age, Santoka now and then returned there. The memories of his 'native place' were quite strong, although they were a mixture of bitterness and sweetness: due the womanizing of his father, his mother had committed suicide by jumping in a well and his whole life Santoka could not forget her dead, white face as she was pulled up from the well shaft. The place where Santoka's parent's home stood and where he was born, is now a miniature park decorated with the present kuhi.

On the way to Santoka's birthplace, I see another haiku by him printed on a large board that points me in the right direction. The whole town of Hofu is plastered over with Santoka's verse! It is a haiku that neatly sums up Santoka's interests:

days I don't like:
days I don't walk
days I don't drink sake
days I don't write haiku

The farther away Santoka was from his hometown, the more he thought about it. He is reminded of it even by the new leaves budding on the trees along the path where he wanders. That is in Kyushu, where he was in 1932, begging his food as a wandering monk.

This kuhi was set up in 1982 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Santoka's birth. It stands in the grounds of Hofu's Tenmangu Shrine, which was a favorite spot of Santoka. The shrine stands on a low hill at the back of the town affording a superb view of Hofu. The shrine is one of the oldest Tenmangu shrines in Japan - according the tradition it was founded in 904. It is dedicated to Sugawara no Michizane, the politician-poet-Chinese scholar who was maliciously slandered by his political foes and exiled to Dazaifu in Kyushu. On his way into exile in 901, Michizane is said to have rested at the spot where the shrine now stands - and therefore the shrine was built to his memory when he died in Dazaifu in 903. Although there are about 12,000 Tenmangu shrines in Japan (after all, Michizane became the Deity of Learning and School Examinations), this is one of the Three Great Tenmangu Shrines, together with the shrine in Dazaifu and the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine in Kyoto.

Santoka wrote this text on a small scroll just three days before his death, on October 8, 1940 - in this way it became his last calligraphy. The text on the kuhi was copied from a small scroll in the hand writing of Santoka. This is a pastoral and serene haiku, but the last three poems Santoka wrote were very different. I quote them for their poignancy:

with a loud sound
the insect scorched to death

busuri to oto tatete mushi wa yakeshinda

the smell of the scorched dying insect
is fragrant

yakareteshinuru mushi no nioi wa kanbashiku

the weak puff of the insect
that soon dies after being hit

utsu yori owaru mushi no inochi no moroi kaze

After Santoka died in Matsuyama, his ashes were brought back to his native Hofu. He was not originally buried however in Gokokuji Temple, where he now rests. Like the man, also the ashes had to wander, it seems. The cemetery where he was first buried, had to make place for the prefectural road that now intersects Hofu City. For a while, the ashes were stored in the Kannon Hall of Gokokuji, thereby creating a link with that temple, but later they were moved to the new municipal cemetery. When in 1954 money was gathered to set up the haiku stone in Kainomori Park, the rest of the money was used to set up a gravestone for Santoka in that cemetery. Problem was, that the grave was difficult to find for the many admirers of the poet who visited Hofu. In 1983, Santoka's grave was finally moved to Gokokuji, together with that of his mother Fusa-san.