Cage of Fireflies: Modern Japanese Haiku(Brief Article)

Heinrich, Amy V.

The title of the haiku anthology Cage of Fireflies is drawn from a poem by Kasho (twentieth century): "Into the cage of / fireflies, mostly dead, / I send a breath." The images, the contrasts and surprises of the best haiku, are occasionally available in the collection, as in this poem by Hosai (1885-1926): "How calming / after rage -- / shelling of peas."

The tension created by the compression this seventeen-syllable Japanese poetic form requires can give birth to a whole contained world, and the techniques for doing so have been explored and argued for centuries. Lucien Stryk, the translator of these modern haiku, discusses some of the major developments, beginning with the profound influence of Matsuo Basho (1644-94), in "Cage of Fireflies," the opening section of the introduction; he then constructs, in section 2, "Meeting at Hagi-no-Tera," a spirited discussion and arguments among the "great four" of haiku: Basho, Buson (1715-83), Issa (1763-1827), and Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902). The imagined meeting of the most famous haiku poets may assume more knowledge than the introduction itself provides, but it is amusing to share in the fictional encounter.

Still, the substance of the volume is the poetry. The haiku form makes extraordinary demands on a translator: the tasks of finding resonances in English words that carry some of the nuances of the Japanese, and of creating a form that produces a similar tension, are daunting ones. However, Cage of Fireflies treats the process of translation as though it were a transparent one; it does not acknowledge the challenges and difficulties. While there is a brief discussion of form in the introduction--the slight irregularity of a famous haiku by Basho is demonstrated with romanized Japanese--there is no discussion of how the translator addressed formal considerations, and clues are not found even in a careful reading of the translations. How the original language may provide depth is also not discussed. As a result, a reader has no way of understanding what might have been contained in the original when a poem emerges as little more than a brief beginning: "Moonlight -- / frozen / in mid-air" (Seishi, 1901-?). For readers who know some Japanese, providing even romanized versions of the originals would have afforded some clue to their richness; for readers with no Japanese, some discussion of the nature of the language and how it is used in haiku, as well as how the translator attempted to achieve similar effects in English, would have been helpful.

The sixty-nine poets represented in the anthology, beginning with Shiki, are also given short shrift, represented by nothing more than half a name (even for the major writers Natsume Soseki and Akutagawa Ryunosuke) and occasional dates. The volume is frustrating in offering too little. Nevertheless, there are rewards as well as frustrations: "Even housebound / the winter fly / follows the sun" (Seisi [sic], 1868-1937).

Amy V. Heinrich Columbia University