タイガー＆ドラゴン。

Have discovered a dramedy called タイガー＆ドラゴン (Tiger & Dragon). The premise is that a yakuza debt collector goes to lean on a rakugo performer and somehow becomes involved in rakugo. The narrative flows between naturalism—or should I say realism?—and a fanciful rakugo setting. 信じられないですね。 I'm particularly up for it now because 日本語の先生 and I recently read 猫の皿 ("The Cat's Saucer") and 習字の先生 was kind enough to lend me some recordings of rakugo. Also, one of the principals in タイガー＆ドラゴン is 西田敏行 (NISHIDA Toshiyuki), who also played Abbyさん's ramen-sensei in The Ramen Girl, a movie I find weirdly comforting. The one season of タイガー＆ドラゴン can be had online.

短冊！ (in which we try to write summer haiku)

Today in shuuji we chose our summer haiku and began practicing! It's a big step because although we've been working on 連綿体 (connected writing) and 変体仮名 (old phonetic uses of kanji) we haven't actually written poems with 小筆 (small brush). Here's mine, by TAKAHAMA Kyoshi (1874–1959):

桐の花日かげをなずにいたらざる
kiri no hana / hikage o nazu ni / itarazaru

Ie, the paulownia has begun to flower but doesn't yet offer shade. Here's how we're doing it:

桐: kanji
の: hentaigana from 乃 (連綿体)
花: a new sousho form of hana
日: between gyousho and sousho
か: standard hiragana (連綿体)
げ: hentaigana from 希　(and a doozie, like this but with a super long tail) (連綿体)
を: hiragana, small and quiet
なずに: hiragana, with hentaigana 二 (連綿体)
い: hentaigana from 移 (例)
た: hentaigana from 多 (kinda like this, but different)
ら: hentaigana from 羅 (例)
ざ: hentaigana from 佐 (例)
る: very small and subtle, I think hentaigana from 留

難しかったですが、非常に楽しかったです。 I have a long way to go before I can write it presentably, but hopefully with practice.　Also have found this great archive of haiku, organized by poet and then by　season. 習字を一緒に練習している友達の場合には。。。。 My friend who studies shuuji with me is doing one by Bashou about persimmons:　木の下に柿の花散る夕かな. Ki no shita ni / kaki no hana saru / yuube ka na. In the evening, persimmon blossoms spread beneath the trees.

Here in Philadelphia the cherry trees are in full bloom and very beautiful. Last Sunday was Sakura Sunday, our annual 花見. Throngs of people as always, and much fun. The Tamagawa taiko and dance troupe was visiting Philadelphia and performed—凄く上手だと思いますよ。 Amazing. I also was fortunate enough to see them at West Chester earlier this month.

Also bought three new calligraphy pieces at 櫻祭り: 春暁 (shungyou?) "daybreak in spring"; 春爛漫　(shunranman?) "glorious spring / spring is bustin' out all over"; and one in gyousho that starts with 桜 but otherwise for now remains shrouded in mystery. They're all written by the same person, who we were told lives in Japan.　I can make out only some parts of the inkan.

Addendum: It's possible the piece that starts with sakura says 桜椋乱 (oomuran?)—the cherry trees and the muku trees are rioting / at war.

More on "kana" (哉).

I while back I was wondering whether the 切れ字 "kana" (哉) used in haiku is related to the ”かな(ぁ)" used now to indicate wondering. I'd read that as a kireji (cutting-word, 切れ字) it could end the verse and separate it from further verses in the same stream. Now I see in the (so reliable!) Wikipedia entry on kireji that it can also suggest "wonder"—though per the examples it seems to mean wonderment rather than wondering.

This I don't understand:

A kireji is typically positioned at the end of one of these three phrases. When it is placed at the end of the final phrase (i.e. the end of the verse), the kireji draws the reader back to the beginning, initiating a circular pattern.

How exactly does it do that? どうしてかな。面白い哉！

雨夜哉 (thematically linked haiku)。

A friend and I were discussing seasonal haiku the other day, and I came across one I really liked:根心に花を算える雨夜哉

negokoro ni
hana o kazoeru
amayo kana

while sleeping,
counting the (cherry) blossoms—
a rainy night

数えるの漢字が「旧字」という漢字で、今使いません。旧字 kyuuji = old-style kanji no longer in use.

I googled "雨夜哉" to see whether anything else would turn up in the setting of a rainy night (with that phrasing), just for fun, and things did:

ぱしぱちは栗としらるる雨夜哉

pashi-pachi ha
kuri to shiraruru
amayo kana

the pitter-patter—
chestnuts and the well-known
rainy night


身にしみて音聞く花の雨夜哉蓼太

mi ni shimite
oto kiku hana no
amayo kana

the rainy night
when the sound of blossoms
penetrates the body


雛の前かしこまりたる雨夜哉

hina no mae
kashikomaritaru
amayo kana

Humbled by
a young bird
on a rainy night


水鳥のあなた任せの雨夜哉

mizudori no
anata makase no
amayo kana

the rainy night
when you give in to (abandon yourself to)
the water-birds


うき時は蟇の遠音も雨夜哉

ukitoki ha
kama no toone mo
amayo kana

the rainy season—
just the far-off sound of a toad
a rainy night

(Apologies for the many weak spots in my translations.)

This evening on the way to 太鼓 we wondered about the difference between 俳句 (haiku) and 川柳　(senryuu), and (via 携帯様) we learned that (1) senryuu end with an additional 7-7; (2) the tone is different—whereas haiku are about nature, senryuu tend to be comical, satirical, or sardonic, treating the more mundane things in life; and (3) because of this difference, senryuu don't need the formal elements of haiku, like 切地 (kireji, cutting particles) and 季語 (kigo, words that indicate the season in which the haiku is set). 習字の先生 says that haiku date more or less to the Edo period but senryuu go much further back, to Nara.

Here's an amazing database of example haiku (俳句例句), organized by either keywords or grammatical elements. It gets very specific with its categorizations. Some of the material in progress, but it's great for finding haiku by theme.

書道テレビ (Shodou TV)。

「書道テレビ」というインタネットテレビ局　(Shodou TV) starts June 1!

the channel is here

more about the project here

楽しみにしています。。。。　

福島。

So strange how Fukushima (福島, a truly ironic name) has all but fallen from the headlines here in the US. That and the 地震 were all the news talked about for a few days, but then Libya happened, and I guess they figured out that the reactor story may take a long time to play out.

哉 (かな) 、「かなぁ」。

Have been looking through an Issa archive for summer haiku to learn to write in hiragana in 習字 and keep coming across, at the end of a poem, 哉 (かな/kana). Is it related to the wondering かな(ぁ)? Jisho has it as exclamatory—"what a...!" "how...!"—but also as "what" and "question mark". かなぁ in modern usage seems to be something like that, sometimes an interrogatory か + a wondering/internal なぁ. I don't know whether it's used outside of a sense of wondering.

古いかな。 furui ka na. I wonder if it's old.
悪く決まったかなぁ。 waruku kimatta ka naa. Maybe it was decided badly.

漢字の字源は何だろうかなぁ。 The parts are earth, mouth, and halberd. Jisho says it's archaic but still 人名用, jinmeiyou, pre-reform kanji still used in names.

Interestingly, it seems also to have the reading や ya. I wonder whether it was ever written as the "cutting particle" in haiku such as 木の陰や。 そんな説明は本当かなぁ。