Penny HarterPoet, Author, Workshop Leader, Editor, Teacher
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Penny Harter's Scrapbook |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||
Penny Harter and her renku group at the Sunday renku session. Click the image for an album of photos from the session.
|
Sunday, October 10, 2004, morning, Weru Sanpia Iga Hotel, Iga Ueno City, Mie Prefecture, JapanInternational Renkukai, including Penny Harter, William J. Higginson
Penny and Bill spent the morning writing renku with Japanese and other
foreign colleagues. clicking on the image at the left will take you to
an album of photos from the session. |
|
 Where are all these people going? Click on the photograph to find out, and to read some of my haiku from the ginko. |
Monday, October 11, 2004, morning, downtown, Iga Ueno
Ginko (Haiku Excursion) with Kiyoko UdaFollowing
Ms. Uda, we walked through downtown Iga Ueno from Sugawara Shrine
(where in 1672 Bashô dedicated his first publication, a
collection of hokku by poets in the region) to Dohô's cottage.
More on Dohô, below. |
|
|
|
||
 Minomushian, or "Bagworm Cottage," home of Bashô's disciple Dohô. (Photo courtesy of the Master Bashô Memorial Museum, Iga Ueno City.)  Signboard with Dohô's hokku and explanation. (Click photo for larger image. Photo by WJH.) The poem goes: sotto ite wakana tsumaba ya tsuru no soba I go quietly to cut young greens . . . a crane nearby Dohô's mother had reached 88 years of age, a significant example of longevity especially celebrated in Japan. At the time, each lunar New Year celebration (familiarly known in the West as Chinese New Year) was considered the beginning of each person's "next year," and treated as a birthday. Also at the New Year, one harvests the fresh young greens of early spring, to make a soup said to ward off illness and improve longevity. Finally, the crane—a long-lived bird—was considered an omen of good fortune and long life. Dohô goes quietly to avoid disturbing the nearby crane. |
Monday, October 11, 2004, midday, Iga Ueno.At Dohô's "Bagworm Cottage"Hattori Dohô (1657-1730) was one of Bashô's hometown disciples. At his cottage, Bashô wrote a famous hokku (shown in Japanese at the right):minomushi no ne o kiki ni koyo kusa no io come hear the cry of the bagworm! this grass cottage Bashô's poem is well known, in part, because bagworms make no sound audible to humans. In ancient Japan, long before Bashô's day, people did believe that bagworms made sounds, and wrote poems about them. Haikai poets, though aware bagworms are essentially silent, continue to observe the "voices of bagworms" as an autumn seasonal topic. Dohô is known today mainly for his record of Bashô's comments on many aspects of haikai, both linked poems and independent hokku, called Sanzôshi, or The Three Notebooks. Dohô was of course also a haikai poet, though very few of his verses have been translated into English. In the second photo at left, we see a signboard posted on the grounds of the Minomushian with a hokku by Dohô on the right, and an explanation of the circumstances of its composition. Another hokku by Dohô: ume ga ka ya jari shikinagasu tani no oku scent of plum blossoms . . . gravel spreads out in the valley's depths This is also an early spring poem, and pairs the bright scent of early plum blossoms with the trickling sounds of the waters of spring glittering in the polished stones of a creek bottom. |
 Above, Bashô's hokku. Below, photo of a bagworm, courtesy of Local Mie (click for their web site in Japanese).  |
|
|
||
 Here's a picture of the festival's closing ceremonies, showing the Haiseiden and the rows of tents for dignitaries and special guests—that's us! Soon, you'll be able to click on the image for an album of photos showing the events of the morning. (WJH photo.) |
Tuesday, October 12, 2004, morning, Ueno City Park, Haiseiden.
Master Bashô Festival Closing Ceremonies.Here, on the steps of and the grounds in front of the specially-built "Haikai Master Hall," Bill and I and a number of foreign and Japanese guests observed as prizes were given to the winners of national and local haiku contests, and special ceremonies were conducted in honor of the 360th birth anniversary of Bashô, the venerable founder of the tradition of haiku and renku that is spreading worldwide today. |
|
|
|
||
|
Notice: All images on this page are copyright © 2004 William J. Higginson or are the property of their respective institutions. All rights are reserved. |
||
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
replacing "-a-" with "@" and "-dot-" with a period.