Born: Masaoka Tsunenori in Matsuyama, Iyo Province (now Ehime Prefecture), 14 October 1867. Education: Tutored privately in Sino-Japanese and the Chinese classics while attending elementary school and Matsuyama Middle School; attended KySritsu Middle School, University Preparatory School, Tokyo, 1883-90; entered Imperial University (now Tokyo University), 1890; failed final exams, 1892; withdrew from university, 1893. Career: After short-lived ambitions to become, successively, politician, philosopher, and novelist, he resolved to become a poet and began his haiku reform, 1892. Haiku editor of newspaper Nippon, 1892-1902 except for six months tenure as editor-in-chief of the short-lived ShSnippon, 1894; war correspondent for Nippon in China, one month, 1895; on return trip, had severe lung hemorrhage and almost died; supervised editing of Hototogisu, literary magazine edited by his disciples, 1897-1902. Bedridden and in constant pain by 1897, but continued his literary activities unabated. Formed group to study haiku of Yosa Buson, 1898, then the Negishi Tanka Society, 1899, and the Mountain Society for sketch from life prose, 1901. Died: From tuberculosis in Tokyo, 19 September 1902.
Publications
Collections
Shiki Zenshu. 25 vols. 1975-78.
Poetry
Takenosato Uta. 1904; as Songs from a Bamboo Village: Selected Tanka from Takenosato Uta, partly translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda, 1998.
Kanzan Rakuboku. 1924-25. Haiku Ko. 1925.
Literary Criticism
Dassai Sho-oku Haiwa. 1892.
Bunkai Yatsu Atari. 1893.
Basho Zatsudan. 1893.
Haikai Taiyo. 1895.
Haijin Buson. 1897.
Utayomi ni Atauru Sho. 1899.
Diaries
Bokuju Itteki. 1901; as ”Masaoka Shiki’s A Drop of Ink,” partly translated by Janine Beichman, in Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 30, 1975.
Byosho Rokushaku. 1902.
Gyoga Manroku. 1901-1902.
Other
Shoen no Ki (essays). 1898; as ”Record of the Little Garden,” translated by Janine Beichman, in Masaoka Shiki: His Life and
Works, 2002. Shigo (essays). 1901.
Bunrui Haiku Zenshu. 12 vols. 1928-29; as Bunrui Haiku Taikan, reprinted, 1992.
Critical Studies:
”Masaoka Shiki and Tanka Reform” by Robert H. Brower, in Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture, edited by Donald H. Shively, 1971; ”Shiki and Takuboku” by Donald Keene, in Landscapes and Portraits: Appreciations of Japanese Culture, 1971; Masaoka Shiki by Janine Beichman, 1982 (reprinted as Masaoka Shiki: His Life and Works, 2002); ”Masaoka Shiki” by Makoto Ueda, in Modern Japanse Poets and the Nature of Literature, 1983; ”The Diaries of Masaoka Shiki” by Donald Keene, in Modern Japanese Diaries, 1995.
Masaoka Shiki, who famously declared ”Haiku is literature,” was the most influential poet and critic in the revival and modernization of the haiku at the turn of the 19th century in Japan. By applying Western ideas of literature and realism to this traditional 17-syllable poetic form, he renewed its literary potential at a time when most Japanese poets were ready to abandon it in favor of longer forms inspired by Western models. In his first major critical work, Dassai Sho-oku Haiwa [Talks on Haiku from the Otter's Den], Masaoka used the mathematical theory of permutations to buttress his sensational prediction that the haiku and the tanka, because they were so short and so limited in theme and vocabulary, were both doomed to extinction. What gave him the way out of this cul de sac was his own theory of shasei, or the sketch from life. In Haikai Taiyo [The Elements of Haiku], Masaoka wrote that the sketch from life promised an unlimited source of new material and themes, as varied as reality itself. If one observed from multiple points of view, near and far, high and low, then subjects for numerous haiku poems could be found everywhere, even in a small garden. Thus, Masaoka made the observation of reality into a strict discipline, the most fundamental exercise in the poet’s training.
Once his haiku reform was well established, Masaoka turned to the tanka. He initiated his efforts with Utayomi ni Atauru Sho [Letters to a Tanka Poet], which challenged the pre-eminence of the 10th century Kokinshu, and exalted the earlier Man yoshu, whose frank expression of feeling seemed closer to realism. Masaoka turned to the personal essay at around the same time as the tanka. His sketch from life essays were written in a fluid colloquial style completely different from the stiff Sino-Japanese of his early prose, and are thought to have influenced a number of Japanese novelists.
The full flowering of Masaoka’s talent, paradoxically enough, came in a genre that he did not consciously seek to reform: the diary, specifically Bokuju Itteki [A Drop of Ink], and Byosho Rokushaku [A Sixfoot Sickbed], the two sickbed diaries that he published daily during the last two years of his life in the newspaper Nippon. The ostensible aim of both works was to solace his bordeom as he lay in bed, mortally ill and in constant pain. On the surface each diary was a sparkling tapestry of comments on daily affairs, conversations with visitors, retellings of his dreams and fantasies, as well as the occasional poem. Beneath this colorful variety, however, one feels a tragic counterpoint, for Masaoka was working out his relation to the world as he prepared to leave it, moving from resistance to reconciliation, and the diaries were, in a sense, his farewell to the world. Masaoka’s accomplishments as a critic and poet changed the course of modern Japanese literature and have played a significant role in the world haiku movement outside Japan, but as human documents it may be his diaries that have the deepest and most universal appeal.
