An Introductory Essay: The Poetry of Ban’ya Natsuishi by Santosh Kumar

Ban’ya Natsuishi has widened the territory of haiku by writing haiku concerned with human condition. He is not confined to nature or season-word. Ban’ya wisely points out: “On the other hand, there are muki haiku, non-seasonal poem, whose keywords are not connected to seasonal aspects. It is a new style of expression in contemporary haiku. Freed from seasonal limitations, contemporary muki haiku have been enriched and expanded with keywords that indicate all living things (animals, plants, and any natural phenomenon), human beings themselves and the culture created by human beings (the body, human relations, family, culture)”. It implies that an impassioned expression and spontaneity is more valuable than kigo and seventeen syllables. Sayumi Kamakura, one of the finest contemporary haiku poets, holding the same opinion, pointed out in an interview: “When I first began writing haiku, I was taught that a haiku poem had to contain season words. To be quite blunt, a poem was considered a haiku only if it contained season words. Should this criterion really hold? Season words are still merely words. As long as they are words, then the emotions the author attempts to convey with them should take precedence over the words themselves. The Japanese haiku that has touched me are those where the author’s true sentiments burst from the words. What is most important in haiku is how much true feeling is included in the poem.”

Moreover, the most significant thing which creates great haiku is not blind adherence to 5-7-5 pattern. Ban’ya aptly remarks: “Perhaps there is no overseas language for which Japanese form of 5, 7 and 5 syllables has a fully poetical reason and effect, except Chinese” ( World Haiku No. 4:77). A rigid pursuit of “holy seven” is not enough to write creative haiku. What Ban’ya is doing in his haiku is to provide two comparative images and illuminate with the third image:

Red roses-

Everywhere is

My home

(Right Eye in Twilight: 40)

To this mirror

Does it come:

A rose or a whisper?

(ibid: 15)

Jim Kacian wisely points out that Ban’ya wholly reinvents himself in Right Eye in Twilight as he is threatened with a potential loss of sight, and he attains peace by writing these haiku, these high moments ( Kacian 1).

Ban’ya strikes a note of caution as he says, “One of the most typical misunderstandings is that a person inspired by a trivial moment can write a good haiku” (World Haiku:73). Religion or philosophy should echo in the background of a creative haiku, so that an effective ‘Punch line’ is achieved in the third. The third line in Ban’ya’s haiku always dazzles with its intensity:

An endless helix

Sings silently

Inside our body

(Endless Helix, 180)

The naked Buddha

Always surrounded

By the rich colors of nothing

(Ibid, 24)

In the first haiku, Ban’ya is suggesting the fantastic dialectics of emotions and thoughts flowing continuously within us. This ‘endless’ stream of thoughts, this stream of consciousness as William James described it is the fundamental truth of life. This is proved by the writings of Marcel Proust, Freud, Henry Bergson, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. No doubt, Banya has composed an extraordinary ‘interior’ haiku. The second haiku is about enlightened Buddha. Banya’s line “the rich colors of nothing” suggests Buddhist void, lit by clear light, a state of trance as Buddha journeys to infinity. Banya’s haiku suggest rather than expound concentrated expression of a philosophic thought, and this is precisely what a perfect haiku should do. In Flying Pope also, the poet brings before us the deepest secrets of human mind, and Ban’ya does it by looking steadily at his subject ‘Flying Pope’.

Some of Ban’ya’s haiku are full of half-playful mysticism, and they are written with a high degree of excellence:

Walking is philosophy’s

Best friend—

Voices from the clouds

(Endless Helix, 59)

The sea of tears

Always waiting

For our haiku

(ibid, 50)

The meaning of Ban’ya can be discerned beneath the haiku. The poet’s sensibility and intelligence is manifested as he suggests that walking is the point of reunion, and ‘voices from the clouds’ are the ‘voices’ of hyper-acute imagination which allow us discover the truth. What we require for a perfect haiku is an overinsistent and high-pitched melancholy or ‘sea of tears’ as Ban’ya aptly says. A constant wanderings or ‘walking’ in the neutral territory of the mind is a dominant force by which a haiku poet like Ban’ya can achieve beatitude. Moreover, as a haiku poet Ban’ya is notable due to precision and clarity of expression

Without a pillow I live

Within a tent

Blown by a strong wind

(Right Eye in Twilight, 53)

Sparkle, tiles!

To be trod on!

A fragrant wind

(ibid, 55)

No doubt, Ban’ya has a fertile and versatile intelligence serving his contemplative ends.

The poet living in a ‘tent’ displays a tinge of melancholy and a quaint pietism as he is well aware of the tyrannies of the flesh (“Blown by a strong wind”). In the second haiku, Ban’ya is suggesting that humbleness (“To be trod on’’) leads us to an experience of “fragrant wind” or inner ecstasy. The value of Ban’ya as a model for future haiku poets is perennial. A special brilliance of his genius is visible in a rich allusiveness in his haiku:

That white cat

Has a tongue

To summon an angel

(Endless Helix, 29)

Cloudy sky:

Very certain

A voice unheard

(Ginyu, No. 42, p. 26)

The quality of suggestiveness in these haiku reveals tightly packed patterns of meaning. “Cloudy sky” kindles the poet’s imagination, and his poetic muse hears “a voice unheard”. This reminds us of Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn where the poet describes sweet unheard melodies accessible “not to the sensual ear” but to a sacred essence of the soul. Only through imagination hearing unheard voices, we can hope to grasp Truth. Unheard beauty of an imaginative experience outshines the beauty of the heard:

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone

The following haiku show how Ban’ya with the shaping spirit of his imagination works upon the outward forms, and thus he is able to take us beneath the surface of things:

Wisteria flowers

Suck in our

sweet nothings

(VOICES FROM THE CLOUDS 120)

A wild eagle

Is invited to

The room of mirrors

(MADARAK/BIRDS 24)

In the first haiku, Ban’ya is suggesting our inexplicable affinities with nature. An emanation, a particular spirit is present not in the temple or church, but in the flowers preferring impassioned contemplation (“Sweet nothings”) and discarding for a little while the sordidness of contemporary civilization. “Sweet nothings” seems to be the only grace left in our nuclear world. Shelley pointed out that Wordsworth in his nature poetry awakened “a sort of thought in sense”. This wise comment is fully applicable to Ban’ya’s haiku.

In the second haiku, we find intellectual poetry of scholasticism at its best. Why does a wild eagle receive the strange invitation to “the room of mirrors”? The eagle is perhaps a symbol of the Devil, who is invited by Lamb in the room of mirrors to attain true knowledge of things. The eagle’s or devil’s doubts and falsehoods might disappear by seeing things as they really are. Ban’ya is asking a philosophical question why evil exists in the world. By juxtaposition of invitation to the eagle, the poet tries to resolve the paradox. But we should remember that Ban’ya is not moralizing or exhorting. The haiku inspires us with deep thought .The idea of the poet is that the wild eagle or wolf should encounter the beast within himself No doubt, Ban’ya’s haiku are inspired by keen observation and enquiry focused “on a moment’s impression”. Shuitchi Kato aptly comments that the haiku instead of developing an idea or thought “tends to focus itself on a moment’s impression” (qtd. in Florentin Popescu: 10).

In his Flying Pope, Ban’ya through his mask of Pope deals with his own meditative experiences about the commonest and simplest things. 127 haiku included in Flying Pope vividly reveal that Ban’ya is a poet of gigantic genius dreaming great dreams and working freely, unlike “Rimbaud wandering / in a circle” and “exhausting all poisons in himself”:

Rimbaud wandering

In a circle

The Pope flying

(Flying Pope: 21)

Bin Akio says that he enjoyed “Flying Pope”, a haiku series written by Ban’ya Natsuishi. “At first the motif of these works was the irony of existence having absolute status”. For example,

howaito-hausu-e sora tobu houou kage utsusu

To the White House

the shadow cast

by the Flying Pope

Bin further comments: “However, these are not mere irony. An excellent point of this haiku series is expressing the humanity of the man of power. This is kokkei humor. So in some works, the Pope seems to be Mr. Natsuishi himself”. Ban’ya has clarified that he used the words “Flying Pope” for Portuguese poet Casimiro de Brito often traveling to other countries to attend poetry festivals (Flying Pope 161 Haiku: 110).

Sora tobu houou konsui shita mama chakuriku-su

Flying Pope -

in a coma

he lands

“This shows the writer was tired out by the work of WHA. What I have found is that this series has pathos, humor, joke, irony, and all kinds of kokkei. Natsuishi’s haiku replaces the powerful, simple kokkei of original haiku with a complicated, modern kokkei”. Ban’ya’s postmodern “kokkei begins from laughing at the mismatch of words and grows, deepening its contents, having the power to relativize the existing cultural outline”( Bin Akio).

The fact is that Ban’ya like Yeats understood the value of using a mask of some other person to sing the song of joy and utter the strong satire against shallow emotion, philanthropic pretension, and sordid realities of a diseased social order W. B.Yeats aptly remarks: “I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other self; that all joyous or creative life is a rebirth as something not oneself, something which has no memory and is created in a moment and perpetually renewed.”

Banya’s Flying Pope shows the poet’s exceptional intelligence, remarkable wit, and unbounded self-confidence:

The reason why

The Pope flies:

A dewdrop (25)

His haiku is apt and suggestive. The reason for the Pope’s flight is that he is incapable to appreciate the simple and natural beauty of “a dewdrop” due to his enormous preoccupations. Another interpretation is that due to the predominance of hectic life, the Pope is unable to appreciate profoundly the sacred world of nature. The mere joy of beholding “a dewdrop”, the grandeur and beauty of the natural world is not allowed to the Pope due to his excessive responsibilities. Similarly, in the following haiku the Noble laureate realizes that the beauty of a poem lies in the poem itself, and not in the personal history of the poet. In other words, Ban’ya seems to emphasize the significance of impersonality of art. “The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality” (T. S. Eliot).

After winning the Nobel Prize

The Flying Pope

Lost (26)

Ban’ya has a keen eye for human feelings. Pope’s fountain of vitality is “lost” after winning the Nobel Prize. This is a stupendous haiku. The Pope is here seen not better but worse through success. Ban’ya is suggesting that the soul becomes better through suffering, and not success.

Ban’ya’s inimitable wit and humour is evident in his satiric exposure of hypocrisy and sordid life. But he is not a pessimist. Ban’ya “gathers manna in the wilderness; he strikes the barren rock for the gushing moisture”.

Let me quote the following haiku, which shows the great distinction of Ban’ya, and the extent of his sympathy for the persecuted:

Persecution, bombing,

Defeat, diligence,

Rose and haiku

(Right Eye in Twilight, 15)

Rose and haiku with their quietude and joy, ‘the ancient rapture’ which we find in Nature and the act of creating haiku provide solace to us in life tormented by vicissitude of fate, and overwhelming catastrophe of nuclear war. Devoid of any kind of inane and bombastic phraseology, we find in his haiku epigrammatic conciseness:

Oily summer sunshine-

An overseas friend’s father

Died

(ibid, 10)

This haiku is a masterpiece as it aptly shows that Ban’ya is greatly superior to other writers in his humanism and taste.

David Lanoue wisely says, “A haiku, if successful, startles the reader out of a rational mode of thought into a deeply emotive, visionary, right-brain experience, an experience which I shall refer to, for lack of a better term, as the haiku “ah!” Without this experiential component on the reader’s part, a one-breath Japanese poem is not, precisely, a haiku.” Ban’ya aptly comments in his “Future of World Haiku”: “Everybody knows that haiku is a short poem, but the fact that a verbal universe made by an excellent haiku is boundless is not so well known” (World Haiku No. 4: 76). In the above haiku we notice “a verbal universe” of humanism, which reveals Ban’ya’s unique way of seeing and feeling. Similarly in his another haiku Ban’ya’s thoughtful judgement about Tibetan Buddha appeals to what lies deepest in us:

A Tibetan Buddha

Invites a thunderstorm

To an island of suicide

(Taj Mahal Review, Dec. 2008, p. 298}

Ban’ya’s tone in the above haiku is full of moral earnestness. The poet means to say that regeneration is possible through suffering; “the island of suicide” refers to the renunciation and self-sacrifice, which are indispensable qualities to discern the real spirit of Tibetan Buddhism. No doubt, Ban’ya’s haiku inspire us towards inner transformation. The following haiku clarify this aspect in Ban’ya’s poetic journey:

The snake has stolen

The golden grass:

Our first unhappiness

(Endless Helix, 37)

The word “Hiroshima”

Is it heavier

Than a butterfly?

(ibid, 22)

A magnetic storm-

Can the earth return

To its native home?

(ibid, 23)

In its heart

Tokyo has a virgin forest

And a sacred mirror

(ibid, 19)

The earth is also a grain—

From it, a shining haiku

Has sprouted

(ibid, 20)

Where there was a tree

Near the pure spring—

The noise of saws

(ibid, 21)

The above six haiku from Ban’ya’s Endless Helix have tremendous conviction, weight and power of emotion. They provide a most interesting commentary on the varied contemporary life. Our first disobedience is “our first unhappiness”. Ban’ya is in quest of “the golden grass”, the light of “native home”, “a virgin forest”, “a sacred mirror”, “a shining haiku” so that he might establish secure relationship with an industrialized world which has lost the divine vision due to “the noise of claws” and the loss of the purest passions of the heart.

Flying Pope is conspicuous for the remarkable title itself. “Flying Pope,” Natsuishi explains, “is you and me. It’s a symbol of the 21st Century. The old West is ruling the whole world, sometimes, bringing us disasters in the name of god or the good, for example, the Iraq War. We are meaningful as well as meaningless.” Ban’ya

clarifies that his haiku series was not modeled on Pope John Paul II (Flying Pope 161 Haiku: 110). “The post-9/11 21st century has brought huge changes on a global scale, and to incorporate these into haiku, the Flying Pope’s freely moving perspective was needed” ( IBID). In order to properly understand Ban’ya’s habit of mind, it is necessary to quote the following haiku from his Flying Pope 161 Haiku:

Cherry blossoms

Inviting

50 Flying Popes

A singing voice

From village of mud

The pope flies

Possibly

The Flying pope

is a balloon

The pope flying

For all

The withered roses

( 95-99)

The above illustrations show that Ban’ya in his power of satire is unrivalled in literature. The satire is so terrific that the ruins and rubbish of old values are cleared away to begin on a new structure. Toshio Kimura aptly observes that non-traditional haiku of modern Japan is not guided by Eliot’s modernism or Breton’s surrealism (The Missing Link: From Classic to Modern 72). A balloon or fundamentalist’s ego is of no use post September 11. Ban’ya’s wit consists in advancing things that are reasonable and useful. True religion is not extravagant flying. “The withered roses” means the poorest of the poor, and Ban’ya’s ironic insight reveals his humanism. The Pope flying is the target of Ban’ya’s wit. Pope can attain a certain halo of prestige not by flying or escapism but by true compassion for “the withered roses”. Adam Powell very wisely describes these haiku as “sparkling semi-precious jewels singing, dancing, and jabbering”( Powell 4). Powell adds that Ban’ya’s great artistry is revealed by “the succession of painterly haiku frescoes, all variations on the same theme: the illusion of consciousness”.

The source of Ban’ya’s satire against Pope is Pope’s incapacity for any vital participation in the sacred beauty of nature

The Flying Pope

Cannot edit

Even the night sky

(Flying Pope 161 Haiku: 8)

He is unable to commune with objects of nature. His private agonies may never end, as he is out of tune with stars of midnight. One of the basic requirements for a Zen practitioner is rapturous monologues with one’s own self in the tranquil surroundings of nature, but this is denied to Flying Pope. Due to his indifference towards ecstatic world of nature, he is turned into a conceited ‘balloon’. The narrow circuits of ideology inspire him more as he is obsessed with the communists in India:

The flying pope

Thinking of the red

Of India

(ibid, 95)

The word “red” gives a certain scope for different interpretations. It is a symbol of death, because red is the color of blood. It is also probable that Ban’ya is referring to Christ’s blood. Moreover, red is a symbol of red powder often showered on deities by Indians at temples during prayer. No doubt, Ban’ya’s image is many-sided.

The Flying Pope seems to have little or no soul as he is a stranger to joys of life:

A singing voice

From a village of mud

The Pope flies

(ibid,97)

Ban’ya shows true imagination in his subtle use of metaphor in his haiku. Due to his intense contemplation, the lifeless thing like forest becomes alive as he compares it with parliament. Ban’ya is an inspired poet in this unusual figurative contrast. Each raindrop is a member of this parliament. This power of creating metaphorical tension in the above haiku and 165 haiku in Flying Pope is a clear testimony to his prodigious ability. Ban’ya is suggesting the richness of sweet rain, and its choral harmony. In other words, he is delving into ‘the mystery of things’. Ban’ya’s “neo-experimentalism” in his haiku makes him the perfect singing god. Lee Gurga highly admired “the effective resonance” in the following haiku by Ban’ya Natsuishi:

in the undersea tunnel

my heart itself

is an autumn storm

“In this poem, his heart’s claustrophobic reaction to confinement in a tunnel is captured artfully through its identification with the violence of an autumn storm”.

J. Middleton Murry aptly observes that metaphor is “the instinctive and necessary act of the mind exploring reality and ordering experience” (METAPHOR 227). Exploration of reality is the sole theme of Ban’ya’s haiku. Aristotle in his Poetics pointed out that the very nature of a riddle is to describe a fact in an impossible combination of words. This cannot be done with real names for things, but with their metaphorical substitutes. This is the main reason of Ban’ya comparing Forest with Parliament. This provides “non-linearity” or “more than one dimension” quality to his haiku:

Parliament of the Forest

Every raindrop

is its member

GINYU No. 41: 4

Parliament of the Forest

Dissolved by

A bear’s roar

(GINYU No. 41: 5)

A horse of Genghis Khan

Follows

A haiku

(GINYU N0. 42: 24)

With a forehead

Like the morning sun

I walk through a wide field

A meditation

Before stepping towards

A source of light

(Harvests of New Millennium 230)

The first two haiku reveal the innermost secrets of nature. A fundamental feature of the poet’s character is his love for “every raindrop” which is “unacknowledged legislator of the world”. The world of nature is always in danger from “a bear’s roar” or hound’s tooth. In other words, Ban’ya is suggesting that our civilization has failed to recognize what is stupid. The haiku about “a horse of Genghis Khan” indicates that we are faced with a real crisis of spiritual values. It is very unfortunate that we have reached a state of collapse of poetry as the moments of exquisite passion seem to be vanquished by the ferocious “horse of Genghis Khan”. Haiku has close affinities with Zen, and in every age hungry “horse of Genghis Khan” tries to tread it down. Ban’ya is perhaps revealing the eternal strife between Virtue and Evil, Lamb and Tiger, conflict between peace of haiku and worldliness of ignorant power-hungry terrorists. This leads to several philosophical questions. Should a creative artist or haiku poet accept the fact that his or her destiny is to suffer more, not to escape but to be followed by the ferocious, macabre “horse” and slaughtering wolf? In the above fourth haiku, Ban’ya is emphasizing the great value of pleasure present in walking “through a wide field” with infinite harmony and blessings of benevolent “morning sun”. In the last haiku utterance, it is certain that the poet feels the great significance of meditation as “a source of light”, the climax of interior life. These haiku clearly show Ban’ya at his best, without any kind of cramping restraints, in quest of intensities and flourishes, glorious moment and epiphany. No doubt, Ban’ya is able to soar in the winged chariot of Pegasus, not through ornamental style. Tohta Kaneko writes in his foreword to Future Waterfall :

The one hundred haiku in this anthology were selected from Natsuishi’s eight volumes already in print. Some of them are delicate, others are bold and vast as the universe. Some are melancholic, still others are cheerful and enjoyable. Some are sympathetic with fellow human beings, yet others are bitterly cynical about them. These . . . with their rich variety have all come through the very heart and center of Natsuishi as a human being.

Richard Gilbert aptly comments about the haiku included in Future Waterfall: “We are fortunate to receive in English translation a recent selection of some of the best haiku composed by Ban’ya Natsuishi, a poet mentioned as “one of the most outstanding contemporary haiku poets breaking new ground in haiku form and expression in Japan” (Japanese Haiku 2001, Modern Haiku Association). In the endnote to his latest collection, A Future Waterfall, Ban’ya Natsuishi writes: “More than three hundred years after Basho, I am trying to create in my haiku diverse, astonishing traditions and phenomena of the world.”

Ban’ya’s plain speaking, colloquial language free from design or pretense reminds us of American poets since William Carlos Williams. These American poets wanted a free verse that, in D.H. Lawrence’s terms, was “direct utterance from the instant, whole man,” spontaneous and flexible as a flame”(J. D. McClatchy xxv). Ryne Inman reveals postmodern characteristics in Ban’ya’s haiku: “For Natsuishi, the world is limitless and so is haiku. The two are fit perfectly for one another; Natsuishi just twists and turns the world of haiku through his lens of abstraction, connection, and symbolism in order to create a masterfully dream-like landscape” (Global Haiku).

Ban’ya may be said to have wholly perfected the art of writing haiku. So effectively has he popularized haiku all over the world of literature that since his time haiku poems have become one of the most effective genre in contemporary arena of literature. Ban’ya clearly affirmed about his mission in his international haiku magazine GINYU (No. 42):

1. To raise the level of the haiku in different languages.

2. To respect individuality of each haiku poet.

3. To promote borderless exchange among haiku poets.

Ban’ya Natsuishi is involved in a range of activities both in Japan and overseas, including the publication of Ginyu, the international journal of the World Haiku Association, and he hosted Tokyo Poetry Festival 2008. Natsuishi has attended international poetry festivals in Latvia, Estonia, Italy and several other countries, offering haiku readings and lectures there. He also organized the 5th World Haiku Association Conference in Lithuania, scheduled for October 2009. He is Editor-In-Chief of Ginyu along with Sayumi Kamakura, Editor. Ginyu is an established Japanese language haiku magazine published quarterly, with the mission of enriching and popularizing haiku all over the world. The magazine is well intentioned, well produced, and receptive to work from developing writers and it represents the widest consensus of excellence in contemporary haiku. Ginyu features mainly contributions from Japanese writers, which take up most of the issue. The magazine also includes critiques, an essay, featured haiku poems, and several pages of haiku translated into English. Its orientation seems to be particularly influenced by Ban’ya Natsuishi who has translated the majority of the poems into an English style that tries to capture the essence of English grammar.

No doubt, Ban’ya is the greatest treasure of contemporary haiku literature. In his extraordinary efforts for making haiku popular all over the world, he has no parallel. He is a prominent figure due to his pioneering efforts for promoting haiku. He attended a haiku meeting in Germany in 1994, and also in Italy in 1995. In 2ooo, he attended the Global Haiku festival in USA. Natsuishi’s ceaseless visits to several countries are the means by which he has made haiku poetry popular all over the world. This characteristic of Ban’ya reminds us of Basho. “Basho traveled to explore the present, the contemporary world, to meet new poets, and to compose linked verse together. Equally important, travel was a means of entering into the past, of meeting the spirits of the dead, of experiencing what his poetic and spiritual predecessors had experienced. In other words, there were two key axes: one horizontal, the present, the comtemporary world; and the other vertical, leading back into the past, to history, to other poems” (Haruo Shirane). He is our greatest possession in the arena of modern haiku poetry. Ban’ya excels most of other haiku poets due to bold sweep of his language, the depth of philosophic insight and minuteness of his poetic imagination. Ban’ya in his haiku eminently proves that one is not made but born a poet. No doubt, Ban’ya’s haiku are astonishing due to the exuberance of his genius.