1792

船頭よ小便無用浪の月

sendô yo shôben muyô nami no tsuki

hey boatman
no pissing on the moon
in the waves!

The Elucidations

This Haiku may be considered as a characteristic Haiku by Issa or even may be cited as a general example of Haiku even to people not really acquainted with Haiku. hai+ku ~ This one is specially strong in "hai" and it is an eternally memorable haiku. It will be almost impossible to forget this once you have read this! The "ku" is subdued and phrased as a chat and mild admonition. It is childlike as many of Issa's Haiku are. In his solitary tragic playfullness he seemed to perceive and react like a child to various things.Rarely this innocence tended to be little childish! But that is understandable since who can really demarcate precisely childlike and childish always!

This Haiku could possibly be seen in four different perspectives as to its dubious origin. I list below the four possibilities.

1] It is moonlit night with a moon floating in the cool waves too, where a boatman is wading in his boat. He actually was urinating into the water and Issa was admonishing him though jocularly.

2] In the moonlit night the boat man is not urinating into moon, but Issa becomes doubtful whether the boatman may actually urinate on the moon in the waves by some apparet movements or gestures he makes. So Issa makes a premonitory admonition to prevent this unpleasant thing happening .

3] Issa is simply ruminating near the waters of a lake where he sees the moon reflected and above in the sky and also a boatman oaring in the gentle night. Issa fancifully imagines the pissing episode and creates the Haiku.

4] Issa remembers randomly a floating boat with a boatsman in waves and moon from assorted memory or a classical painting. He mentally assimilates a curious situation and in his funny mind creates the pissing scene and hai to create this Haiku.

It may be specially noted that in all traditional societies it was very sinful to excrete into public water resources like river, lake, pond etc.

I personally think that this Haiku originated in the fourth way mentioned above: ie. strictly from the imagination by a fusion of memories in Issa's memorabilia. There may be differences of opinion on this point. Readers are requested to respond.

This perhaps also clarifies how a Haiku is never written immediately on perception of the moment. Often it could be written later or much later. There are various possibilities.

Please check

AH-HA! AND TABLE TOP HAIKU ~ Narayanan Raghunathan

http://www.wonderhaikuworlds.com/haikuandgenres-ahha.php

Talking about the details of the haiku we could observe that tsuki [moon ] is a kigo for all autumn ~

月 【つき】 tsuki, moon

Check below for details

http://worldkigodatabase.blogspot.com/2006/01/moon-and-his-links.html

Moon at Japanese Text Initiative