Haigahō 俳画法

FSC-GR-780.435

Commentary by Tamaki Maeda

Posted February 24, 2018

Haigahō (Rules for haiku pictures) reveals the complexities of haiga (俳画), which are pictures, often simple drawings, brushed in association with haiku. Haigahō opens with reproductions of three paintings exemplifying antecedents of haiga, followed by twelve haiga, forty haiku, and an essay entitled “Theory of Haiga” (“Haigaron” 俳画論).The essay and images are the work of the oil painter, calligrapher, and scholar Nakamura Fusetsu 中村不折 (1866–1943), while the poems and calligraphy are by the poet-essayist Kawahigashi Hekigotō 河東碧梧桐 (1873–1973).

As Fusetsu recounts in “Theory of Haiga,” his deep involvement with haiga began in 1894 or 1895 when he worked as an illustrator at the Japan Newspaper Company (Nippon Shinbunsha 日本新聞社). There he became acquainted with Masaoka Shiki 正岡子規 (1867–1902), today widely considered as the “father of modern haiku.” [1] The two men became fast friends: Shiki sometimes presented a poem to Fusetsu for a haiga or Fusetsu created a picture for Shiki to accompany a haiku. Fusetsu’s emphasis on shasei 写生 (drawing from life) led Shiki to develop a new style of haiku that captured scenes of everyday life. Shiki, in turn, provided opportunities for Fusetsu to explore haiga.

In his essay Fusetsu elucidates that the most common mistake in the production of haiga is the attempt to illustrate exactly what is conveyed in the haiku verse. Haiga, he maintains,should not be some mysterious visual quibble on a poem. Rather, the artist should draw upon their own visual associations with the haiku, an image that can be linked to (rensō 連想), shifted from (henka 変化), contrasted to (taishō 対照), or the opposite of (hantai 反対) the poem’s literal meaning. The haiga samples in the book are thus visual representations of these ideas.

For example, the poem on page 39, “Even a row of trees/look afar at a harbor/after a freezing rain” (Namiki sae/minato tōme ya/hyōu harete 並木さへ/港遠目や/氷雨晴れて), might evoke an image of roadside trees leading into a distant shore. Here, Fusetsu opts for a simple picture of two swimming mallards. The forms of the birds above the water appear in dark silhouette against a band of faint pink, suggesting a bleak winter sunset. Their representation underwater in a shade of blue projects a sense of frosty cold. In another, on page 27, the verse “Waiting for a go turn/by mosquito incense/I grind down an ink cake” (Go o matte/kayari no soba ni/sumi surinu 碁を待つて/蚊遣の側に/墨すりぬ) is accompanied by an image of a stack of fans in a stand. This everyday scene, together with the poem, invites the viewer to imagine friends playing go and intimates that the slow pace of this game would permit the participants to grind ink on an ink stone.

Still, for Fusetsu, the most important element in making haiga is the ability to draw “unskillfully.” Artists should become more sophisticated as their study advances but those with true aspiration, he asserts, should unlearn what they have learned. The book suggests two methods to achieve this sense of amateurism: avoid technical dexterity and study ancient objects. Fusetsu may have adopted these methods from calligraphy practice. Both he and Hekigotō helped to develop the “Six-Dynasties school” (Rikuchōha 六朝派) of calligraphy. [2] This was inspired by the Chinese “epigraphy school” (C: Beixuepai 碑学派) that incorporated stylistic traits of scripts carved on ancient bronze vessels and stone objects.

The haiga examples in the book reflect Fusetsu’s idea about amateurism. Indeed, they appear simple, or even naïve. Yet, paradoxically, haiga is a highly sophisticated art form. Many of its complexities lay in the interplay between word and image, as the following two works demonstrate. Page 37 has Hekigotō’s verse reading “Kyorai’s wife/sending him off with a hat/the first winter shower” (Kyorai tsuma/hanamuke no kasa ya/hatsushigure 去来妻/はなむけの笠や/初時雨). Kyorai here refers to the poet Mukai Kyorai 向井去来 (1651–1704), one of the ten disciples of the haiku master Matsuo Bashō 松尾芭蕉 (1644–1964). Fusetsu responds to the poem with a casual drawing of Kyorai, wearing traveling gear, replete with a large brown straw hat. There are two horizontal blue bands along the bottom of the composition that suggest distance. Hekigotō completes the work with his calligraphy, its awkward, uneven characters resonate with the “unskillfulness” of the drawing. The last character, ame (雨), dips into the blue and elicits the sentiment of a solitary journey in cold rain.

The final haiga in the book appears on page 41. It depicts a man in silhouette, enjoying the warmth of a kotatsu brazier, with a cat cozily curled on top of the table. The haiku reads: “Without light/I recite from memory/in the middle of the winter night” (Tō okade/soranzuru sho ya/yowa no fuyu 灯置かで/暗んずる書や/夜半の冬). [3] The first four characters meaning “without light” appear at the top, positioned against a soft gray ground, thereby setting up a visual and textual link to the vastness of the night sky.

Selected readings:

Janine Beichman, Masaoka Shiki: His Life and Works (Boston and Worcester: Chen & Tsui Company, 2002).

Donald Keene, The Winter Sun Shines In: A Life of Masaoka Shiki (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).

Tamaki Maeda, “Nineteenth-and-Twentieth Century Japanese Bunjinga (Literati) Painting,” in Encyclopedia of Modern China (Farmington Hills, Michigan: Charles Scribner’s Sons/Gale Cengage Learning, 2009), vol. 2, 318–20.

Naganoken Ina Bunka Kaikan 長野県伊那文化会館 and Hayashi Makoto 林誠, eds., Seitan 140-nen, gaka, shoka, Nakamura Fusetsu no subete ten 『生誕140年, 画家・書家, 中村不折のすべて展』(Inashi, Nagano: Nakamura Fusetsu no Subete Ten Jikkō Iinkai and Naganoken Ina Bunka Kaikan; Naganoshi: Shinano Mainichi Shinbunsha, 2006).

Nakaya Yuka 中谷由郁, “Haiku to kaiga no setten: Nakamura Fusetsu ‘Haigahō’ o shiza to shite,” 「俳句と絵画との接点：中村不折『俳画法』を視座として」, Ōtsuma kokubun 『大妻国文』38 (2007): 155–73.

Takii Kōsaku 滝井孝作, “Kawahigashi Hekigotō to Nakamura Fusetsu” 「河東碧梧桐と中村不折」, Bokubi 『墨美』159 (June 1966): 2–7.

Aida Yuen Wong, “Reforming Calligraphy in Modern Japan: The Six Dynasties School and Nakamura Fusetsu’s Chinese ‘Stele’ Style,” in The Role of Japan in Modern Chinese Art, edited by Joshua A. Fogel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 131–53.

Copies in other collections:

Kansai University Library, Suita

Kyoto University Library

Ochanomizu Women’s University Library, Tokyo

Osaka Shōin Women’s University

Princeton University Library

National Diet Library, Tokyo

Tenri University Library

[1] On the life and work of Shiki, see Beichman 2002 and Keene 2013.

[2] On Rikuchōha calligraphy, see Maeda 2009, vol. 2, pp. 318–20 and Wong 2013, 131–53.

[3] The character 暗 in the poem should actually read 諳.