SENRYU, PART ONE
Traditional Senryu
Little poems of human nature from Edo and Meiji Japan
This first of my two essays on senryu defines the genre and shares traditional senryu together with a few modern senryu written in a similar spirit.
The second essay, coming soon, will explore literary definitions and analysis of modern senryu, with many examples of today’s senryu by Japanese and English-speaking authors.
While a number of modern writers and editors have discarded the distinction between haiku and senryu, in traditional Japan they were easy to distinguish. While haiku were about nature — even urban nature, like feral cats — senryu focused on human nature and society.
Both haiku and senryu were written with 17 on (which very roughly correspond to a short syllable) and in one vertical line, unlike the now-standard three lines in Western languages. Nevertheless, during the Edo period (1603–1868) the Meiji period (1868–1912) it was easy to separate senryu from haiku. The senryu lacked a seasonal reference and a “season word,” or kigo, such as the cicadas’ cry that suggests summer. Furthermore, senryu were almost always written as a single sentence, whereas most haiku were written in two phrases, allowing for a juxtaposition of images.
Traditionally, the Japanese have never seen senryu as serious poetry. Until the twentieth century, senryu were anonymous. Jane Reichhold points out that as late as the nineteen eighties, senryu did not appear in Japanese literature textbooks, while haiku and tanka did. This is partly because senryu can be rude and lewd — and sometimes offensively sexist. From this perspective, they seem more like the limerick of Japan than like traditional haiku, which could be wry or playful, but were always in good taste.
The best of the older senryu, however, have literary qualities of their own: Each one presents a scene that reveals both Japanese culture and universal human nature. They are sometimes less personal than haiku: they use the third person to showcase a little slice of life. If there is an implicit authorial perspective, it is often ironic or downright cynical, but may also be full of laughter at human foibles or grief at human pain. Makoto Ueda, in his introduction to Light Verse from the Floating World: An Anthology of Premodern Japanese Senryū, compares the senryu writer’s perspective to that of the novelist. Consciously generalizing, he writes that haiku were for exploring responses to nature, tanka expressed love and grief, and “someone with a novelist’s eye but without his ability (or patience) jotted down senryu” (18–19).
Even “traditional” senryu were not particularly “traditional.” Like popular novels, the famous eighteenth-century senryu collections sold well because, as Ueda says, they “amused a vast number of people, including those who had no special interest in literature” (18). Each anthology published the winners of popular anonymous contests. The writers were mostly common people and mostly men, from fish vendors to clerks to physicians (16), but a few bold women (18) and some slumming samurai (16) also provided winning entries.
People loved them because they reflected the everyday life of ordinary commoners, not the rarified art of aristocrats or samurai and those who tried to imitate them. The examples below come from Ueda’s book and from the 1964 Penguin Book of Japanese Verse by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite.
when he holds a baby
his entire body shrinks —
the sumo wrestler (Ueda 90)Guns blazing
From his fan
The story-teller. (Bownas 136)At all the corners
The mat-maker
Curses the carpenter. (Bownas 134)Not going in,
But asking the price,
Sheltering from the rain. (Bownas 137)
In an interview in Prune Juice, Alexis Rotella says,
“The best senryu can be found in the shadows, in the dark crevices of life. Blythe quotes a poem about a woman in the marketplace with sores on her face. It’s something you don’t expect to see. That, to me, makes it powerful. There’s lots of light in haiku, but if you want senryu go into the gutter. Follow the homeless; look at people’s body language. Don’t be afraid to write what you see.”
the matchmaker
speaks the sober truth
only when drunk (Ueda 109)With all her might
the spurned woman
throws the wedding rice.~ Alexis Rotella in Simply Haiku 3.3
See also:
a charming gesture —
the girl knows it, as she covers
her mouth with her sleeve (Ueda 98)to put it briefly
courting is tantamount
to begging (Ueda 101)“There’ll soon be
a charming widow” — That’s the talk
among the doctors (Ueda 68)
My favorite senryu are often those that are funny, but not necessarily in a jokey way . . . they hold up a mirror to the human comedy.
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For example:
Now the man has a child
He knows all the names
of the local dogs. (Bownas 131)Zen priest
Meditation finished
Looking for fleas. (Bownas 131)Getting out of bed
For a pee, the wife
curses the chessmen. (Bownas 137)the pediatrician
first takes the pulse
of the stuffed tiger (Ueda 150)
Sometimes, the line between laughter and tears is finely drawn, as in life:
Scolding to excess,
The mother also
Bursts into tears. (Pizzarelli)
In “The Serious Side of Senryu,” Alan Pizzarelli writes, “There’s another side of senryu, a more serious side that express the misfortunes, the hardships and woe of humanity. . . . Senryu that express passion and fullness of heart.”
His magnum opus —
While the wife does
The neighbors’ sewing. (Bownas 136)
This one reminds me of the childhood of Kobayashi Issa (1763–1828), the famous Japanese haiku poet, who suffered as a step-child:
The step-child,
All day long
With his nose running. (Pizzarelli)
or:
After the funeral
the child looks around —
Where’s grandpa?~ Steve Wilkinson (The Bamboo Hut)
formerly on Twitter, now found @bamboohut.bsky.social
References for this essay:
“Senryu: Definitions & Pronunciation” by Ray Rasmussen.
Reichhold, Jane. “Should Senryu Be Part of English-language Haiku?” Modern Haiku 44.1, Winter-Spring 2013. Available in PDF by searching author and title.
Ueda, Makoto, editor and translator, Light Verse from the Floating World: An Anthology of Premodern Japanese Senryū. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Available on Google Books as a preview and for purchase as an ebook.
An interview with Alexis Rotella in PRUNE JUICE: Journal of Senryu & Kyoka, Issue 6, Summer 2011. Available in PDF by searching author and title.
Senryu by Alexis Rotella in Simply Haiku: A Quarterly Journal of Japanese Short Form Poetry, 3.3, Autumn 2005 (No longer on the Web).
“The Serious Side of Senryu,” edited by Alan Pizzarelli in Simply Haiku, Autumn 2006, 4.3. This essay cites senryu from two collections by R. H. Blythe: Senryu: Japanese Satirical Verses, Hokuseido Press 1949, and Japanese Life and Character in Senryu, Hokuseido Press, 1960. Now available at the Haiku Foundation website.
Additional senryu are taken from the older edition of The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse, translated by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite, first edition 1964.
This essay is an edited version of one I published in Simply Haiku, 10.3, Spring/Summer, 2013, no longer available on the web.
And, since I began with a cat picture, and I cannot find any traditional cat senryu, here’s one of mine:
threesome …
they lie in bed together
petting the cat
