The art of insinuation

Dissecting a multilayered poem from "Shogun"

What lurks beneath the surface of the seemingly simple haiku?

Haiku is a type of short-form poetry in Japan. It consists of three lines in a “5-7-5” arrangement:, five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third. Here is a famed example from Japan’s best known haiku poet. Matsuo Basho wrote it in 1686.

古池や　                  蛙飛び込む　                   水の音　

Fu-ru-i-ke-ya     ka-e-ru-to-bi-ko-mu     mi-zu-no-o-to

An ancient pond / a frog jumps in  / the splash of water

Despite, or perhaps because of, the extremely limited number of words, a skilled composer can choose phrases that evoke multiple meanings. In this case, Basho isn’t really writing about frogs, or not only about frogs. He’s writing about silence.

But the specific details – of the scenery, of the pond, of the frog – are all up to the reader. Even the silence. Is he talking about a silent place, or a tranquil soul? This is why haiku attracts so many people. The number of words is limited, but the depth of meaning they can evoke is limitless. In truly great haiku, anyway.

For instance, is the old pond at a temple? Or in the backyard of an abandoned house, like the classic film Ugetsu Monogarari? Or maybe a swamp deep in the woods? How big is the pond? If you ask me, I imagine it as neither too large nor too small, its bottom layered with many seasons of fallen leaves, deep in some abandoned wood. Almost a century before Basho wrote this poem, Japan was suffering through the Era of Warring States. The pond might well have seen many battles, felt the footfalls of the soldiers, in that tempestuous era of ambition and death. But now that raging storm had passed. Everyone, fallen and victor alike, had long since died. Now the only thing that might disturb the tranquility of this quiet pond is a humble frog. That is my interpretation. But in the world of haiku, there is no single true answer. Whatever a poem evokes in you, is right.

The finale of the 2024 television miniseries Shogun centers on a haiku. But haiku, with their wordplay and entendre, are among the most difficult things to translate. The show’s translators did a heroic job, but nevertheless, if you can’t understand the original verse, you may have missed some interesting twists. I don’t think what I’m about to write spoils anything, but If you’re nervous, please stop reading here and come back after you’ve seen the series through!

In the penultimate episode, Mariko and Lady Ochiba compose a poem together. This was a common game called renga, the art of linked verse. This is in fact how the haiku we know today were originally enjoyed: as the first lines of a renga.

It’s played like this: whoever goes first opens with a 5-7-5 verse, and the next follows with a verse in 7-7 to complete the poem. This was serious stuff among the sophisticated elite of premodern Japan (and still is among aficionados today.) There are strict rules involving the picking of a theme to suit the season, and the response needing to match it.

Here’s the exchange between the two characters, which plays out across the last two episodes of the show. I’m not interested in critiquing the show’s translation – there are many factors that go into subtitling, such as timing and text-display limitations – so I’m just going to re-translate the lines myself. Here we go:

Mariko:

雪ながら　　   ゆうべにかすむ　      枯れ枝かな

yu-ki-na-ga-ra   yu-u-be-ni-ka-su-mu  ka-re-e-ka-na

While snow remains / veiled in the haze of evening /  a leafless branch     

Ochiba:

風なおふきて　 花は花なれ

ka-ze-na-o-fu-ki-te ha-na-wa-ha-na-na-re

The wind blows and blows / yet flowers are flowers 

Taken literally, the poem means that flowers can bloom among the bleakest of scenes. But to talented renga players, which Mariko and Ochiba obviously are, this exchange would have raised a red flag. As I mentioned, there are strict rules. Perhaps the single most important one is that players must pick a kigo – a seasonal word. Much of Japan’s traditional culture is arranged around seasons. Nobody would ever open a renga without a kigo appropriate to the season. It would be akin to showing up at a summer cocktail party in skiwear.

Yet that’s exactly what happens here. The scene is set in spring, the time of flowering. But Mariko’s verse begins with yuki, snow, a clear kigo for winter, and ends on another that might be winter or late autumn, “a leafless branch.” That even the crude Yabushige takes note shows what a faux pas this opening is. But we know Mariko is no amateur. There’s no way she’d make so fundamental of a mistake. What Yabushige misses, and I suspect most following in translation, is the double meaning embedded in the poem.

Mariko is sending Ochiba a code. Yuki does mean snow. But yuki is also a homonym for the word “go.” And kare’eda does mean leafless, but it can also mean a withered or dead branch, depending on context. In other words, Ochiba would certainly pick up on subtext of Mariko’s seemingly tranquil poem, which might be rendered “if you go on / in the haze of darkness / you may well die.”

And what of Lady Ochiba’s response? The last half of her second verse caught my attention: “ha-na-na-re.” This is the “are flowers’ part of “flowers are flowers,” but it also contains the syllables of a homonym: hanare, which is “to separate” or “to leave.” So Ochiba’s equally pretty response is more than just flowery prose. Someone in the know would interpret it as “When the wind blows / I shall leave.”

This exchange links back to a climactic moment in the final episode, when Yabushige asks Toranaga, “how does it feel to shape the wind to your will?” To which Toranaga replies, “I don’t control the wind. I only study it.” He certainly did, in the case of Mariko and Ochiba’s linked verses.

Or at least, that’s my interpretation. What is yours?