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The Zhuangzi, also called The Chuang Tzu, is second only to the Tao Te Ching in its importance as a Taoist (Daoist) writing . A collection of stories, fables, poetry, dialogue, and anecdotes written centuries ago in China, it has for centuries influenced scholars, artists, politicians, authors, and poets in China and throughout the world.
What few people know, however, is the role the Zhuangzi has played in the development of haiku. Scholars, of course, have been aware of the influence the poets of China, especially those from the T'ang (618-906) and Sung (960-1278) dynasties, have had on the development and flavor of Japanese short form poetry. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the correlation between the poetry of the two nations. Basho and many of his contemporaries, including Buson, often alluded to lines from poetry by Li Po, Du Fu, and other Chinese poets. All of Japan's early poetry was in some way or another linked to the influence of Chinese poetry. After all, it was China which introduced written language, and, therefore, literature to the people inhabiting the islands that eventually formed the island nation of Japan. Proud, resourceful, and highly creative, the Japanese people, through the years, originated and refined their own poetic voice, giving to the world Waka, Renga, Haiku, Senryu, Tanka (modern Waka), Haibun, and Haiga.
The link to Chinese poetry, in Japanese short form poetry, however, goes much deeper than an admiration of Chinese poets and their methods of poetic expression. There is a deep spiritual influence as well. Most of the poets I talk to today readily see a correlation between Japanese poetry and Zen Buddhism, other sects of Buddhism, and Shintoism. But few if any, it seems, apart from academic circles, discuss the role Taoism had and continues to have on the aforementioned Japanese genres. This, perhaps, can be attributed to the fact that the majority of people in the West have only recently discovered haiku and related genres (beginning in the middle of the 20th century), or expressed a desire to study and try to understand the Japanese culture and mindset. Since the close of World War II, Japan has become a major economic power in the world and, therefore, the need to know this once mysterious neighbor, becomes all the more relevant. For centuries, Japan had closed itself off to the rest of the world, especially to Western influence, wanting to preserve its own cultural identity. Says Professor Makoto Ueda, Professor Emeritus of Japanese at Stanford University in California, regarding the influence of Chinese Taoism and specifically the writings in the Zhuangzi, "Basho seems to have been attracted to Chinese poetry for two reasons. One was his interest in Taoism, which he thought might lead him away from the turmoil of everyday life and into the world of nature where he could regain his true self. He became an avid reader of the Zhuangzi, a Taoist classic attributed to Chuang-tzu, so much so that he even called himself Kukusai at times, deriving the name from a word appearing in it."
Professor Peipei Qiu, an associate Professor of Japanese at Vassar College in the United States, has written an important book, Basho And the Dao, published by the University of Hawaii Press, that goes beyond a surface recognition of the Daoist influence on Japanese poetry. And because she is from China and speaks fluent Chinese, Japanese and English, combined with a solid background in Chinese and Japanese literature, she has insight into the subject that few scholars today have. Says Columbia University's Donald Keene, "... she combines a background in Chinese literature with her special interest in haikai poetry. She has been able to make a real contribution to our understanding of the role of a major Chinese text, the Zhuangzi, in the formation of the ideals and practice of a major Japanese poetic genre."
Says Qiu, referring to her reasoning behind writing the book, "While the general interest in haiku continues to grow, few people outside Japan know about haikai, or comic linked verse, which gave birth to haiku. Even fewer people know about the interesting role that Chinese Daoist classics played in its becoming a high art."
Continues Qiu, "Although the impact of the Zhuangzi on haikai is remarkable, there has been no systematic study in any Western language on this issue. The absence of Western scholarship is not surprising, because the lack of attention to Daoism in Japan has been a general situation in Japanese studies."
"Previous Japanese works of scholarship," adds Qiu, "point to the important place the Zhuangzi occupies in the development of haikai. They also suggest a helpful frame of reference to contemporary readers, especially Western readers, who have generally considered haiku a purely Japanese form, a genre that is intuitive and expressive rather than referential and allusive. Yet answers to some fundamental questions regarding haikai's encounter with the Zhuangzi remain obscure."
Why did haikai poets need to justify the legitimacy of their poetry?
Why did they choose an old Daoist text as a source of authority?
What are the inner factors in the development of haikai that led to the poets' sustained interest in the Zhuangzi?
And, how did the ancient text become relevant to poetry and literary principles, and what role did it play in haikai poetics?
These are good questions which are answered in the author's text coupled with detailed documentation and reference. In addition, she examines the haiku of Matsuo Basho, credited by most scholars with having played a significant role in elevating haikai from a frivolous verse form to a respected place in Japanese literature "in light of its intertextual relationship with Daoist traits in Chinese poetry." We learn that "it was mainly due to Basho's understanding of the correspondences between Daoist principles and Chinese poetic tradition that the Zhuangzi became a fruitful source of haikai tradition."
"All, including Basho," says Qiu, "used the Zhuangzi as a source of inspiration to develop their haikai style and theories. The haikai poets' encounter with the Zhuangzi presented a fascinating case of adaptation of Daoist thought in Japan. Through a dynamic process of reading and reinterpretation of the Zhuangzi, the haikai poets borrowed the foreign to reinvent the indigenous and the new, transforming haikai from an entertaining pastime to a poetic form that was at once uniquely Japanese and universal."
What makes Professor Peipei Qiu's book vital to the study and understanding of haiku, and as such, groundbreaking, is as Dr. Keene says, the author's treatment of "Basho's indebtedness to the Zhuangzi not as mere borrowing but as an example of cross-cultural fertilization at the highest level." It is easy to read something Basho said or is credited with saying, out of context, and/or to interpret it from one's own realm of cultural understanding, which can be far removed from the context it was meant to express, the differences between Occidental and Eastern thinking, at times, vast in the way of viewing the world. To understand Basho and, therefore, the direction he and his school of poetry (Shoman) took haiku, it is imperative to see and understand life from their language base and social context. And their social context was greatly influenced by Daoist teachings espoused in the Zhuangzi; a subject Professor Qiu covers extensively in her book. Basho raised haikai out of the mire it had sunken into. And with the relative complacency and lack of vision in some of today's modern English haiku, this is an area we should pay heed to and learn from. By going to the source that revived a dying genre (haikai) and elevated it to high art, perhaps we can gain a better, deeper understanding of haiku, and by doing so, breathe new life into our craft.
An excerpt:
Ice ---bitter tasting ---
just enough to moisten
throat of the mole.
kori nigaku/enso ga nodo o/uruoseri
While this verse is easily comprehensible as a humorous sketch of the hardship of the hut life, his (Basho) choice of the Chinese word "enso" (mole) as has been frequently pointed out,as the haigon draws our attention and causes us to feel unsatisfied with a mimetic reading. This peculiar image, in fact, is not merely a description of an animal that happened to be in the speaker's sight. As has been frequently pointed out, the mole is an image from a gugen in the Zhuangzi. According to the gugen, Yao, the legendary monarch, wants to cede the empire to recluse Xu You. Xu says:
You govern the world and the world is already well governed. Now if I take your place, will I be doing it for a name? But name is only the guest of reality---will I be doing it so I can play the part of a guest? When the tailorbird builds her nest in the deep wood, she uses no more than one branch. When the mole drinks at the river, he takes no more than a bellyful. Go home and forget the matter, my lord. I have no use for the rulership of the world.
Concerning the significance of the "tailorbird" and the "mole," Lin Xiyi explains: "That Xu You does not want to play the part of a guest means he does not let outer things dominate him. The "tailorbird" and "mole" are metaphors Xu You uses for himself, implying that he, like the mole, is contented with what he has." As indicated by Lin's explanations, the metaphor of the mole evokes a preference for simplicity and spiritual freedom, which carries the profound meaning Basho seeks when using the word in his hokku. Thus, the mole functions not merely as an image in the poem, but also as a meditating sign that signifies the specific hon'i, or poetic essence. With this meditating sign, all the other details are translated, and the humor of the tableau takes on poetic depth: the mole is in fact the eccentric self-image of the speaker, who, following the aesthetic recluse tradition, finds perfect happiness in a solitary and humble life.
Professor Peipei Qiu's Basho and the Dao: The Zhuangzi and the Transformation of Haikai, is not a book to be read in a single sitting. And it is not an easy read. It is a scholarly treatise to be studied, cross referenced, and analyzed; a book that will give serious students of haiku a clearer understanding of what haiku is, and isn't, and the path they must take to improve in their own quest to be better poets.
Says Qiu, "the Zhuangzi served as a congenial canonical text that assisted both haikai's identity building as a popular poetic form and its transformation to high art. Basho, in particular, used the Daoist classic ingeniously to appropriate haikai's popular, unconventional nature while at the same time imbuing its vernacular language and mundane themes with high cultural values. The haikai poets' adaptation of the Zhuangzi in the seventeenth century contributed greatly to the creation of a poetic form that is simultaneously humorous and profound, earthy and spiritual, eccentric and classical . . . characteristics we continue to enjoy in haikai's offshoot, haiku, today."
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