furuike ya              Old pond
kawazu tobikomu  Frog jumps in
mizu no oto            Water-sound!

the American poet Allen Ginsberg traslated this haiku thus:

Th'old pond--Frog jumps in--Kerplunk!
 

Just as they were speaking, from the nearby pond, Basho heard a frog jumping in, and he looked, transfixed by the sight.

Basho said: furuike ya  kawazu tobikomu  mizu no oto

The master laughed out loud, saying "These are the words of your true self."

Zen aesthetic has the quality of "wabi", which is a kind of loneliness. Didn't you feel the whole aura of the good haikus had some strange quality of aloofness. We all noticed the brevity, the enormous world/moment that is captured within 17 syllables.

Just look at the very first haiku in our text.

On a withered branch
a crow has settled--
autumn nightfall.

kareeda ni /
karasu no tomar keri/
aki no kure

This was indeed the haiku that made the difference. A truly original work, a masterpiece, for the genre, and for the poet. The effect of the poem is not intellectual. Actually there is hardly any commentary, any description. All we have are three very very short lines, like gentle brush strokes hinting at a certain TIME and PLACE, and then a RELATIONSHIP between the two manifest in an object or a movement that has touched the poet in a very profound emotional level. The poet reveals the secret of this emotional experience through the haiku, very much in the manner painters express themselves.

June 30
Modern Japanese Stories, pp.(786-827) (Watch Rashomon by this date).

Are there common elements in the versions? Might the husband have rejected the wife?
Might the wife have been willing to go away with Tojumaru?

What loose threads are there? Was the husband killed by a sword or a knife?

Are all weapons accounted for?

What is the significance of the child at the end of the film?

What really happened in that grove?

Tattooer
by Junichiro Tanizaki
The Moon on the Water
by Kawabata Yasunari
The Priest and His Love by Yukio Mishima

As we shift gears from the Indian tradition, make sure you check out some of the links that follow.
Learn as much as possible about Japanese culture, ancient and modern, movies, public life, US and Japanese relations, etc. Check out a map if possible. I am going to build up this site in the next few days with plenty of stuff for you to look at if you want to learn more.

Let's also keep in mind the unique nature of Asian theater you were introduced to through Sakuntala when we discuss the noh plays of Japan.

Checking out the Japanese movies in the MOVIE Page; the movies may be another way of getting some easy and fresh exposure to Japanese culture.

Points to Remember as we enter the final phase of our course: Japan
 

During 4th-6th century AD clans join together and form Yamato, early Japanese state

Buddhism arrives in 552; first major turning point;

710-784 Nara period, the capital established in Nara; great cultural transformations;

Nara Period witnesses the second major turning point in the culture: the adoption of Chinese characters for writing Japanese which in its oral form existed long before

True that Japan has somewhat recent historical origins compared to India and China

Many think Japanese culture is only a variation on the Chinese culture; judge for yourself.

The foundation of the Japanese tradition indeed rests on the ancient Chinese culture

Earliest classics, Kojiki and Nihon-shoki [legends and chronicles of Japan] was written down in the newly adopted Chinese characters.

Our first readings, Manyoshu (760) is translated as "Ten Thousand Leaves", but the book contains only about 4,500 poems. Very much in the spirit of Shi-jing, which also exerted a lasting influence on Japanese literature

In the Heian Era (794-1185), katakana and hiragana style writing added to the classical Chinese characters, leaving three ways of writing Japanese.

In  the Heian age (794–1185)  Japanese literature establishes its unique identity, although the Chinese style writing and the Chinese dominated culture still retained much clout among the aristocrats.

The new writing in Japanese was mostly dismissed as women's stuff; women were, of course prohibited from learning the elite Chinese language; if men wanted to write in Japanese they even used female persona to avoid detection.

Tale of Genji, by the first major Heian writer, Murasaki Shikibu (Lady Murasaki, 11 th century) also the first novel in any language--it is commonly believed that the novel form is a product of 18th century Eurpean middle class experience.

Murasaki's Tale of Genji] is ranked with the world' s greatest novels.

Sei Shonagon, Murasaki's friend and rival, wrote  The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon.

In the medieval period,  noh theater develops, a dramatic  form combining dance, music, chanting, and mime--very ritualistc, close to Euopean tragedies

Kanami Kiyotsugu (1333–84) and his son Zeami Motokiyo  (1363–1443) developed noh.

Plays by dramatist Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1724) are important in world literature as the first mature tragedies written about the common man.