Taneda Santōka — 'Wading In, Wading Further In, Still Blue Mountains' — The Wandering Poet

Born to a Sake Brewery in Hōfu (1882-1902)

Taneda Santōka (1882-1940), given name Shōichi, was born on December 3, 1882, at Nishisawaryō (present-day Ōji, Hōfu, Yamaguchi). His family ran the Taneda Sake Brewery, prosperous in the region.

But dark shadows fell in Santōka’s early childhood. In 1892 (Meiji 25), when Santōka was 10, his mother Fusa threw herself into the family well. Fusa was 33. Santōka is said to have witnessed the scene (accounts differ). This became the shaping trauma of his life.

Afterward Santōka was raised by his father Takejirō, but Takejirō was dissipated and involved with women, and drove the family business into decline. Santōka’s youth passed in an unstable home.

Waseda Dropout and Marriage (1902-1913)

In 1902, at 20, Santōka came up to Tokyo and entered the Waseda University Higher Preparatory literary course. He suffered from neurasthenia during his studies and dropped out in 1904. He returned to Hōfu.

In 1906, at his father’s urging, he joined the management of Taneda Sake Brewery. In 1909, at 27, he married Satō Sakino. The next year his son Ken was born. For a time he lived the ordinary life of a young sake-brewery heir.

But in 1911 Taneda Sake Brewery collapsed. Between his father’s dissipation and his own lack of business ability. The family left Hōfu.

Days in Kumamoto and Divorce (1913-1924)

In 1913, the family moved to Kumamoto. In a place near his wife’s parents, they opened a frame shop, Garakuta. But the business failed, and Santōka increasingly turned to drink.

At this time Santōka began contributing to Sōun (Ogiwara Seisensui’s free-verse haiku magazine). Seisensui recognized the young Santōka’s talent and published him actively. Santōka chose the pen name “Santōka” — meaning “fire on the mountaintop,” conceived from seeing fires along the Rokkō slopes.

In 1916 Santōka’s father Takejirō died in Hakata with a mistress. In 1919 his brother Jirō committed suicide. A chain of misfortune among relatives.

In 1920 Santōka and Sakino separated by mutual agreement. Sakino took their son Ken, and Santōka was alone. By this time he was effectively an alcoholic, wandering the streets of Kumamoto and failing repeatedly at attempts to rebuild a career.

Ordination and the Life of Alms-Rounds (1924-1940)

In December 1924, Santōka caused an incident by stopping a Kumamoto tram (said to be either drunken behavior or a suicide attempt). By chance, the abbot Mochizuki Gian of the Sōtō Zen temple Hōon-ji saved him and had him ordained. Santōka was 42.

In February 1925, he became the caretaker of Mitori Kannon-dō in Kanoku District, Kumamoto. But settled life didn’t last. In April 1926, dressed in a woven hat, black-dyed robe, and iron begging bowl, Santōka set out on his life of gyōkotsu — mendicant travel as a wandering monk seeking alms.

For the next fifteen years, until his death in 1940, Santōka walked intermittently across Japan. As far north as Tōhoku, south to Kyūshū, and west to San’in. The total distance is said to be 80,000 ri.

Life of Mendicancy and Composing

Santōka’s daily routine is hard to imagine now:

• Each morning, hat and bowl in hand, going house to house for alms of a penny or two
• Alms spent day by day on food, lodging, sake, writing paper (sake often exceeding food)
• Nights at cheap inns, temples, or in the open
• Continued journals and haiku (Gyōkotsu-ki, Sanpakukyū Nikki, and huge diaries survive today)

Santōka’s power is that he did this for fifteen years. Whereas Bashō’s journey was “literary travel,” Santōka’s journey was literal beggary. In the modern society born of the Meiji Restoration, he walked as a pre-modern beggar-monk — an exceptional poet.

Santōka’s Masterworks

“Wake-itte mo / wake-itte mo / aoi yama” — Wading in Blue Mountains (1926)

The first-major verse from the earliest days of his mendicant journey. May 1926, shortly after leaving Kumamoto.

• Wake-itte mo — I part the way and go forward
• Wake-itte mo — and go forward again
• Aoi yama — still blue mountains stretch on

The repetition of “wake-itte mo” carves as sonic rhythm the mountain paths that repeat on and on. 5-6-5 = 16 morae, with a season word (blue mountains taken as summer), near-fixed form. Santōka’s most widely known verse.

“Ushiro-sugata no / shigurete yuku ka” — A Figure from Behind Vanishing (1931)

• Ushiro-sugata — someone’s back (or one’s own back)
• Shigurete yuku — passing on through the winter drizzle
• Ka — sentence-final particle, exclamation

5-7-4 = 16 morae, free verse. The lingering “ka” leaves the loneliness of autumn’s end and winter’s beginning. Another Santōka masterpiece.

“Teppatsu no naka e mo / arare” — Hail Even Into the Iron Bowl (1934)

• Teppatsu — the mendicant monk’s iron bowl
• No naka e mo — even into that
• Arare — winter hail

5-3-2 = 10 morae, an extremely short free-verse. He holds out his begging bowl and instead of rice or coin, hail falls in. The severity of winter and the harshness of the alms-round, met with quiet acceptance. One of Santōka’s peaks.

“Yuki e yuki furu / shizukesa ni oru” — In the Silence of Snow Upon Snow (1934)

• Yuki e yuki — snow falling onto already-fallen snow
• Furu — falls
• Shizukesa ni oru — dwells in the stillness

5-3-6 = 14 morae. In a solitary house in the winter mountains, snow falling without sound and on and on. “Shizukesa ni oru” — the “oru” (dwells) quietly marks the composer’s own being.

“Massugu na michi de samishii” — On a Straight Road, Lonely (1934)

• Massugu na michi — a straight road as far as the eye can see
• De — locative
• Samishii — lonely

3-6-4 = 13 morae. Among free-verse haiku, this shows most sharply Santōka’s marking of feeling through brevity and colloquial language. The daring of setting “samishii” (lonely) directly in colloquial form.

Death at Isso-an in Matsuyama (1940)

In 1939, at 57, Santōka walked through Shikoku and reached Matsuyama. Aided by his Matsuyama haiku friend Takahashi Ichijun and others, he settled at Isso-an, at the foot of Mount Miyuki in Matsuyama. His fifteen-year travels came to a rough end.

On the evening of October 11, 1940, after a verse gathering with friends over sake, Santōka died in his sleep at Isso-an. Cause: cerebral hemorrhage. He was 58.

His last verse collection Karasu (“Crow,” 1940) was compiled by himself just before death. One of the last verses (attributed):

“Mori-mori mori-agaru kumo e ayumu” — “Toward the clouds heaping and rising, I walk.”

Santōka’s Legacy

While Santōka was alive, the central haiku world partly regarded him as “an eccentric, self-destructive poet.” But from the 1960s onward, a major reappraisal:

• Positioned as a representative figure of colloquial and free-verse haiku, an important line of modern haiku
• As an instance of Zen and haiku joined, read even by Western Zen studies
• The unity of life and verse — “the wandering life itself is haiku” — an inspiration to modern lifestyle-oriented poets
• Publication of Santōka’s diaries lets us read the interior of the fifteen years of travel in detail

Today, when Japanese hear “free-verse haiku,” Santōka’s “wake-itte mo” is the first thing that comes to mind. Alongside Ozaki Hōsai, he is a central pillar of 20th-century haiku as the counterweight to Kyoshi’s kachō-fūei.

Toward the Next Article

If Santōka is “moving” free-verse (a poet who kept walking), then his contemporary Ozaki Hōsai was “still” free-verse (a poet who tried to stay put). In illness and solitude, Hōsai left the ultimate verse of solitude: “Even when I cough — alone.” In the next article we trace his 41-year life.