Kyo’on’s Final Fart

An early modern Japanese death poem by Kyo'on, translated and illustrated as a poetry comic

I enjoyed Hot Off the Press Book Fair this past weekend, with mostly great weather (wind was a bit of a nuisance) and live music playing while a good crowd wandered vendor tables. To my delight, several people who stopped by my table had already heard of jisei, it seemed from the same Hoffmann book as I did, and were very interested in my haiku comics project! I’m now even more excited to bring the collection to printed form and be able to share it with everyone. Thank you to everyone who got Phased, picked up a BoMB, or both!

This coming Sunday 7/20 is Seattle Zine Fest, the the Quality Flea Center in Capitol Hill. Find me at table 19!

On to today’s death haiku comic: Kyo’on didn’t take the death poem assignment so seriously as most everyone else did. This will be the second to last one I do before moving to editing the writing and creating a couple more illustrations for the print compilation.

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去音の辞世 Kyo’on’s Death Poem

去音 Kyo’on (died 1749, age 63)

夢 の 葉 か

yume no ha ka

散る 洒落臭し

chiru shyarakusashi

最後 の 屁

saigo no he

Translation:

a dream’s leaves perhaps…

scatter impertinently

like one final fart

Notes

Kyo’on had a little fun with their death poem. Besides using passing gas as a metaphor for the transience of life, they transition from the dream imagery they start the haiku with to gas via shyarakusai (meaning something like impertinent, impudent, or bold), whose latter half, kusai, means “smelly”.

And I had fun coming up with the composition for the comic, starting at the top with gingko leaves blowing beautifully in the wind and traveling down the page we come to the reveal that the wind is a bodily one.

The onomatopoeia I took inspiration from Calvin and Hobbes, whose fart onomatopoeia I and my brothers enjoyed pronouncing literally as young kids. “F-b-p-t-b-p-p-b-t…” I’m sure Watterson would be so proud!