Saikaku’s Moonlit Miles

An early modern Japanese death poem by Saikaku, translated and illustrated as a poetry comic

Seattle Zine Fest this past weekend was great! My best show yet. Again, thanks to everyone who came by for sharing their enthusiasm and picking up copies of my books!

A lot of folks expressed excitement about the death haiku comics, too, so this is very validating for my own excitement when I first thought of the idea and bodes well for the eventual book.

The power went out early on during the festival, and we all improvised lighting to get through. There is a small flashlight that has lived in my backpack for years without ever being used. But Sunday, the moment it had been waiting for its entire life finally arrived—its time to shine.

The visitors seemed unperturbed, though! And if done intentionally with better lighting prepped, it would be awesome as a festival theme.

As a bonus, I also feel like my live sketches I did during the show of attendees standing nearby reached a new level:

Up next for my events, the comics talk at Mam’s Books on 8/3 @ 1pm—probably? I’m trying to coordinate with the store owner, who did verbally confirm that the event is happening a couple weeks ago, but he’s a busy guy. Will keep you posted.

Today’s death haiku comic is the last one for the compilation!

Up next, I’ll be writing and editing the prose for the booklet, doing a back cover illustration and possibly inside cover, depending on how the prose lays out, and I need to learn how to set it all up for print via risograph printing. This’ll be the first time I prep a riso print job, and there are some particulars about it.

I’ll also have a poll coming to get y’all’s thoughts on the title.

Ok, on to Saikaku.

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西角の辞世 Saikaku’s Death Poem

西角 Saikaku (died 1730, age 70)

月影 を

tsukikage wo

借って 今 行く

katte ima iku

十万 里

jyuuman ri

Translation:

I borrow moonlight

and go now, on a journey

of a million miles

Notes

There’s not much new to explain here in terms of the imagery in Saikaku’s poem. But I loved the idea of illustrating “borrowing moonlight” as a literal borrowing of the moon to light one’s way, so this poem was on my priority list early on.

And starry night skies are always so captivating to illustrate and to behold. As I went through the process of illustrating, my ideas evolved so that instead of simply lighting the long path Saikaku walks, the illumination would be a pathway of stars. If you imagine someone carrying the moon as they walk a starry path, it could be an allegory for the moon traveling the night sky. And to think of the moon guiding people to the next world seemed to me a beautiful and satisfying image to end the compilation with.

On the moon:

We can hearken back to Onitsura’s jisei for some of its meanings:

The moon could represent several things: on a simple level, Hoffman notes that the moon was considered an autumnal image by default unless the context indicated otherwise. Seasonal imagery has been a key convention of haikus since the 16th century in Japan.

More significant to death poetry, though, Hoffmann also observes that in a death poem by Oriku, who commit suicide to escape her cruel mother-in-law, the moon represents salvation in the world beyond our mortal realm. And in another interpretation that could be relevant to Onitsura’s poem, the full moon can symbolize enlightenment, with its circular shape echoing the ink circle paintings of enlightenment (ensou) in Japanese Buddhism.