Haiku on Shit

 

In this jumbled world of ten thousand things, there are things that are beautiful, things that are ugly, and things that combine beauty and ugliness. However, if we attend to beauty, we can find almost nothing that completely lacks it. The ugly face of the puffer fish bears a slight trace of beauty within its ugliness. Sea cucumbers possess an unintelligible form, but even in this unintelligible form, we catch a glimpse of beauty. People despise the creepy appearance of hairy caterpillars and snakes, yet an honest look may reveal something appealing about them. But of all these subjects, the most extreme example must be shit. Among countless books on aesthetics, probably not a single one expounds on its beauty. There are voluminous Western and Chinese poems, but in our experience, we have never run into a poem about shit. Probably such a poem does not exist even in books of which we are not aware. If this is the case, then we might regard shit as entirely unsuitable for poetry; but, curiously, there are many poems about shit in haiku.

Why is it that shit does not appear in other poetry, and yet it appears comparatively so often in haiku? Perhaps it is because short poems like haiku allow for a high degree of harmonization. It is impossible to extract even a single molecule of beauty from something as thoroughly ugly as shit—but combine shit with something else and it becomes possible to sustain a slight hint of beauty. Outside of this act of combination, there is no method by which shit can be beautified. Now just because shit is combined with something else does not mean it will harmonize. Shit requires a very simple combination; in other words, shit cannot be harmonized unless it is combined in haiku. These examples demonstrate this immediately:

Fallen red plum blossoms appear to be ablaze on clumps of horse shit
—Buson

A plum tree in bloom—horse shit on the road south of the river
—Muchō

Put like this, shit does not sound so filthy. On the contrary, the image of horse shit seems rather tasteful. This is due to the simple and deeply harmonized combination of words. What happens if we make a longer poem?

Moss laid like a dragon on the tree trunk Flowers in bloom like jewels on a branch Speckles of snow on the beautiful girl’s face A single spring blossom in the boy’s bosom  ........................................................ Amid flowers scattered in a gust of wind A multicolored horse carriage passes by The scent of aloeswood and plum blossoms In the air, and at the cold edge of the road Three or four clumps of horse shit in the weeds

Here, “horse shit” stands out, merely emphasizing its filthiness. If you think only the wording is to blame:

Following the horse shit in the road
A rice paddy begins to appear

So even if we express it more gently, it still fails to harmonize.

Exquisite displays belong only in a jade paradise
So who planted this beauty amid the shit in Jiangnan?
Among the snowy mountains lies a great hermit
In the moonlit forest, a beautiful woman arrives¹

Phrased this way, nobody would take the poem seriously.

In everyday conversation, there are times when saying “shit” sounds neither terribly filthy nor funny. If the word appears in a solemn public speech, however, surely the audience would be offended. But in haiku, words like this can be short, informal, and comical, and, therefore, even such a thing as “shit” can be used lightly with ease, whereas in a longer poem, words inevitably take on a solemn, stern, and serious feel, and are far from being able to harmonize with excrement. This is the reason why shit harmonizes only in haiku.

Animals eliminate what they eat in the form of shit; thus, from a zoological perspective, there is no difference between human shit and mouse shit. And yet, from an aesthetic point of view, classifications and gradations exist even within the category of shit, so that we do differentiate human shit from that of a mouse. Perhaps it is too much to say that mouse shit possesses more beauty than human shit. But most people would probably agree that mouse shit has fewer unsightly elements than human shit. Generally speaking, the lower the animal, the less filthy its shit, and the more developed the animal, the greater the filthiness of its shit. No matter how we consider it, human shit has the foulest smell.

We have never seen a sea cucumber’s shit or a sea urchin’s shit, even if it might be pretty. Butterfly shit, cricket shit, grasshopper shit, and the like do not feel especially filthy, but we do not really find these examples rendered in haiku, perhaps because they are much too tiny and cannot convey any ambience. Goldfish shit, although discussed in conversation, also never appears in haiku. Whale shit must be enormous, but we seem to have heard nothing about it, since it may be that no one has ever seen it.

Many haiku do mention bird droppings. To the extent that it has even become a saying, it is believed to be a good omen to get pooped on by a bird, and that is because bird droppings do not elicit a sense of filthiness.² In particular, scenes such as a rock in the sea covered purely with white bird droppings feel rather beautiful. The phrase “kite droppings” is often used in everyday speech, and also appears in haiku:

A kite wipes off  its shit and flies back home—the snow on Mt. Fuji
—Kafū

A single cry—the little cuckoo feeds on the droppings of a bush warbler
—Baijun

The sticky droppings of a kite fall right on an iris petal
—Buson

The bush warbler—shitting on a rice cake from the top of a chestnut tree
—Bashō

The bush warbler taking a shit on the dead branch of a plum tree
—Onitsura

Shit from bush warblers is said to refine the skin and it is used in rice bran sponges—so, of course, it does not evoke a feeling of filthiness.

Targeted with precision over the big village house—the hawk takes a shit
—Bansui

Cormorant shit frozen on the branch of a pine tree—the riverbank
—Goun

Dropping its shit on a painting of Ōtsu—the swallow
—Buson

When you show it some sympathy, the baby sparrow takes a crap on you
—Issa

On the sprout of a reed, the old shit of a wild goose—a fond memory
—Kyōtai

A hedge of reeds—shit from a crane near the plum tree
—Hakuto

Taking a shit after peeing—a late autumn bird
—Tojaku

Even the bird that shits on the camellia blossoms takes a rest on its journey—
—Sentoku

Oh, no! All kinds of birds soiling the flowers with their shit—
—Issetsu

A hazy moonlit night—a bird has left its shit on the fence post
—Jyoin

An evening shower—I can read the stupas covered in bird shit
—“Resting in Suma” by Onitsura

We have exhausted the available haiku about bird droppings, and even people unaccustomed to reading haiku would not find them strange. Bird droppings may or may not appear in Western poetry, but, surely, in some cases, the topic would not be unsuitable. Even in Chinese poetry, although bird droppings would not have been included in quatrains or eight-line poems [lüshi ], it is possible that they could have appeared in the five-character “old style” poems. In The Water Margin, there is a passage on the deterioration of Gakan Temple:

When he went straight to the abbot’s chambers to look, he saw the ground was full of swallow droppings.

There is no sense of filthiness here. On the contrary, the lines are full of poetic refinement and pleasure. By nature, bird shit is not such a filthy thing.

The shit of larger animals might seem inharmonious unless employed in haiku. In this category, the most common are haiku about horse shit. In addition to being extremely commonplace, horse shit is not as dirty as cow or dog shit, and so it is used frequently and naturally in haiku:

The young weeds—dismounting my horse in Ueno and it, too, takes a shit
—Jinkō

Fallen red plum blossoms appear to be ablaze on clumps of horse shit
—Buson

A plum tree in bloom—horse shit on the road south of the river
—Muchō

From this point onward, not even the sight of horse shit—a departing little bird
—Gochiku

On this road, just follow the horse shit—a departing little bird
—Kiin

Compared to horse shit, I’m as fragrant as a daffodil
—Tōin

Swept up and mingled with horse shit—oh, is that hail?
—Rinpu

Clumps of horse shit lined up from Yotsuya all the way to a withered field—
—Seiga

Accompanied by a pine needle collector in the wintry wind
—“The Horse Shit Shoveler” by Shūsen

This last haiku was composed without foregrounding the image of shit. As for cow shit:

Making my way through cow and horse shit toward a patch of ground without snow—
—Teikō

On a signpost along the barren, wintery road—cow shit
—Bokuseki

Picking the young greens—if I had a kitchen knife, I’d try to chop them on this big cow dung
—Shusetsu

Haiku rarely makes use of cow shit, since it is filthy. If there is a place where the poet wants to say “cow shit,” the phrase will be replaced with “horse shit.” Among our examples, however—similar to the “picking the young greens” haiku—there are some unusual cases when “cow shit” cannot be substituted with anything else.

One dropping left by a mouse on my quilt—
—Buson

A harvest moon—the rabbit shit shines brightly
—Chōha

Hard to discern between the tree nuts mixed with deer shit
—Riri

Nothing but wolf shit in sight—how cold it is
—Issa

Amid a bundle of sweet flag grass, even bat shit can bless the child
—Kikaku

Reluctant to return to the court, he takes an early morning shit
—“Young Love Amid Cats in Heat” by Yūka

We have not yet seen a haiku about dog shit.

Regarding human shit, it appears difficult to handle, such that even haiku poets have not composed many haiku on the topic:

Peach flowers in bloom—when a boat carrying shit from Uji passes by
—Tei’i

The harvest moon—a boat carrying shit passing by with the smell of aloeswood passing by
—Otsuyū

The mustard flowers in Shimogyō blossom as the odor of shit wafts by [a linked verse]
—Shunsui

A high priest empties his bowels in the withered fields—
—Buson

At her baby’s first shit, my youngest sister’s beauty fades away—
—“To the Person Who Wished for and Gave Birth to a Girl” by Kikaku

“Crab shit” is used to describe a baby’s blackish shit. Although Kikaku’s ingenuity lies in making use of baby shit, we must say that the skill of Buson, who composed a poem about a virtuous priest taking a shit, is unsurpassed in history. The haiku about shit-boats, on the other hand, are nothing but sheer childishness.

We have never seen waka composed about bird and animal shit, although there is one poem about human shit in the Man’ yōshū:

Let us clear away the brambles and build a storehouse! To my wife making combs, please take a shit somewhere else

Aside from this example, there are some classical poems, such as those on silver carp shit (kuso funa)—but those refer to lower forms of crucian carp, similar to other vulgarized phrases such as “skunk vine” (kuso kazura), “shit out of luck” (yake kuso), “talking shit” (boro kuso), and “shithead” (kuso baka). The oral tradition includes this poem:

Saigyō has taken many journeys, but this is his first time taking a shit on a bush clover

We cannot, of course, believe this was composed by Saigyō, but it is puzzling why a poem like this was created. As we know, there are many poems on shit among senryū [comic haiku]. While the episode in The Pillow Book of Heichū looking into his beloved’s chamber pot is probably too old to consider even among historical examples, the camphorwood manure scoop, Ranmaru’s notched scabbard, and Mitsunari’s toilet paper are all fine material for senryū.³ In painting, there is Hokusai’s manga depicting attendants holding their nose as they wait for their samurai master to finish using an outhouse at a mountain pass. Aside from these, there are few other examples.

Let us take this occasion to mention haiku on piss as well. Piss may be regarded as more vulgar than shit, or, in some cases, it could be taken as slightly cleaner than shit. It depends on the occasion and circumstance. Notable characteristics of piss are that, unlike shit, it does not leave a form, it can be done outdoors, and when it bounces off of something it becomes audible, and so on. As for animal piss:

Fleas, lice, and a horse pissing near my pillow
—Bashō

In the hot grass, an earthworm swims in horse piss
—Suisatsu

An evening cicada: I wipe its piss off my neck
—Beitoku

Pissing a light green color, a frog jumps away—
—Issa

First cicada of the new year and here’s where it pissed—
—Issa

And so forth. In terms of human piss:

Eggplants ripening out of the piss at the town gate
—Jyunshi

As I piss on a lotus leaf, the Buddha’s cremated bones come into view—
—Shikō

A child pisses—with slight pressure and a smile on his face
—Sōbi

“Piss is indeed a good trade for bitter greens”—the iris seller⁴
—Otsuyū

Soaked in piss—a futon hung out to dry in the village of Suma
—Buson

First snowfall of the new year—who the hell pissed here?
—Kikaku

The water pipe overflows with my piss during the May rains—
—Kikaku

Getting up to take a piss, I saw the moon
—“Talking through the Night with a Priest” by Kikaku

Piss becomes a giant river at the close of the year
—“Edo” by Hokugen

There is an old story passed down about a person who wanted to paint cherry blossoms without being disturbed, so he mischievously posted a sign reading, “No Urinating Allowed on These Premises.” Immediately afterward, the poet Kikaku took a brush and added five syllables, “Mountains of Flowers,” thereby correcting the sign so that it contained seventeen syllables. We do not know if this is true.

A mountain witch pisses in the drizzling rain—traveling over the mountain
—Teitoku

The raindrops are only the goddess of spring wetting her bed—
—Unknown

The purity of piss from a mountain god—cries of the cicadas
—“At the Otowa Waterfall” by Tantan

Water in the valley rippling in the wind—shit from the moon
—“In Praise of the Tamagawa River in Kōya” by Onitsura

Although these four haiku make use of piss and shit, they only do so figuratively.

Incidentally, we can offer poems on farting, but there are not many. This is probably because it is more vulgar than shitting and pissing:

I eat a sweet potato and pass wind from my ass this evening—
—Sanpō

Unnoticed, I release an easy fart—staying indoors this winter
—Shōzan

Rice cakes and farts—nothing exciting to hear in this inn
—Kikaku

Occasionally hearing farts from the bamboo—a dark night in the rainy season
—Kikaku

We must say that Shōzan’s poem is an excellent example of a haiku on farting. “Farts from the bamboo” must be a metaphor. Since “stinkbug” has become a season word, there are a few other haiku along these lines.

Let us also present haiku on toilets. Toilets may be referred to as “bathrooms” (benjo), “outhouses” (secchin), and “privies” (kōka), but “outhouse” seems to be the term most commonly used in haiku:

The barrier guard’s outhouse is quite far—peach flowers in bloom
—“Spring” by Bakō

Ah, yes, I can hear it even from the outhouse—isn’t that a gray-headed cuckoo?
—“Summer” by Masanao

I forgot my sword at an outhouse in the middle of a field—the cuckoo cries
—Jyūji

An evening  glory blooms in white—I take a paper torch to the outhouse in the evening
—Bashō

Ah, the bamboo shoots—a priest from Saga visits the outhouse
—Onitsura

The outhouse has no door to knock for the water rail—
—Sakō

It’s been a long time since I last saw an outhouse—the flowering gourd
—Bakō

Ah, is this the fan that Koremitsu took into the outhouse—
—“Scene of a Broken Fan” by Kikaku

The fan’s become a toilet that the mouse eats—
—“Reading Li Si’s Biography” by Kitō⁵

A carpet of red leaves from the goddess of outhouses—Princess Tatsuta
—“Autumn” by Joryū

Bonesets flowering—who hung their pants on the outhouse in the field?
—Yūsei

Unexpectedly, the scent of chrysanthemums rises from the outhouse—
—Sekikō

First day of autumn—the outhouse door squeaks in the wind
—Tōsui

Head of a rooster—the outhouse door on a shaded mountainside
—Shōzan

The temple school’s garden and its outhouse shaded by gingko trees—
—Shōzan

A woman viewing chrysanthemums and then borrowing the outhouse—
—Kitō

The dawn moonlight—reflecting back upon the outhouse
—Kitō

“Here’s an outhouse!” calls my horse on a cold night—
—“On the Time I Got Lost While Looking  for a House” by Issa

An outhouse known as “the mountain”—an inn covered in snow
—“Winter” by Sukenaka

At an outhouse after a rectal prolapse, I gaze at the loquat tree in bloom—
—Onitsura

Let’s wait for this sudden shower to pass—an outhouse in the field
—Ukō

Ah, the daffodils—the outhouse door faces the other side
—Risetsu

In the outhouse, I purify my spirit—is it December?
—Toshi

Late autumn rain shower—a single pine tree by the outhouse
—“The Famous Pine Tree of Karasaki” by Kikaku

Is it an accident that there are so few haiku on spring outhouses? Or, is it because when a cheerful thing like spring is combined with outhouses, the odor of an outhouse is somehow sensed? All of the many haiku about shit, piss, farts, and outhouses invariably avoid describing foul odors—something we apparently cannot beautify under any circumstance. Among these haiku, there are some that do have a slightly foul odor, such as, “Unexpectedly, the scent of chrysanthemums rises from the outhouse—” and “The harvest moon—a boat carrying shit passing by with the smell of aloeswood passing by,” but none of them are any good. On the other hand, in the poem “The mustard flowers in Shimogyō blossom as the odor of shit wafts by” even the foul smell seems pleasant, since the locus of the haiku is expansive.

Here we have the only haiku on bedpans:

The barrier guard—an evening plover flying back and forth from the bedpan
—Kansei

Having listed all of these poems, if we do not present haiku on male loincloths (fundoshi) and female loincloths (yumoji), our discussion might be incomplete, so let us look at the works below:

This morning, his loincloth is loose—a young warrior
—Yūsei

In the spring rain—I change my loincloth, taking off my socks
—Shayō

In the plum orchard, the owner dragging his loincloth
—Buson

Inside his loincloth, the innkeeper wedges his paper fan
—Buson

Even the men’s loincloths sport a square knot in this summer heat
—Dōin

His loincloth got torn in half—the sumō round ends in a draw
—Kotō

Crossing the river—dedicate your loincloth to the starry night
—Sogai

On the evening of a windstorm, Du Fu’s loincloth falls off
—Kitō

After crossing the river, I squeeze out my loincloth—here comes the sleet
—Mōgan

To my loincloth, I fasten two hundred talismans, driving out the evil
—Taigi

The firefly’s butt shining brightly—a red loincloth
—Unknown

A hunter in the river—a sole warrior from Ise in his red loincloth
—Hakei

In the cool evening, a man in his loincloth taking pleasure in sleep
—Masan

Hanging one’s loincloth to dry on a chilly pole—the autumn plums
—Kendō

Hanging one’s loincloth to dry on the top of a pole—the Milky Way
—Rangai

At Tamagawa River, a frog wearing my loincloth
—Kaiga

Displays of strength in sumō—grabbing his loincloth by the hand
—Gyokusei

His loincloth looks splendid but Kyōto sumō is weak
—Kyoriku

In my loincloth—I have to get out the mosquito net in the morning
—“Shit out of Luck” by Genso

Around his loincloth, the summer heat lingers—
—“For a Poor, Honest Monk” by Riyū

Slipping out of the mist—crabs in their white loincloths
—“At Tago Bay” by Fukaku

Haiku freely employs motifs such as shit and piss, not to mention outhouses, loincloths, and so on. Most people are puzzled about why haiku poets compose poems with such filthy, disgusting subjects. They criticize those poets for being too eccentric, and say there must be plenty of subject matter other than shit and piss. Indeed, motifs like shit and piss do not need to be rendered in haiku at all costs. But it is also not wrong to compose haiku about them. The general public immediately feels talk of excrement is unpleasant, and probably has no patience to savor combinations and harmonization. But haiku poets are constantly trying to capture the beauty of everything, and so they are not quick to reject even excrement. By attending to combinations and harmony, they are willing to incorporate any worthy elements available. This tendency is not limited to haiku poets. Other artists, such as painters and non-haiku poets, are accustomed to seeing all things only from the perspective of beauty. This is why they have a habit of discovering subject matter for a painting or a poem from within commonplace scenes that the general public has dismissed as worthless. But haiku in particular allows poets to depict the insignificant things that other poetic forms cannot, given the natural tendency of a haiku poet’s observations to encompass every inch of the world. Taken to the extreme, the haiku poet cannot dismiss even excrement. It is not our intention here to demonstrate the beauty of shit and piss by expounding on filthy themes and focusing on filthy objects. We have simply shown that a haiku poet’s viewpoint has the tendency to encompass all things within a wide scope, including, ultimately, the study of excrement; and furthermore, we have asked to what extent excrement can be beautified. (We have collected everything we could, and the aforementioned poems are what we found. More than half of them may be failures.) We hope the reader understands that this does not mean that haiku poets are fond of filthy things, nor do they pointlessly shock people in pursuit of novelty.

Translated from the Japanese
 

____

The Japanese-language essay (which you can download as a PDF) was first published in Hototogisu vol. 3, no. 5 on March 10, 1900. This translation is based on the version in The Collected Works of Shiki (Shiki zenshū) vol. 5, eds. Masaoka Chūsaburō, et al. (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1976), 392-406.

1 Shiki replaces the word “everywhere” with “amid the shit” in these four lines from Nine Odes to Plum Blossoms by the Chinese poet Gao Qi (1336–1374).↩︎

2  The saying is based on a pun in Japanese: unchi ga tsuku (to get pooped on) sounds similar to un ga tsuku (to be lucky).↩︎

3 A legendary character from the late Heian period (794–1185), Heichū stole a woman’s chamber pot so he could smell it, thereby overcoming his desire for the woman. To his surprise, he found the contents delightfully perfumed—to the point that he sipped the urine and took a bite out of a turd. Heichū quickly realized, though, that the woman had played a trick on him: the “urine” was clove-infused water, and the “turd” was a taro root mixed with incense.↩︎

4 The poet Nakagawa Otsuyū (1675–1739) is referring to human urine, which along with human excrement, was valued as fertilizer during the Tokugawa period.↩︎

5 Li Si (d. 208 BCE) was a Legalist thinker and prime minister during the Qin dynasty in China who once advocated the burning of books.↩︎