- Fukuda Chiyo-ni
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Chiyo-ni standing beside a well. This woodcut by Utagawa Kuniyoshi illustrates her most famous haiku: finding a bucket entangled in the vines of a morning glory, she will go ask for water rather than disturb the flower.
Fukuda Chiyo-ni (Kaga no Chiyo) (福田 千代尼; 1703 - 2 October 1775) was a Japanese poet of the Edo period, widely regarded as one of the greatest female haiku poets.
Contents
Biography
Born in Matto, Kaga Province (now Hakusan, Ishikawa Prefecture) as a daughter of a picture framer, Chiyo-ni began writing haiku poetry aged 7. By the age of 17, she had become very popular all over Japan for her poetry. Her poems, although mostly dealing with nature, work for a unity of nature with humanity. Her own life was that of the haikai poets who made their lives and the world they lived in one with themselves.
Chiyo-ni's teachers were the students of Bashō, and she stayed true to his style, although she did develop on her own as an independent figure. Today, the morning glory is a favorite flower for the people of her home town, because she left a number of poems on that flower.
After becoming a nun, Chiyo took the Buddhist name, Soen.[1]
She is perhaps best known for this haiku:
morning glory!
the well bucket-entangled,
I ask for water
(trans. Donegan and Ishibashi)[2]Shokouji temple in Hakusan contains a display of her personal effects.
In popular culture
The American rock band Red House Painters adapted one of Chiyo's haiku for the chorus of their song "Dragonflies".
References
- ^ Patricia Donegan and Yoshie Ishibashi. Chiyo-ni: Woman Haiku Master, Tuttle, 1996. ISBN 0804820538 p256
- ^ Donegan and Ishibashi, 1996 p172
See also
- Japanese literature
- List of Japanese authors
External links
- O Mabson Southard and Chiyo-ni: Masters of Buddhist Tradition by Brock Peoples at Millikin University
- Pamela Miller Ness and Chiyo-ni: A Comparison of Two Women Haiku Authors by Joan Leach at Millikin University
- With Liquid Voice Unendingly a renku by Chiyo and Sue Jo, translated by Lenore Mayhew and William McNaughton in Modern Haiku, XIV:2, 1983
- Morning Glories! (朝がはや Asagao ya) a renku by Chiyo and Suejo, translated by John Carley, in Simply Haiku, v7n3, 2009
- The Wasi of ChiyoNi Ishi at ancientworlds.com
- Chiyo-ni's Haiku Style Excerpts from Chiyo-ni: Woman Haiku Master, by Patricia Donegan, in Simply Haiku, v2n3, 2004
Categories:- 1703 births
- 1775 deaths
- Japanese poets
- Japanese women writers
- 18th-century women writers
- Japanese writers of the Edo period
- Japanese writer stubs
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