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We are currently research and confirming the following haiku for inclusion in Catalog of Japanese Haiku. If you have a haiku suggestion please contact us and let us know.

Haiku Design

Haiku Design Description

^[X] Blyth. A History of Haiku Volume One. 385.

Blyth is not as accurate as we would always like. He is poetic and insightful so we respectfully overlook his errors. He uses tadai 多大. Lanoue uses tadai 多太. Japanese sources often write 多太（田）with "field" read "ta" in parenthesis. Presumably this is read "tata" making the middle line seven syllables answering Mr. Lanoue's question of why the middle line has eight syllables.

Blyth writes, "Adam cannot possibly live, even in Paradise, without Eve."

Haiku guy at http://haikuguy.com/issa/haiku.php?code=234.23a has:

This undated haiku is a version of one written in 1817:

kimi nakute makoto ni tadai no kodachi kana

without you--
how vast
is the grove

R. H. Blyth reads the above haiku's fourth kanji as "large"; A History of Haiku (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1964) 1.385. Since this choice makes the compound tadai ("great"), which makes sense in the context, I have followed his lead in my translation of both this and the 1817 poem, even though this adds an extra syllable to the "middle seven" phrases.

Blyth uses:

君なくてまことに多大の木立哉

http://haikuguy.com/issa/haiku.php?code=234.23a

君なくて誠に多太の桜哉
 

^[X] Blyth. Haiku, Volume Four. 1156.

Blyth writes, "At the end of the year, relatives are reunited, parents and children feel their relationship more warmly and deeply. In such an atmosphere, Issa overhears a father or mother grumbling at a child. Guilt on the one side, anger on the other, - there seems litle room for envy, but Issa, an orphan, envies the child his power to be reprimanded, that is, his having a father or mother."

^[X] Blyth. A History of Haiku Volume One. 220.

According to Blyth this was written upon the death of her husband.

^[X] Blyth. A History of Haiku Volume One. 128.

Blyth writes, "He is referring to the white hair of his dead mother which he saw when he returned to his native place in 1684."

^[10] Blyth, R. H. (1949) Haiku Volume 1: Eastern Culture. Tokyo. The Hokuseido Press. 82.

^[X] Blyth. A History of Haiku Volume One. 26.

IMPORTANT: Blyth has an error. Which is reflected above still. The "no" should be a "ga". Unfortunately the meaning changes so Blyth's translation is also not quite right. I will look into this further and put up the other sources.

This also appears in A Year of Epigrams p ix and 35.

Porter, William N. A Year of Japanese Epigrams. London: Oxford University Press, 1911.

^[X] Blyth. A History of Haiku Volume One. 55.

I read this poem in several different ways. Clearly it is a comment on filial piety. In one view we can image the parents are the one tending the bamboo grove and it is their labor that means the bamboo will grow strong. Or perhaps the parents really had nothing to do with how the bamboo sprouts, but we should still be thankful to them. Finally, the young bamboo grows in a shape suggestive of a dashing samurai (See Haiku by Ransetsu and the commentary) and so when we are big and strong for this too we should be grateful to our parents.

^[X] Blyth. A History of Haiku Volume One. 141.

Blyth writes, "To understand this excellent verse we must know two things: the way in which the bamboo grows out of the ground, the sheath on one side; and the way in which a Japanese of the old dashing type would pull out his sword and bare the shoulder of the arm to ensure freedom of action."

^[10] Blyth, R. H. (1949) Haiku Volume 1: Eastern Culture. Tokyo. The Hokuseido Press. 207

An autumn eve; She comes and asks, "Shall I light the lamp?"	aki no kure hi ya tomosan to toi ni kuru
Etsuji	etsujin

Haiku p 405 Blyth (1952) and p 168 (1981)