Traveling to the Inn 【Haiku of Japan #1】

the moon’s guidance:
please come this way
a traveler’s inn
—Basho

月ぞしるべこなたへ入らせ旅の宿
(tsuki zo shirube / konata e irase / tabi no yado)

This is my first post in what I hope will be a daily haiku post. Before moving to Japan I thought haiku were pretentious and somewhat silly. It seemed to me the entire point was to count syllables and therefore anything could be a haiku.

How pointless it is
anything can be haiku
if you can count well

After arriving here however and seeing real haiku poems, I fell in love. These are nothing like the mindless crap that passes for haiku in the US. The best of them paint a scene in your mind just as well as any painter could do. They suggest enough that your mind can fill in the details and transport you there.

I will be sharing some of my favorites here as well as any that I come across a just like. I have many haiku books, so I won't run out anytime soon. Translations are usually my own, but I will note the translator when I use someone else's translation.

Let me know if you have any suggestions for this series.

*: Woodblock print is by Kawase Hasui. It is titled Rain at Maekawa in Sagami Province (相州前川の雨), from the series Selected Views of the Tōkaidō Road (東海道風景選集)

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Thank you for reading. :)

If you enjoyed this post, please like, follow, and resteem.

I post one photo everyday, as well as some misc posts such as haiku, videos, more Japanese history, and so on. Let me know if there is anything about Japan you would like to know more about or would like to see.

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David LaSpina is an American photographer lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time.