I first encountered the haiku of Santōka some 50 years ago, and was instantly hooked.  At the time, I was living in a 250-year-old hut in Japan’s countryside. Three small rooms with earthen floors, no running water, and a thatched roof as leaky as Santōka’s straw raincoat, this peasant’s dwelling was much like the hermitages the poet himself occupied between his periods of wandering the country. 

Unlike many traditional haiku poets, Santōka wrote about his own lived experience: his loneliness, his unremitting poverty, his joy in being with friends, his delight in the public baths and sake, and the miserable figure he cut as he wandered about begging. His verse was also striking in its form; conventional haiku generally adhered to a 17-syllable limit, but Santōka’s poems ran anywhere from eight to 28. Likening himself and his poetry to weeds, existing according to their own rules, he wrote, “Those who do not know the meaning of weeds do not know the mind of nature. Weeds grasp their own nature and express its truth.”

A Zen Buddhist priest who could not sit still, a lover of sake, and a chronic supplicant for his friends’ charity and patience, Santōka managed to produce a body of work that came to be widely celebrated and enjoyed after his death. To this day, books, movies, and manga extol the poetry and life of this singular man.

I am profoundly grateful to the National Endowment for the Arts for this grant, which will support my translation of The Pagoda of Grasses and Trees, Santōka’s favorite collection of his own poetry, in its entirety. This award will allow me to pursue further my fascination with Santōka, broadening and deepening my research in key locales and with fellow scholars in Japan.